The Waylanders Critic Reviews

The Waylanders is to be commended for the way it takes Celtic mythology and extracts cool moments and conflicts. It’s a great jumping-off point to learn more about the Tuatha De Danann and the stories of pre-Christianity Ireland. It also tries to innovate party-driven RPG combat by focusing on formations and their advantages. Unfortunately, engaging with the game world and its mechanics is not fun enough. Most combat encounters feel interchangeable, companions do not have much personality, there’s a lot of walking around. Working the camera never feels good, especially in tight quarters during battles. The Waylanders also needs major tweaks to its difficulty if it wants to attract more than a very niche audience.

Although flawed, The Waylanders is a solid RPG for fans of the genre thanks to its setting and interesting mechanics.

The Waylanders is an interesting concept let down by poor dialogue and inconsistent challenge, but it’s not without its charm.

With its unique setting and interesting story mechanics powered by time-traveling, great sense of scale, and nice visuals, The Waylanders had the potential to be a remarkable role-playing game. The uneven pacing of the story, writing with wild quality shifts, the rather run-of-the-mill combat, the clunky interface, and a general lack of polish, however, make the game often frustrating to play, preventing it from reaching the heights it could have achieved.

Underneath the intriguing concept and gorgeous graphics, The Waylanders has a somewhat meaty tactical experience wrapped around the bare bones of an RPG. And while it may be light on the actual role-playing elements, there’s enough of a unique spin in terms of story, setting, and battle system that those who prefer mechanics above anything else might have a good time. This is by no means Baldur’s Gate nor Dragon’s Age: like King Ith’s Tuatha de Danaan, those gods aren’t here. I can recommend The Waylanders, but only if expectations are managed accordingly.

The world with Celtic folklore and strange creatures is remarkable in itself. However, the overall result is inconsistent, unconvincing and even with bugs.

I’m not sure if more time in the oven is the answer to The Waylanders’ problems, but it couldn’t hurt. I really liked the setting and core story, but I’m afraid that the game’s bland combat and awkward controls are baked in by now. It has character, charm and style to spare but swings and misses in the execution. The Waylanders is a collection of really good ideas, almost none of which are allowed to shine without compromise.

The Waylanders is an old style RPG with a good setting, but it is penalized by bugs, errors and full of awful dialogue.

Everything about my experience points to GATO Studio either running out of time or money (or both) before they could complete The Waylanders. A story that starts off in a fresh setting and filled with interesting characters, nice visuals and outstanding voice acting is quickly derailed by technical flaws and an ever-growing list of bugs. I rarely complain about too many side missions or additional features like romantic endeavors being added to a game, but this is a perfect example where cutting out unnecessary features would have allowed GATO Studios to focus on the things that really mattered. Sometimes, less can be more, and that appears to be the case here.

The Waylanders tries to follow on BioWare's footsteps but Gato Studio's game lacks all the qualities that made Dragon Age: Origins stands out.

The Waylanders tries to imitate a variety of mechanics from leaders of the RPG genre, but fails to implement any of them effectively, while offering nothing original apart from the astonishingly poor dialogue.

The game is wonderful artistically, but it just has far too many problems right now to recommend. The developers, Gato Studio, seem to recognize this and are preparing updates, but once again I find myself reminding game studios how badly things can go if you release something before it is ready. It is really hard to gain back the trust of players after you lose it.

As such it is hard to recommend The Waylanders in its current form. Although it is charming and enthusiastic, its slapdash quality seriously hampers the overall quality of the experience. A middling narrative and minor bugs are easy to overlook if the overall game is enjoyable - which The Waylanders is - but potentially game-breaking issues will erode any good will the title may have gained.

Inspired by legendary RPGs and developers of yore, The Waylanders fails to honour them in any respect. Its story is as generic as they come, the characters completely inconsistent. The controls are clunky and some bugs prevent you from progressing. The combat system is fine, but that really cannot save this game from deserved oblivion.

When The Waylanders succeeds, the game is one of the most solid experiences I’ve had all year. But those successes are few and far between, while the rest of the title fails to keep itself afloat among a sea of bugs and poorly thought out gameplay decisions.

The Waylanders is an RPG that's endearing as it is janky. It has fun characters and looks stunning, so here's hoping that more patches can get rid of the (potentially game-breaking) bugs.