Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem Critic Reviews

Wolcen's development has been long and full of uncertainties, but it has managed to reverse the trend and become an excellent surprise. It should appeal to veterans who have been around the hack and slash genre. Although it can sometimes be very intimidating with its massive Gate of Fates and its huge amount of statistics, it also has what it takes to attract the general public. It offers an instant grip and efficient gameplay, all with a design uncommon to big studios and a solid play time. Unfortunately, it was released prematurely, and bugs, server unavailability and a rough interface have cooled our enthusiasm a bit.

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is a good action isometric perspective RPG that knows how to take what you need from games like Diablo III or Path of Exile. Its playability is fun and demanding, although it does not escape the sense of repetitiveness inherent in the works of its genre. It highlights the excellent work that has been carried out in the system of skills improvements and levels rise, but it is dazzled by a multiplayer section still pending some improvements in its servers, although it has been on track since its launch. With a new mode at the end of the main campaign, the options for those who wish to stay are endless. Undoubtedly, one of the surprises of this beginning of the year that, will have to do with time if it stays in a “take away” while Diablo IV arrives or manages to keep his community hooked with new content.

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem deserves your attention and patience. You can clearly see the passion, commitment and a fresh look on the hack'n'slash genre. Right now the game is a well-made evolution of old ideas but it has a chance to become one of the best if the developers deliver all the promised content. Despite many technical issues, Wolcen is worth your time. The game is simply too much fun.

The ARPG genre is a crowded one, but when something as fun and entertaining as Wolcen wants in, I'd say we can afford to make room.

Wolcen stands firmly on the shoulders of Diablo 3 and does a surprisingly good job of replicating its formula. Forceful combat, interesting ways to develop a character and fancy graphics come together in a decent campaign, even though it feels overly familiar and even a bit unfinished at times: The end game needs more content and variety, the balancing seems a little off and there is a good amount of bugs left in the game. While Path of Exile or Grim Dawn clearly remain the better options right now, there might still be a bright future for Wolcen - if the devs keep on patching things up and adding new content.

Despite its many minor flaws and even significant issues, Wolcen nails that action-combat-loot dopamine drip that fuels the longest-lived games in the genre. Even after four years of pre-release tinkering, Wolcen is pretty messy, but enough fun at the core that the problems are worth dealing with, at least in the short term.

Apart from lots and lots of missteps and bugs I can see the developers’ passion and a whole lot of hard work poured into the game.

I really like Wolcen very much. This talent tree - complex and full of variants on the one hand and user-friendly on the other hand without gaps - has been my wish for Path of Exile for years...The cutscenes are also great. It's just a shame that the story runs out of air in the last third.

It is not the new Diablo, nor an action RPG with great new additions: it is instead a game that celebrates features brought to success by others, to which we add some personal ideas that work.

Extraordinary beauty (and extraordinary bugginess) aside, Wolcen is a run-of-the-mill ARPG that takes "inspiration" from every popular game in the genre and mixes it with its own questionable know-how.

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem has all the tools thanks to ARPGs that came before it. Sadly, its online mode has had a litany of issues, the controls could use some tweaks, the loot pool isn't as deep as you could imagine, character skills need some rebalancing, and a slew of shortcomings lead to a questionable launch after four years of development. Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem can surely reach the cream of the crop among ARPGs with more improvements, but it's going to take time.

With a good campaign and a nice combat feeling, Wolcen shines in the Hack'n Slash genra, even if it has a lot of bugs and suffers from difficulty balancing issues.

Wolcen could have been a contender in the ARPG arena, but it can't get out of it's own way for more than two seconds. Perhaps in time WOLCEN Studio will patch everything up and allow the game to shine as it deserves, but right now the game fights you at every turn. Wolcen is game that is as fun as it is frustrating. I like Wolcen; I simply wish I could love it.

This game is, unfortunately, buggy and broken. It was unable to fully utilize its time in early access, but you can still find moments of genuine fun if you look hard enough.

Despite the game have a great combat feeling and create tons of fun on looting, it's such a pity that Wolcen: lords of mayhem remains buggy and broken. After a four-year development, the game still looks like being in ALPHA test, obviously, not everyone can stand it.

Beautiful and interesting ARPG following the steps of Diablo and Path of Exile, but severely lacking in general polish.

Wolcen can be as fun as it is visually stunning. It has some brilliant ideas in terms of character development and feels great once you in a fight. But it also has a lot of technical and balancing issues that may prove that it needed more time before release.

Some good ideas but with a price too high and with too many limits.

A mountain of issues gets in the way of the gratuitous monster murder and engaging customisation.

Hack-and-Slay heaven and bug hell: Wolcen be thy name. While the battle system and the visuals lay the foundation for a promising motivation cycle, the enormous amount of bugs as well as annoying gamedesign blemishes keep pushing you away.