Warden: Melody of the Undergrowth

Fun in concept and like the style but the game is quite slow and clunky. definitely needs a lot of polish. The battle system feels like it still needs work before it feels good to play.

:)

This game has no way of remapping controls and the sensitivity/camera inversion settings are global to both mouse and gamepads. I wanted to invert the X/Y and A/B buttons so that I can swing the sword with the A button and dodge with the Y button (or shouldn't it be X instead?) and the game crashed and it also crashed Steam along with the game. I wanted to remap the shield from the Ctrl key to the C key for easy reach, but that cannot be done. That requires me to stretch my left finger in my left hand down to the control key and I can't keep the rest of the middle fingers around the WSAD keys that easily. The shift key is easier to reach, but alas, I requested a refund for this game due to serious accessibility issues and for flat-out hard-coding the controls in the game. This game is half-baked. Buyer beware.

Once you accept and get past the jankiness of this Zelda-Collecth-a-thon hybrid, you have a pretty enjoyable game with quite a bit to do and find.
If you're a fan of nintendo 64 and gamecube era adventure-platformer games, it's a game for you.

I believe in giving everyone a second chance, so I reinstalled this ....game.
Wardern is without a doubt, the worst Zelda rip off to date. A combat system that is at best broken and at worst unplayable. EVERYTHING about this game feels like a failed high school students project. It's so clumsy in execution that it's truly unplayable.

While it lacks the polish of a larger studio game, Warden is a lot of fun. Don't roll towards an enemy because you might end up standing on their heads and bring a piece of paper and a pencil for the alphabet puzzles, and other than that, enjoy a great mix of exploring, collecting, searching, and fighting.

The combat is horrendous. You're forced to hit and run you. You can lock on an ennemy but the game will chose which enemy you're locking on and you can't change the lock selection. The weapon swing animation feels like dark souls except when you roll you don't get invincibility frame you just land in another ennemy's way and you get yeeted off a the nearest ledge.
Platforming is okay to me although nothing interesting to see here.
The map is huge but you can't run and there's no map. There's some kind of fast travel for which you have to go through the rest and sleep animation which are way too long to execute. Like all animations in the game.
It was fun for about 2 hours. Then came zones filles with 5 ennemies close together and that awful hive queen which can by the way, shoot and slam your face through obstacles of course. Did the devs test their own game ?

This is... a surprisingly decent game all things considered. Not great, absolutely far from it. Too many problems to list; but in short:
1. Janky and awkward physics and jumping in general. Feels stiff
2. Combat is awful and having weapon durability just feels especially off
3. Lots of collectibles but the primary collectible becomes useless 2/3rds of the way through the game with no reason to keep collecting after that point, and stuff hidden in awkward places that's decisively not worth it
4. Some questionable level design in general
5. Sound design isn't great; weapons are unnecessarily noisy and the transition between overworld music and battle music is incredibly awkward (the music is all kinda forgettable too)
6. So I got softlocked in The Water Wing once also, had to reset, which...
7. Ooh checkpointing is baaad, every time I loaded the game, no matter where I left off, I'd start in the royal bastion. I have absolutely no clue why and while I can warp back to some places, fast travel is, well, not done well.

But on the whole I did like this, despite all my gripes. The aesthetic is nice, clearly aping wind waker but trying to modernize it in some ways and it's colorful and pleasant to look at with decently diverse areas overall (though none feel especially imaginative). The platforming and puzzles can generally be solid fun as well, and the game doesn't overstay its welcome or feel overly long. There's an attempt at a story and worldbuilding but it all feels a bit awkward, but it's appreciated nonetheless. There are two final bosses you can choose between and one is much, much easier than the other, so...

I'd say get this on sale if you can, I wouldn't say it's worth $20 when taking the length and general lack of polish together, but I didn't mind playing it and had a decent time with it.

Reminds me of the legend of zelda wind waker graphics, except less bright and doesn't have random unnatural lines in the ground. Story is good so far. Sound is ok. Fighting is similar to links style, lock on attack and dodge. I don't think this game supports keyboard and mouse very well as the only way to view for me is by walking and doing lock on/off to change camera. The controller works just fine but the controls are still wonky. Also why is dodge ctrl, my little pinky already has a hard time reaching the windows key. honestly i think the game is worth $15-17. Also the game isn't optimized for low key laptops/computers that you got 8yrs ago.

Warden is basically a mashup of everything in the action-adventure genre and collectathon platformers. It doesn't do anything better than its inspirations, but it does it all well enough that I had a decent time, especially considering that some of those genres (3D Zelda-likes, for instance) are horribly represented on PC.

Combat is functional, but not remarkable. Weapon variety is great, and degradation means you're forced to get the most out of it, but your reach feels shorter than it should be and the collision can freak out in close fights. It basically clones the targetting system from Zelda or Dark Souls, as well as the dodge system from Wind Waker, but your sideroll and backstep don't have the range to actually dodge the attacks from certain enemies. Still, the boss fights are very well done and combat against large standard enemies is consistently fun. It's also notable that there is friendly fire for enemies, which can be funny in crowds.

A lot of the negative reviews complain about the difficulty, but I found it pretty much on par with Zelda. I died three times over the course of the game, and all of those were to the same mini-boss because my weapons were completely mismatched. Most of the boss fights are almost comically generous with health pickups, but I can see there being room for frustration if you missed a lot of the health pickups or didn't take higher-tier weapons from dead enemies.

There are three dungeons that are impressively large and a fourth "final area" that's more of an extended outdoor environment than an extra dungeon. Platforming segments aside, none of them would feel out of place in an actual Zelda title in terms of either design or quality. The Pyramid in particular was a highlight.

The graphics more or less speak for themselves. Everything about the art style is blatantly inspired by Wind Waker, and it mostly pulls off the look. The exceptions are almost all lighting bugs - a few areas with exceptionally bright lights look absolutely terrible, and some dark areas make the shaders lose their minds.

The story does its job, but no more than that. The only thing I have to say about the writing is that literally every lore log has escaped linebreaks (\n) all over the place. I'm not sure how they did that, but it's frankly unbelievable that that level of bug both got past testing and hasn't been fixed two months after the last patch.

Overall, I had a pretty good time with it. If you're in the mood for a 3D Zelda-like and don't mind it being a little janky at times, you can't go too wrong here.

This game is really trying to emulate Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker. Unfortunately, it is lacking in the areas that made Wind Waker really stand out.

* Combat is clumsy. Your dodge move will take you directly into the path of enemy attacks. Combo attacks are hard to pull off because enemies tend to either fly away from you or do not stagger when you hit them. Often as not, the only way to fight is to hit the enemy once and then retreat before they hit back.
* Too much of the game environment is basically empty space - fun to explore once, and tedious to pass through afterwards. Thankfully there's a fast travel system.
* Platforming feels weird and floaty - it's not hard, most of the time, but I still have difficulty guessng where my jumping characters will land.
* World-building writing only happens in specific areas, rather than being distributed all over the world map.

I did not finish the game, as I wandered into the Hive Queen boss fight and died repeatedly to its exploding spore creations. I do not have the patience to muddle through that.

Sadly, I asked for refund because I had frame rate issues (in some parts the game ran around 14 FPS and I can play Witcher 3 with medium settings 720p with solid 30FPS), but the game itself was very good.
If you saw the trailer, you already know what to expect of this game, and it doesn't dissapoint.
If you have even a slight interest in this game, you should give it a chance, if you have the same problem as me, you can always ask for refund, and the game deserves taking that small risk.

I really love this game. If you have fond memories of the N64 and Mario64, BanjoKazooie, and the like, you are going to enjoy this.
It's an adventure game with some puzzles (some are impossible to discern, I had to phone a friend... one of the earliest puzzles is BINARY?!). I had one glitch in the four hours I have played so far, I jumped from a platform and fell....forever.
You don't have the option to manually save progress and rooms reset if you die. Some will dislike this, but it is clearly the game working as intended and you don't lose your weapons or anything. It's nice to be able to just jump to your death if you've messed a puzzle up beyond all recognition. And of course, this was a feature of many N64 games, which the Warden is intentionally imitating.
In a sea of FPS, 2d garbage and "minecraft" clones this game really stands out. I would buy this game 20 times, not just because they broke the mold a bit, but because they did it very, very well. 10/10

So I played about 2 hours tonight in one sitting, and so far my impression of the game is pretty good. Those who say it feels like are Zelda game are exactly right, and that's one of the main reasons why it was recommended to me and I decided to buy it. As of initial impressions, I'd give it 7/10. For $20 it's worth supporting the devs and giving it a try if you're in the mood for something Zelda-like before the next big Zelda game comes out.

Good-
-The art style and execution in most of what I have seen has been very nice, and plays well to a smaller development team with more limited resources in terms of time, money and project scale. That being said, in many ways it emulates the Wind Waker style very, very well.
-The sound and music overall is pretty good, the mixing could be a bit more even, but it's minor. I did feel some of the dungeon music to be a bit repetitive and needlessly abrasive for a *mostly* puzzle oriented dungeon. The town music though, very good and really makes it feel like a welcoming area in the game
-Character dialogue is pretty good, albeit a bit rushed. The WW kokiri-like race is really well done.
-Combat, after some initial experimentation is a bit rough, but otherwise fun and has a good basis for balancing
-Use of different mechanics to set it apart from a Zelda game -- this is important and is shown to you pretty much immediately in the constant search and collect mechanic through the spirit motes as well as weapons for your character. The quick travel function/concept also ties in really nicely with their fire motif
-So far the puzzle variation is pretty good

Bad-
- The game is a bit unpolished in some ways and could benefit from some non-essential gameplay moments to add to the world and help to setup the game and the main character a little bit ( like an opening cut scene, some dialogue choices, some panning shots etc.)
-I've experienced some texture popping in various areas
-Combat can be a little frustrating at first, specifically regarding the use of specific weapons, targetting being less useful than it could be and getting used to the speed of movement in the attacks, it doesn't feel as responsive as it could, but it is something you get used to.

See written review below or watch it here: https://youtu.be/cTXARvbmlrU

TL;DR: SKIP TO CONCLUSION!

Warden: Melody of the Undergrowth is an action adventure platformer that gives a good sense of nostalgia to the old school N64 Legend of Zelda.

You play as a young child who is trying to find his father, who visits the spirit realm, and sort of merges with the two other children to try and protect the forest. The world is open, but there are a fair amount of loading screens when going between areas.

You start off with one character, and as you play the game, you unlock two more characters, each with their own special ability. I liked being able to change characters, but I had expected a more Trine-like feel to changing between them. In Warden, the transition from one character to the next takes way too long, and it wasn’t always feasible to do when enemies are near.

Pros:

• the nostalgia is great, and the graphics really made me feel like I’d been brought back in time with the vibrant colours, and style of the game
  
• soundtrack was really good
  
• solid adventuring and platforming that plays similar to older console games of the genre from the late 1990s and early 2000s
  
• being able to fast travel through the spirit realm campfires was a neat addition and came in quite handy
  
• quite a few optional puzzles, and collectibles to find for those who like to explore more thoroughly

Cons:

• lacks keyboard/mouse customization, and the default keys feel a bit awkward to use (controller is recommended)
  
• the overall story isn't that impressive
  
• very short draw distance - the environment looks great up close, but everything else a bit off in the distance is blurry, and there’s no options to change it
  
• sound effects the characters make when they’re jumping, and fighting are too loud, and very annoying (the third character wasn’t bad, but the first two characters made me cringe every time I heard them)
  
• music when you enter and exit combat would change abruptly, and it was almost jolting at times
  
[*]combat uses a lock on system, and it functions horribly

My biggest complaint about the platforming is that the fall damage seems very inconsistent. Sometimes I would jump off a tiny ledge and take damage, but the other times, it would be twice the height and I would take no damage at all. Health is shared across all 3 characters, but death isn’t that punishing, so losing health here and there wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was still a nuisance.

For the most part, the combat was terrible, and the combat really holds the game back from it’s full potential. I avoided fighting as much as I could, and I would run through mobs and just not attack whenever possible. The combat uses a lock on system, which doesn’t always work properly - there were some times where it would lock on a target in the back, or just not lock on at all to the mob right in front of you, and other times if there was nothing to lock on, it would try to lock on to something else and spin the camera around.

Then if you finally succeed at locking on, there’s sometimes a significant bug, and the weapon would go straight through the mob, dealing no damage… it was very annoying! When you lock on, you can also throw a stun at an enemy and dodge incoming attacks. Being able to stun mobs helped take alleviate some of this combat frustration.

As you fight mobs, your weapons will lose their durability, and break, but there is usually a sufficient supply of weapons available, so this wasn’t a huge problem. I didn’t mind the weapons breaking, but it was annoying that I couldn’t drop a weapon off one character to pick up on another or trade them between each other.

Conclusion:

The game took me about 11 hours to complete, and I was trying to find as much as a could. I did get stuck on a couple parts that were bugged, but these issues have already been resolved. The developers really seem to care about their game, and I’m glad to see that they are so responsive on the discussion board, and putting out so many bug fixes so quickly. That being said, the game has good potential, and the nostalgia factor is definitely there, but due to the combat issues, and bugs that still need to be worked out, I would suggest waiting more fixes, or for a sale price.

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This is a half-recomendation.

The game is, at its heart, good, however it less than unpolished, it is downright rough in areas. Some mechanics are difficult to control to the point of irritation and the game will kill you a number of times because of faults with the physics engine whereby you will maintain your momentum when you jump, so if you start sliding off something the traditional method of jumping to get a better foothold won't work. This can also throw off your jumps if you land somewhere that gives you this momentum and jump before realising that you're flying uncontrollably off course.

However, despite those faults, the game IS still playable and I am confident they can be patched and fixed at a later date.

Another qualm is that despite the narrative woes the main character goes through at the beginning of the game he is quite content to smile like a goof throughout a lot of it, making it difficult to get invested in what is going on.

HOWEVER... having said all of that I still recomend the game. There is some very good art direction going on here, and some of the models really impressed me. The gameplay, though rough, is pretty solid and thus-far is about the same level of challenge you would get from Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask.

The developers also seem to be rather proud of the lore they have given to this world, as one of the collectibles in the game are lore scrolls that give brief explainations of the world, and the things you will find in it, and they are kept in a dedicated lore tab. It is not a large gesture but it does a lot to reassure me of how much the devs care about the game.

The game is at its best when nobody is talking and you are let loose to explore an atmospheric area. There is plenty of evocative map design going on here and I will be interested to discover more of it going forwards. I hope the developers keep working on this game post-launch to smooth out the edges (and honestly, those are edges that should have been smoothed before release just fyi, lads).

Warden:Melody of the Undergrowth is one of those games that will remind you of the days playing on your N64 trying to navigate both combat and moving around with a camera and movement. The Puzzles will challenge you as you try to navigate each area of the game in order to progress further. Getting lost is something that will happen now and again as you may miss something simple like a passage way or a ladder that you need to go up, but when things start to work you do feel that level of accomplishment for figuring out things.

Combat is a little problematic, but not to the point where it ruins the game, just requires a different way of thinking when you engage the enemy.

Overall a very beautiful looking game with some problems, one big one if you watch the video towards the end, but still a very enjoyable game.

https://youtu.be/SP3JBRALByg

I love it, the puzzles are fun, somtimes frustrating, the gamplay is fun on controller, and works just as well on keyboard. And if you're wondereing yes this game is very similar to Legend of Zelda, but in many ways it is different. It has the same feeling but there are some mechanics in the game that is different. The open world aspect is also cool in that you choose wich order you go with the game. The graphics are also pretty good with nice vibrant colors and beautiful lighting, so would I recommend this? Hell yah!

I'm pretty impatient so I'm going to put at least -some- words out so far. That is to say that the general vibe of the game is great. The graphics are nice and the combat is pretty fun! It's fairly heavy and it takes a little to get used to, but it's nice otherwise. The environments are rather immersive and this whole game -really- takes advantage of the unity engine which really does make this a pretty special game.

But.

In the 47 minutes I have played of this game before writing this review -- and trust me, it's enough to gripe about it a little -- I have to say that I find the sound design to be so bad that it is -distracting-. I wouldn't put it like that if I didn't think it was true, but I think a big problem that the devs are going to find with this is that the sounds in this game either feel underwhelming, (Example: A cave-in that takes place at the start of the game.) or feel almost non-exisistent. Sometimes, when you hit something, you don't get much of a response at all. In fact, in the very first area, whacking through the underbrush produced no sound at all. I'm not sure if that was a glitch or not but it did bother me. I'd hate to say that this is something worth considering so much, but the sound lacks tactile depth to a point that it does interfere with the gameplay. It has an effect of bringing you out of the experience, and the music is charming on the surface, but quickly grows repetitive and almost obnoxious. (I had to turn it down when I was in town. It got to me.)

For some people, that whole spiel right there won't be a problem at all since it might not impact how you play the game, but for someone like me, sound's a visceral part of the experience and just as important as the graphics. When I hear something that feels cheap, it does affect the gameworld as a whole, and with a very beautiful game like this, it's a shame. I understand that saying this isn't very much help to the developers either since redoing the sound at this stage in development would be a massive undertaking and take hours and hours more work, but it feels like this is something that should've been evaluated before the game was released.

SO ALL THAT BEING SAID, it's still a pretty gosh-darned good game. I'm going to recommend it with a caution that the audio can be -very- offputting. It's something I hope the developers take the time to address, but again, this isn't an early access game. The glitches are manageable and a little goofy, the gameplay is solid, and the graphics are bewitching. And although the story is rough around the edges, and the game has an awkward start, so far everything is rather great. I'll probably update this later, but I feel like, with a game like this, the more reviews people have to see, the more they'll have to work with when deciding whether or not to purchase a game like this.

A truly enjoyable throwback to a seemingly lost genre.

Warden delivers in all the areas where it matters, from having stunning environments and unique enemies to a compelling story, this game isn't pulling any punches.

Delve into a whimsical world of fantasy and wonder, playing as the new warden work to stop untold peril from unmaking the beautiful world the game takes place in. From a vast amounts of unique weapons and equipment to witty dialogue and subtle humor this game has a great deal going for it.

What An awesome game, has a nice rareware/zelda charm to it.


Even though the game is a nice take on old Rareware/Zelda games it still feels a little in the beta stages of development, Currently I died once during the beginning of a stage and ended up at the respawn point before the boss of the temple/cavern. Skipping the puzzles/level entirely.

The game also takes a page from Prince of persia series as you can pick up your enemies weapons and use them, however if you die after your weapon/armor breaks you don't get it back. so be prepared. Also you don't have a main weapon, your torch so far is the only permanent item that you can carry.

As you progress you gain the ability to change forms, different characters, which have their own abilities to help solve puzzles and to gain access to areas you normally can't, they also have their own inventory for weapons so if you are fighting a boss/ mini boss, your character's weapons break, you can switch out and use the other characters weapons.

The music in the game at first was O.K. now that the nostalgic goggles wearoff it's becoming more annoying, some of it is just a 15 sec loop, while others you actually tell comes directly from the zelda series.

The targetting system is somewhat flawed as when your in the middle of the battle you can target the enemy doesn't really mean your facing said enemy, Coming from the zelda series specifically OoT your first instinct is to lock on and attack, you cannot do that in this game. What you must do is lock on, dodge, then attack. if you directly attack at all it leaves you open for attack, as your character animations are slower then the enemies, which means rinse lather repeat.

The exploration of the game is fairly good, collecting blue symbols which help you unlock new areas, firepits allow for fast travel, different characters help out where needed.

The story I haven't really followed, There is a lore section in your start menu when you find hidden scrolls, which you can read on your free time.

It's a good game but i wouldn't buy it at full price, get it when it's on sale.