For the past 3 weeks I have mostly been playing Wartales. I am not 100% sure how many hours, but my total Wartales play time after this third run is now up to 225 hours. In this run I finished the first four zones to 100% completion, and finished the main story and majority of content of the fifth zone. Now my group is parked before the 5th Ancient Tomb, and I don't really feel the desire to play through it.

I have a model of how all computer games work: There is a basic repetitive part, which in games like Wartales is combat, and a non-repetitive part (e.g. story or quests) that leads you from one repetitive unit to the next. Ideally the repetitive part evolves somewhat to stay interesting for longer, but that typically plateaus. My characters in Wartales are now level 11 or close to it, and I don't expect them to be much different at level 12, even it that is the next level where they gain new skills.

On the positive side, combat in Wartales remains fun for many hours. It is very easy to get past my benchmark of 1 hour of fun per $1 spent on the game. Especially if you just buy the base game for $35. In my current playthrough, I never made it to the Pirates of Belerion DLC content, as I was playing on region-locked, and Belerion would be either the 6th or 7th zone, with 6 zones being base game content. I have the Tavern DLC, and that was usable from level 1 on, but other than siphoning off money, I mostly ignore that management side-game now, as I am already at the top with my tavern.

My basic model of computer games shows a typical problem: There are two "lengths" to a game. One is the length of the non-repetitive content, how long you play until you are at the end of the story or have done all the quests. The other is the length of the repetitive content, how long you can play that before it becomes boring. For Wartales, the non-repetitive part is definitively longer, I grew bored before reaching the end of the story. That isn't inherently bad, as I said it took a lot of hours before I reached that point. But frankly, sometimes I had to grind a bit to either catch up with my levels to the region-locked level, or to gather enough resources to get all my mercenaries equipped with the latest smithed armor they could make, but didn't necessarily have all the resources for. Leveling feels slow after reaching about mid-level, it really seems as if xp per fight nearly stay the same, while xp per level go up by a lot, so time per level increases.

I am still somewhat divided on the question whether it is better to play Wartales on region-locked or adaptive difficulty. The clear disadvantage of my region-locked run was that I had to play through the same zones again that I already knew from my very first run 4 years back. But I do kind of enjoy the feeling in any RPG where you encounter an enemy that is too strong for you, only to be able to come back later, when you have a higher level and better gear, and now are able to beat that enemy. Adaptive would be better for being able to skip zones, although I haven't tried it, and am not sure how viable it would be to directly go for zones that are higher level in region-locked with a level 1 group.

The problem with fun of the repetitive part of the game having run out for me is that the fact that there is a new DLC coming out next week doesn't interest me at all. The changes to the core gameplay aren't big enough to revive my interest, and so I really don't need yet another higher level zone.

I had fun, and I certainly don't regret my third time playing Wartales, but I do think it might be time to move on. I'm not directly uninstalling the game, in case I want to come back and play the pirate DLC after all. But my experience with the first five zones was that, while they certainly do have their unique parts, there are also repeating elements in those zones, and the fifth tomb, the fifth bandit camp, and the I don't know how manyth rat lair aren't really fun anymore.

- posted by Tobold @ 11:19 AM Permanent Link