Wolcen Lords Of Mayhem Review (Steam)

by Jim Smale · January 4, 2021

Wolcen Lords Of Mayhem

A dynamic hack’n’slash with no class restrictions. Choose your path as you level-up and play your character the way you want! Explore this shattered and corrupted world to uncover its ancient secrets and hidden truths.

Pros:

Decent dark Gothic graphics.
28767MB Download size.
Steam achievements.
Graphics-fullscreen, resolution, v-sync, fps limit, show fps, anti-aliasing, sharpening, chromatic aberration, vignetting, motion blur, lens flare, blood optimization, graphics quality, shadows quality, animation quality, objects detail, water quality, texture quality, and volumetric effects quality.
Streamer mode-hides your player ID.
Powerful soundtrack.
ARPG gameplay.
Auto equips option.
Hud scale slider.
Can rebind controls.
Online and offline mode switch.
Two game modes-story and Champion of Stormfall.
Two privacy settings-private or public game.
Two difficulties-story or normal.
Two-story mode types- Lords of Mayhem (original story) and Blood trail (story and new additional content events).
Character creator-male/female, face, hairstyle, hair color, facial hair, facial hair color, eye color (for each eye), starting gear-melee/ranged or magic and name.
Easy to learn controls complete with a roll/dodge button on the space bar.
Plays like Diablo.
Stamina/willpower will determine what actions and abilities you can use, it does regen.
Tutorial pop-ups as you play.
It looks absolutely gorgeous from the locations to the lighting to the ever gruesome enemies and bosses.
Can see enemy health bars.
Clear easy to read Hud.
Earn EXP and level up to get 10 points each level and put into the four categories-ferocity, toughness, agility, and wisdom along with a point to put into the gate of fates.
Character sheet-shows stats, exp level, damage output, and modifiers.
Gate of fates-use a point to add further buffs and attribute changes.
Excellent cutscenes with a mix of in-game and pre-rendered cutscenes.
Complete character build control.
Hack and slash combat.
Personal chest for stashing loot.
Loot has rarity and stats are randomized.
Shop to buy/sell loot.
Pets-will collect items and gold for you.
Full voicework.
A simple click to move and click to attack system. Can hold down the move button and do so without the constant clicking.
Camera-can zoom in and out.
Town portal-press to fast travel back to the town hub has a casting time.
Waypoints-discover them and unlock them as a fast travel point.
Spells-as you use spells you earn exp with them and every so often you can add a modifier to them like lower resource cost or do more damage.
Enneract- collect these as they are what give you spells and abilities, you can buy/sell/upgrade them along with changing them in and out.
Many optional side dungeons and missions.
Clear mission tracker on the screen.
Hunts- find traces that add modifiers to the hunt for both you and your prey but most importantly it lays down a trace for you to follow. Hunts end in a huge boss battle and rewards.
Gems-socket these into gear that can take it to add new buffs and/or modifiers to them.
Sell Enneracts in the town for affinity points that you can then use to level up other Enneracts.
Very addictive.
Innovates in very clever ways.
Big boss battles.
Defines loot lust.
Different enemy levels like elites and mini-bosses.
Breakable objects like barrels, pots, and boxes.
Loot chests to find.
Gore can be turned on or off.
Auto equips the different types of loot (armor/weapons).
Treasure spider that drops loot and gold but will run away all the time.
Offering shrine- pick one of the random rewards.

Wolcen Lords Of Mayhem

Cons:

No benchmark setting.
Doesn’t support the controller.
Basic character creator.
Broad starting gear choice.
Why even have the original story option.
Varying load times.
Pets don’t do combat.
Hunts can drag on a bit.
A lot to take.
Slow start.
Loves to give you gear you cant use.
Pushes melee builds on you with its loot drops.
Can be hard to see items on the floor.
Have to be precise with item clicks.
Leveling up is long winded.
Small inventory capacity what with the high item drop rate.
Never sure it saved.

Wolcen Lords Of Mayhem

8/10
Graphics - 8/10
6/10
Sound - 6/10
7/10
Accessibility - 7/10
7/10
Length - 7/10
8/10
Fun Factor - 8/10

7.2/10

Summary

Wolcen Lords Of Mayhem is an ARPG and will instantly (and rightly so) be compared with the king of the genre Diablo 3. It’s the look, the feel, and general action that will draw the comparisons and as someone who has many 100s of hours in diablo 3 alone, I cannot help but pit the two together. I found that Wolcen did have a lot of really good adjustments and advancements for the series like leveling up magic as you use it, the way in which you get magic and abilities is a good start, it works by you finding them and equipping em, with them associated to the different play style like spells or melee or ranged. The downside is, you have to actually find the drops and even then it’s a case of getting the right one for your build. That lies the start of a problem, the builds are so hard to get going as it’s so random, all you have guaranteed is the stats allocation, everything else is luck, you pick a class but that means nothing outside of the starting stats. I went magic and it was a nightmare as the game kept chucking melee weapons and gem drops. Looks-wise it’s a real looker and has really good locations but it all feels way too staged. Enemies can be seen from a distance and they just sit there until you get so close that it triggers them to move, it’s very rehearsed and not that immersive. I liked the idea of chasing down your prey and getting a boss fight but again it drags out simple tasks, has tedious areas and the boss fight is very eventful. It feels like the game never finishes anything and just does a bit of that and a bit of this. The crafting is not on a level that’s worth reporting on, the level up is simple with just stat point allocations, boss fights are damage sponges and not that fun, the performance is stuttery and it’s all these reasons I can’t fully get on board. I want to like it and I reckon with more content it could make a real go of it, even with the content drop that happened recently, it didn’t do anything substantial, it didn’t fix the main content issues, I got constant sound issues, loot is tipped too far the wrong way and it’s just a stop starter. Overall Wolcen shone brightly for a few hours but the light soon faded and all I get now is darkness and tiredness.