Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem

You want to buy the best aRPG? Buy Diablo 1-5
You want the best aRPG for free? Get Path of Exile.

I really really wanted to like this game but I just don't.

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is not really a bad game, but it is not a good game either.
The campaign is fun for the first 2 acts, act 3 slides down the fun ladder considerably and the ending gives you blue balls.
Act 4 shits the bed and kicks you in the nuts, it's tedious and boring.

The skill system and skill point system is hard to get your head around, but the worst offender in this game is the loot system.
I played until lvl. 50 and all the time I had no idea what made loot good or bad, there are to many damage types, resistence types etc. and I didn't know if my new stuff is in any way better than what I had before.
The crafting is horrible don't even bother, because it is 100% random.
The game has a to dark colour pallet, it's hard to see anything on some of the maps.

I give the game a 5/10, not recommended.

Cool game.

Developers abandoned the game and it is not finished. DO NOT BUY.

I bought the game years ago to support development with the intention to play it when complete but instead they gave up, took the money and ran.

Idk. Got it on sale for around 4 Euro. The problem with this game is that there are so many ARPGs that just make everything better. There is no reason to play this instead of other games like LE or Poe-Poe2 The skill tree isnt as good as i hoped and so many things arent explained. Example minion scaling is so weird. Still enjoyed the hours i played. Its like a 6/10 or 5.5/10.

amazing game until they shut it down so abruptly. would have loved to see more from it but alas nothing.

Refunded this, even for 3,74 it's not worth it.
Controls feel clunky AF, the only thing is that it's pretty, but just go play Last epoch or poe2 then

Interesting. Looks like they shut down multiplayer. Picked this up on sale to check out and it's a solid Diablo vibe. I actually like the skill system and it has a cleaner interface in parts. I normally play solo anyway except on the boss fights in Diablo IV which is fun to scamper into and then go about my way.

Totally worth the $5 price tag but it doesn't look supported anymore. Amazing artwork and scenes as well. Even Diablo team could learn from some of it.. Some amazing scenes so far and great thematics.

Fun so far, Got it on sale so even better. No cards.

try it
you will love it

i really dont like the combat and movement.

This is a pretty fun ARPG. Too bad the developer stopped updating it and discontiued its online servers! I heard they are making a Wolcen 2 probably will be worth a try!

I wasnt for sure at first. Man, if you dont grab me, and most, gamers quick, like out of the gate quick, with your game in every area then you're in trouble, and we start to feel the feeling of, ok, I have it in my collection, but its not worth my time until later, like retirement age now I have time to play my collection kind of later.

Having said that. This game isnt the best performer. Graphically optimized, but if you can hang in about 15 minutes, make the necessary adjustments, then this one will grow on you. Like fungus on a tree grow. Im only level 4, and completely digging this game now. Worth it guys.

"How many more times do I need to do this?"

NOTE: This will not cover the online component which was shut down on September 17 2024.

So your character might exclaim during the endgame loop*. This echoed my sentiments towards the end of my time with Wolcen and grinding out some of the achievements.

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is an action RPG in much the same vein as Diablo or Path of Exile. While it does have some good attributes, it also has more than its fair share of problems - some of which are subjective, some of which are not. You play as a character who suddenly develops unknown powers and is thrust into a pivotal role to save the world - hardly remarkable so far. Aspects of this implementation however serve to differentiate Wolcen from its peers. For starters, the game runs on CryEngine (yes, of Crysis fame) so it looks truly fantastic: well ahead of its time and probably still equal to any other ARPG on the market today. The character customisation is quite extensive (eye colour, facial hair etc.) albeit potentially irrelevant as you will likely be wearing armour the entire time.

The writing is quite good and the campaign is lengthy - with at least 20 hours (probably) to finish all the acts. There is an extensive amount of dialogue (perhaps too much) as well as cutscenes - which are very well done. Even here though, there are some (subjective) issues: a lot of the interchange between characters feels overly long-winded and while the story is quite well written and fairly engaging, the coverage is so broad that nothing is really explored properly. Maybe the team behind Wolcen were setting it up for further expansions or sequels - we will probably never know. The exposition however is not ideal, but is still worth a playthrough. The story is supplemented by good voice acting (never hurts a game), so clearly the production values for graphics and engagement (story/acting) were quite high for Wolcen - more on this below.

The interesting part is that there is no true class system like you have in other games in the genre. You choose a starting "playstyle" rather than a class; this really only seems to determine which attributes are most important for your "class" rather than what abilities/items they can use. Imagine a spell-slinging sword-wielding warrior - quite possible in Wolcen. There are also items which enable this as well, so the flexibility is quite broad. Tied into this is the skill "tree" (called Gates of Fate) which is also quite interesting. It consists of three concentric circles (starting position somewhat determined by the playstyle you chose initially), but the outer two circles can be rotated. This opens up many interesting possibilities, but can also become very confusing as there is no way to distinguish paths/nodes just by looking. If someone sends you an image of their skill selection, you will not have the slightest idea of what they have chosen. I also enjoyed the dodge mechanic used to evade attacks - it was useful for mobility as well. However, it is tied to a stamina meter which is difficult to track during gameplay.

NOTE: In the interests of transparency, I played a pretty standard sword+board build - take that into account but I do not feel it changes the fundamental argument in any way.

There are however numerous problems with this game. Every game has bugs to some degree, but the degree here is noticeable and in some cases prohibitive. This is said ignoring the disastrous launch and the numerous game-breaking issues at the beginning of the lifecycle. I had instances where I got stuck on terrain and was forced to quit and reload the map. Often (I was using Bladestorm) my skill would show as active even when it wasn't - imagine having spinning blades around you while not doing anything. This interfered with my attacks as it made it difficult to tell when I was actually attacking. On top of this, I had numerous crashes to desktop and instances where the game slowed down so much (memory leak? lag?) that I was forced to kill the process and start again. On that note - friendlies (e.g. pets/allies) also share a red health bar, just like enemies. Like me, you are probably conditioned to attack something with a red health bar and it becomes annoying when there are multiple enemies around you. I even found the minimap to be tricky in the sense of your location being slightly off; perhaps this was as a result of your marker being an arrow rather than an icon or dot, but it annoyed me to no end (possibly subjective though).

The single biggest issue however is simply how bland the gameplay is. Every game has a loop and most action RPGs have the same loop (kill stuff, get better gear to kill more stuff to get better gear), but the majority make it entertaining. Wolcen is really just about repeating the same thing over and over and over and over and over until you eventually quit. The reliance on just combat (which is fairly satisfying, but combat should be a tool in the gameplay rather than the entire gameplay) does it no favours. The endgame is especially guilty as the problem is less pronounced during the campaign. Endgame, while having a few small basebuilding characteristics, is really just about preparing for the final boss fight and repeating it over and over again ad infinitum - that's it. The implementation is "map like" but there is no depth to it, such as Path of Exile. This more than anything else is the primary reason for my ranking - I got bored and at least half of my hours played were unenjoyable.

Wolcen is not all bad, but I struggled to extract any meaningful fun from it and feel you will not be missing much if you give this one a skip. You might find it worth it on sale for just the campaign, but if you are looking for a long-term game, this is probably not it.

Played on Windows 11 Pro x64.

*My recollection of the precise wording may be a bit off, but that is the gist of it.

server shutting down
just delist this from market

Ultimately, I can't recommend Wolcen.

In its current state, the game is as finished as it's going to get, bugs and half-baked storyline and all.

There's a history here: My understanding is that this game was, at launch, a buggy mess. A very *pretty* buggy mess, but still a mess. The devs made a lot of promises while overestimating the scope of the work to create and fix the game. The released a final patch and then cut and run. They posted a final update in Maty 2024 indicating the shutdown of multiplayer.

This may not be a direct scam, but it's a close as you get the classic Early Access tale of a developer not following through.

The current state of the game is playable.
The story is very engaging, but fizzles out near the end (guessing because they ran out of money) so you get a sudden "six months later" epilogue (which is the endgame) in one of the most pivotal moments of the final act.

Combat, mechanics, are okay. Not amazing, I would say feels pretty clunky by PoE2 or D4 standards.

If you can get it for $4 and want to play single-player, that's probably worth your time, but right now the most valuable piece of this product is as a cautionary tale and a "Remember Wolcen?" among ARPG fans.

A pretty basic Diablo clone. Loot is plentiful, and a little boring. Monsters are copied, different colors. Graphics, and abilities, are pretty decent.

Except for summons. I'm playing as an offensive warrior, wearing full plate, but choosing avenging knight styled build attributes. I use a zweihander, you know? Somehow, I picked up a summon spell along the way, that doesn't seem to cost mana ("willpower / rage" in this game), and has three guys, with railguns (you read that right) follow me around blowing holes in everything I get near. It's actually a pretty good railgun simulator -- the shots are like lightning bolts that don't stop until they punch holes through like.. everything. And these guys.. they don't miss.

I'm a warrior. I'm trying to play as a warrior. A melee guy. This summon is specific to melee guys, for some reason? I don't have to actually do anything but walk around while these guys blast everything they see. I decided to make a little mini-game about me trying to outdamage them, and.. yeah it's tough unless I jump in with my greatsword and my jump attack ability, and even then it's close. I get two hits on stage bosses before they die to railgun holes. Not actually very fun, because no challenge?

Oh yeah, these guys count as me, so I get full xp...

To be fair, you can just choose to not use this skill. I guess it's sort of like a "hey, do you want ez mode? Use this skill", but I kind of wish that was explained. Even if I was a mage, I don't think I would want this. Makes me wonder "what is the golem, the actual mage summon, like?"

Even without this wierd superpower, the game just isn't balanced very well, and the monsters and environments are nicely detailed, but very repetitive. The monsters look the same, and act the same, and only really vary by outward color, hitpoints, and elemental attribute. The design team called this one in.

Se me ha borrado por algún motivo mi personaje offline. Que sólo llevaba dos horas jugadas ni tampoco quiero recuperarlo, pero si encima ya no tiene servidores online ni tampoco se espera soporte... Pues menuda puta mierda de juego sinceramente.

very hesitant recommend, i picked this up when it went on sale for dirt cheap and had no idea about the drama other then the fact they were discontinuing service. that aside i did really enjoy my time with acts 1-3 just arrived to act 4 and from what i understand and have seen so far this will likely end my run since they just repurposed end game and slapped a few story beats on top of it. the story was pretty enjoyable even if its a your he chosen one type of story. some of the enemy designs are really cool too. the thing i find the most unique is around act getting the ability to transform into a giant god-like thing but other then visuals it felt underpowered for what it was. the skill tree feels like it wants to be POE but decided to not copy the homework completly with the rotating boards to switch your class on the fly, oh forgot to mention that this game is classless most games like this force you into a role and while this game does to you dont have to reroll a character to switch builds. its ashame they abandoned it as it had a lot of promise gameplay and story wise hope maybe one day they will give us a wolcen 2 and this time not get in over their heads and finish it.

p.s. they are working on a pvpve style game with similar gameplay and its free to play, id avoid it after how they handled this game, expect likely after that game flops they most likely will close studio.

Abandoned Game, Original Kickstarter (UMBRA) promised a completely different game, was even Featured while under the old name on the Crytek Webpage till they remodeled the game into a Diablo like.

realy suprize game with many unaspected situation

Everyone should be refunded

Got it on deep sale recently. So while I get those that really invested in this game, I can say if you can get it cheap will be happy with single player and if you are ok doing some simple mods like camera, enemy HP (way too low), you can really hone this in to a fun ARPG. I would say it gets quite a bit better after the story, I do agree during the story the pacing is almost the same all the way through, quite a bit of change up in the after story though.

I had high hopes for this game. They had some nice and fresh ideas, that worked well, but the execution was off. The foundation is there, but it wasn't quite up to snuff. It's been abandoned and is now a SP ARPG that is fairly lackluster. getting to end game doesn't take much, even though the campaign is fairly long. The campaign for this game is longer than LE, even if you know what you're doing and get lucky with drops.

The one thing that REALLY holds back literally every build is a singular stat.

"Transfer Time Speed between Willpower and Rage".

If you don't have this stat on several pieces of gear, you build won't make it very far in endgame as far as pushing. With that said, it forces your hand with what skills to use, which just flat out feels incredibly bad. Being pigeonholed into a specific cookie cutter base on itemization and skills is poor design at best.

I really wanted to like this game, and I did. Up until I found out that most builds pretty much suck without that particular stat. Playing without that stat, feels like a huge slog. Their was a small change to which items get that stat, which was a welcome change, but it just absolutely wasn't enough. It used to be 2 pieces could carry that stat, and one of them being an offhand, which forced you to play with that off hand and a 1 hand weapon on every single build if you wanted to feel like you were actually progressing.

I honestly can't recommend this game anymore, and I'd avoid it at this point. I truly wish I didn't have to feel this way, but I can't allow people to buy something that feels incomplete and abandoned.

A short review after spending some hours and reaching chapter 2.
I bought this game in the winter sale for nickles, hold back because of the mixed ratings.
So far the game exceeds expectations. It plays well and so far no bugs were encountered. A mix of Diablo 3 (play) and Path of Exile (skills). I am using a summoner build now.
I guess the game draws mixed reviews as it was released in early access. Afterwards development will have been influenced by the community & feedback. Nor everybody will be happy with choices made.
If you can buy it in a sale it will be worth your money.

too many quest breaking bugs...

Do not buy this game it is dead!
Better to buy soda, at least you can become wet from it.
This game? It makes Sahara looking like summer resort. It's so dry I couldn't finish freaking first cave/dungeon/whatever!
You know what is better than this game? The Room The Movie! No kidding it is far more enjoyable to buy nail bed and sleep on it on stomach! This game is so dry it could drench Dead Sea... OUT OF SALT!
So like I wrote game is absolutely dead, servers has been shut down and announced expansions has not been delivered due as developer stated "poor selling numbers". Last patch has been released more than 2 years ago, then they've shut down online servers in game that CORE COMPONENT IS ONLINE GAMEPLAY yet they still are selling it in shop as FULL PRODUCT!

It's like someone was selling milk bottles in store without milk in it! It's like selling WoW without expansions while charging twice the price after releasing patch and calling it version 1.0! It's like drowining in own tears after visit of your mother-in-law! It's like visiting restaurant and ordering expensive wine only to recieve cheap glass of water!

The game has a decent story and graphics were good but with bugs and a terrible team behind it, there is a reason the game failed and servers are now shut down. Don't waste your money and I wouldn't support their future projects.

Game has good ideas, but its has multiple problems. Also, there are better options in the market. The best thing of this game, is the price.

Reasons:
- Boring loot drops
- Boring mob grouping / amount
- Side quests bugged, which do not spawn the target enemies
- maps are super linear, barely any reward for exploration
- camera is too damn close
- terrible waypoints locations, either they are too close, or too far
- they killed the multiplayer, way too soon
- multiple bugs still left to be fixed (game is abandoned by the devs)
- terrible minions AI
- too many breakcables in every map

Its a good game.

Got it for like 8 dollars. Worth the 8 dollars if you don't mind offline only ARPG's.

Had fun with it when it came out and was hoping to play online again. Overall not bothering to play again since they just killed the online of it.

Well, I guess the game had some aspiration behind it and it looked good back then, though it was ultimately held back by tons of issues an then slowly died.

played for a few hours was meh. have no intention of playing again since there are last epoch and grim dawn out there.

Game was actually fun for some time
But project being actually abandoned long time ago. And now servers shutdown-_-
Such a waste

The campaign is nice.
The endgame is interesting and complete.
Gameplay is pretty fast, and very customizable.

It is a finished game with no more updates, for me it is a good point but be advised that nothing new will be added.
Be advised that the servers are closed, it is only playable offline and solo. As another good point, the character file can be updated manually in wordpad if you want to cheat a little.

Shame the game was abandoned and never finished, it had some good ideas.

Developer couldn't complete this game and abandoned it. Just becasue they released it and called it 1.0 doesnt at all mean it was. Then very shortly after announce another arpg. Took customers money and threw them away. Don't fall for it again.

Another Diablo 2 clone, which has apparently been abandoned by devs and can no longer be played online.

Good game - had its issues but nothing that any other game deals with at times. Move to offline play as online servers shutdown - good call and I hope the game remains available. Thanks for the fun times, devs. Your work was apperciated. Worth the price

dont buy - they never finished it

I had hopes but now this game is a prime example of why I rarely buy early access games now. Game is basically abandonware.

Wolcen is a game that gives you a dog, but doesn't let you pet it. It's a solid ARPG with great mechanics that consistently stop just a little short.

The combat and character progression are the best part of the experience. The game loop is addictive and creates a feeling of becoming more powerful as you progress. Unfortunately you become incredibly OP to early, and the game loses all challenge about half way through.

You want to see this world and to kill these monsters, because they are so well designed. The set piece battles are epic. You will want to revisit locations to replay major events, but you can't do either. Once you progress a chapter you're prevented from revisiting anything you've already completed.

The voice acting is some of the best I've ever heard in an ARPG, but the writing is inconsistent. Credit to the voice talent for doing so much good work with such poor dialog. The story jumps between Warhammer 40K and 90s California slag. The dialog can break immersion, and the convoluted story is just confusing. Dialog may go something like,"Justicar Maelys will lead the legion of light to victory over that total tool Naerlog and the Cult of the Blind. The Mizzeonth will rise for the fourth time in this second age, and Janaris will regain the throne of Stormfall..... NOT." I don't know who I'm fighting for or why, and I'm expecting a Jerry Springer reference at any moment.

The endgame is a fun loop for a few hours, but lacks real depth. It requires grind just to unlock things that should be available by default. For example the right stick button is locked for the entire game, but can be unlocked by grinding for 20+ hours in endgame. The game literally locks the ability to rebind controls until you grind to the very end of endgame to unlock them. By the time I was able to use all the controls and rebind my keys I was done playing the game.

Wolcen is a fun 60 hour experience, that I recommend playing. You will enjoy this game, but will also be left with a feeling that it could have been so much more. Wolcen gives you a dog, but doesn't let you pet it. 6/10

This game got a lot of criticism, but as someone who never relied on online play, and never seemed to have any of the technical issues or bugs that others had, I would consider this game pretty good,

I sunk 100 hours in to it no problem. Played through the game multiple times with various builds, and really enjoyed my time with it.

It's sad that the servers are shut down now, but you can still play solo, and to be honest it's a lag free experience compared to the online mode sometimes was.

The game itself plays great - the skills and combat feel impactful and satisfying, the graphics are decent, and I'd recommend it

Server Offline. Devs abandoned project officially. Can't start game. Can't refund either :(

dont buy they have shut down the servers

A very entertaining game. I got it on sale and have enjoyed the Diablo like clone.

Unfinished game with tons of irritating bugs, none of wich ever going to be fixed, becouse devs bailed out and abandoned the project. As a consequence of that multiplayer mode is now permanently removed from the game as well.
90% of game mechanics is copy/paste from other games like diablo, poe, etc. And the few original ideas thats left are pretty much useless - like aspects mechanics.
Storyline is very generic and also unfinished - act IV story does not correspond with the rest of the game and looks like a last minute botch job forced on developers by angry community.
Visuals are very nice though - one of the best looking games of the genre. Music is pretty good too.
But thats not enough to make it a game worth investing your time in.
It had its potential, but was totally wasted by the devs. Too bad.

Very good I dont know why people hate it :)