Family Matters.
Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem was released on Steam back in 2020 to a less than favorable reception. However; over the years, the aptly named Wolcen Studios has certainly put in the work, adding new content and features and improving the experience for many of its players. Recently, that experience has grown with the release of its Chapter IV content, providing a true end to its current storyline and a fairly in-depth endgame.
Alongside this new content is Wolcen’s debut appearance on consoles, releasing both on PS4 and Xbox One. While there are no native versions for PS5 and Series X/S, the CryEngine 3 powered hack and slash adventure nonetheless looks fantastic on either piece of hardware, containing some of the best action RPG environments I’ve ever seen.
Now, before I get more into it, there is a sizable “but” to follow that last sentence that I need to address before we really break this game down as it may pause your desire to jump into the current build of the game. While I still recommend Wolcen to those who are champing at the bit for another Diablo-like experience to hold them over until Diablo IV releases this June, Wolcen has a significant amount of issues that prevent it from being something I can fully recommend to go out and purchase right this second.
Wolcen’s issues can be broken down into two main categories; how the game has been adapted for a controller and its technical shortcomings, with the latter being the real disappointment here. While I never encountered anything that prevented me from completing the game, my time with Wolcen was riddled with bugs both big and small. Its control issues; however, are less critical but nonetheless an annoyance in their own way. While you’ll slowly get used to them, their departure from the industry norm gives off a bizarre first impression.
While Diablo III wasn’t the first isometric action RPG to arrive on home consoles, it nonetheless set a standard for how a controller could truly enhance the experience. The inclusion of the dodge/evade roll allowed combat to flourish and each and every menu was accessible in ways that benefitted the player. Since then, other titles have been inspired and often copied Diablo III’s entire structure to the closest pixel, ensuring that same accessibility and ease of use.
While the controller's use in combat is more than serviceable here, offering two configurations to work with, Wolcen nonetheless stumbles a bit when adapting the controller to several of its UI systems and nearly all of its interactable elements. When Wolcen originally added controller compatibility on PC, several of its menus were redesigned to accommodate the change and those same designs are here, complete with the same issues that plague the PC release.
One issue that I eventually made my peace with is the inventory system. Similar to Diablo III, you'll have a radial that you'll circle around to equip gear. However, with Wolcen, you need to hold down X even to see what is equipped. For selecting new loot, this process is tiring. Thankfully, you can press LT to swap down to your inventory stock, allowing a much quicker way to cycle through your newly acquired loot. It's also bizarre that you are not told anywhere that Y allows you to see the paired items you have equipped, such as left and right gloves, pauldrons, and rings. This is not mentioned anywhere.
Some controls feel like they have an extra step, such as selling items requiring you to press A to select the item and then A again to sell it. This is because the initial press brings up the option to sell or drop an item. It’s a shame that one of the other absent buttons couldn’t have shouldered the ability to drop an item and then A could have been used to one-button sell, as this would have streamlined selling immensely, especially since you have to double-tap A for the hundreds if not thousands of items that you'll sell throughout the campaign.
Another weird option is a few UI elements that are clearly designed with a mouse in mind. The bottom right corner features the social options for multiplayer, but there is no way with a controller to even access them. The only way I could find to even toggle the social features is by exiting out to the main menu. Additional oddities are various menu buttons across a few tabs that have buttons that are unreachable with a controller, clearly meant for a mouse, yet I could not get Wolcen to recognize any mouse I plugged into my Xbox Series X console. Some menus are fine, but several are just copied and pasted from the PC version.
While these menu issues are largely minimal, often requiring an extra button press when they really didn’t need it or UI that is not entirely controller compatible, it’s how you interact with the world and its NPCs where Wolcen utterly fails, offering a wealth of annoyances that had me sighing as much as I was picking up loot. Any aspect of interaction requires that your character is facing a certain way, and should you be rocking a necromancer build like I am, that viewpoint is constantly hindered by your numerous summons, and even when they are behaving themselves, you still need to steer your character’s gaze to just the right pixel to even select the NPC you want or the exit to leave your current environment. Trying to select the shopkeeper without accidentally buying something when the menu pops up is actually harder than the game’s final boss. I wish I was joking.
This inconsistency to select anything easily feels like a chore when it should be the most simplistic of options. Honestly, I can’t think of a single action RPG where this was an issue. While picking up loot is as simple as pressing A, there are also a few problems there as well. Loot has a small delay when picking anything up and navigating a pile of loot at your feet can often have you grabbing items you don’t want. It’s a shame that while you can press LB to showcase all the loot around you or set filters so that less common stuff cannot be snatched, there is no way to cycle through the loot on the ground and you often have to nudge your character to the correct pixel to snag what you actually want to grab. And, since your character has a slight waver to their movement, you’ll often miss out on selecting what you wanted anyway, forcing you to restart your positioning all over again.
In the other camp are the game's technical issues, glitches, and various other bugs. This includes enemies and weapon perks having their folder or file names displayed instead of what they are actually called. Facing down @Elite_Monster_Boss isn't exactly threatening, nor is knowing what @ui_eim_ragecost_percent does to my newly acquired belt (see included picture below for such an example). This particular glitch was only present in the game's newly implemented Chapter IV content, as I never experienced it during the game's first three chapters.
I've had the game crash on me numerous times resulting in having to tackle some of the game's content over again due to a pretty lax autosave system. One issue I had right out of the gate were giant black shapes that covered large swaths of the environment to the very enemies themselves. While the environmental issues were only present in the game's opening hour, the black squares around enemies were present during most of chapters I and II, either fully visible or flickering as they moved or were attacked. My playthrough was on the Series X, and during research on some of the issues I was having, it seems there are even more problems on PlayStation 4 with entirely invisible enemies and weapons taking the form of their programming placeholders.
One bug that I had almost constantly was the complete lack of any visual effects. This was the entirety of chapter III for me. Once I found a waypoint and could head back to town to allow the game to save, I could reboot the game and have those effects return, but no less than five minutes later, that problem would occur yet again. This issue mainly impacted the ability to properly aim spells since you could not see their effect or pathing. It was like watching behind the scenes footage of a movie and having to imagine all those effects would be added in post.
The cutscenes before and after that chapter's boss as well as the final cutscene of the game just didn't work for me at all, instead showing the character models moving in a locked position around the scene as if they were pre-posed action figures. I had to watch these scenes on YouTube to even see what happened. And it's a shame since these scenes were pretty damn cool. I also had a weird glitch where I would be awarded some loot and then I was suddenly transported to the cutscene that played after the end of Chapter I. I cautiously skipped the cutscene and it sent me back to where I was at the end of Chapter II. For a second, I thought all my progress in that chapter was gone. Thankfully, it wasn't. And, since there isn’t a way to replay cutscenes (that I know of), it was a bizarre glitch to have something like that trigger in the first place, let alone while accepting a reward.
Now, despite those issues, Wolcen surprisingly kept me entertained well throughout its roughly 25-30-hour campaign, which includes its endgame that is built around the game's central antagonist. While I wasn’t sold initially on how its endgame was structured, I eventually came around and really started to enjoy the more rogue-lite approach it took. But, before we dive into that, let's talk about what Wolcen is and what we can expect from its story.
Wolcen sees you as a high-ranking member of the Human Republic who, during a battle with an extremely powerful demon, unwillingly transforms into a demonic force simply to survive. This power sees you then branded as a traitor, placing you on the run from your own people. While you'll find allies in those close to you and those you previously called your enemy, you'll look to investigate just what those powers are and what demonic forces are setting the stage to destroy the world as we know it.
The basic aesthetic of the story feels very inspired by the likes of Warhammer 40K, as characters and ranks feel ripped directly from that series. Your character is one of three siblings under the tutelage of the Grand Inquisitor, a man in control of this army of “Purifiers”. The way these characters talk and interact with one another, their creed and dialogue all feels as if the world of Warhammer 40K was injected into the world of Diablo. It’s a combination that works well and allows for some decent drama around the beliefs of each faction and what they stand for.
Apart from discovering more about your own character and how each of the warring factions interacts with you due to your new powers, as well as those you once called family, Wolcen starts to explore dangerous threats that are often hiding in plain sight. What starts out as exploring mysterious earthquakes, often bringing forth demons that leave chaos in their wake, the game starts to develop its narrative around the game’s big bad.
Up until this newest content drop, fans on PC were left with one hell of a cliffhanger, one that has now seen its resolution within the endgame content in Chapter IV. This content sees you taking on smaller bite-size missions as you work to make the city of Stormfall a fortress, while also weakening the upcoming threat by taking out specific Lieutenants that contain elements of his power. Eventually, after a while, this evil will come to Stormfall and you’ll have to deal with him. Win or lose, the endgame will continue and deepen into providing more options to keep the game essentially going.
Should you defeat him, you’ll be treated to the game’s ending, showing where certain characters end up and the fates that await them. Once the credits end, you’ll be placed back into Stormfall, prepping to once again take on this threat. However, you’ll have even more options now to build up Stormfall and weaken this evil force once again. This is where the game takes an almost rogue-lite approach as each run of taking on the final boss results in the resetting of certain preparations when complete. It’s a decent loop for what it does, even if it felt like the weakest part of the whole package.
While the endgame itself is fairly robust in what you are able to do, there is very little narrative built up around just what exactly is going on. It starts off fairly strong with one hell of a hook and some fantastic missions, but after a while, that narrative is put to rest until the big bad shows up. While there is certainly a lot to do here, I feel that the endgame itself lacks what I personally enjoyed about the rest of the game; exploring large sprawling environments with some sort of story playing out. It’s not a bad way of extending the adventure out, but feels more of a mechanics-based extension than that of a narrative or gameplay one.
The overall campaign has you pushing through four chapters, with three of them seeing you make progress on a map, moving from location to location as you combat evil forces and those who would mean to stop you. Wolcen rarely sees any sort of filler with its story being pretty lean and paced fairly well. You’ll encounter “side quests” in the form of objectives that pop up when you find caves or other secondary locations that you’ll find on the map. These objectives are largely to kill whatever boss that area has or other simple tasks you’ll likely do without much thought.
Gameplay-wise, this is where Wolcen really shines, and frankly, has become one of my favorite action RPGs out there, despite its vast problems. Exploring each new environment and trouncing thousands of demons with my abilities was constantly satisfying, especially when I found a series of skills that really complement my play style. The Annihilation spell, for example, caused a laser to tear forward from my wrist, and might just be my favorite spell across the genre as its reach and mobility caused me to decimate anything that was in my path in just seconds.
Combat also felt great, regarding of swapping from a staff to a pistol from time to time. The flexibility of the combat system allowed me to really tinker with whatever I wanted, all without locking me into a certain play style. Each crunch of my melee or crackle of my spells felt great and caused me to seek out as much combat as I could, clearing out each and every map and leaving no single demon or foe alive to tell the tale.
Destroying creatures and opening up a sea of chests will reward you with a wealth of loot, from head to toe, you’ll find stats that work for your build while almost ensuring that it increases your health or shielding to keep you alive. One interesting change that Wolcen offers that I am not sure if I have seen before, is being able to equip different gloves and pauldrons from one another, almost as if you are finding a single glove on the ground instead of a pair. Loot comes in different rarities, as expected, with a huge variety in perks and bonuses, and the gems sockets to fully take advantage of.
Wolcen sees you starting with a central archetype; melee, ranged, or magic. However, unlike most games in the genre, you craft your build and basic character class as you go, equipping a wide range of weapons and skills and finding your own path. This allows for an endless supply of builds, allowing almost unlimited freedom as you tinker with a vast skill tree that connects to 21 different subclasses. While it’s not quite the skill-forest that Path of Exile presents, it’s a less intimidating alternative that works extremely well.
Leveling up in Wolcen presents you with 10 attribute points to sink into Ferocity, Agility, Wisdom, and Toughness, which account for your critical attacks, speed, ailments, and survivability, among several other stats. You’ll also gain a single point to place into the Gates of Fate, which is how you'll carve your path across all the varied subclasses. These range from the Cabalist, Warmonger, Oracle of the Trinity, and Exorcist, to simply list a few. These subclasses can be rotated around the core skills for quicker access to fine-tune your proposed build. The variety here for what each class offers is immense, allowing for unique hybrids that don’t exist anywhere else across the genre.
Now, the bulk of your skills are learned through the procurement of what are called Enneracts. By consuming these you'll learn the skill associated with it, with most skills also being able to be purchased as well. Consuming an Enneract, even if you already have it allows you to earn a unique currency needed to level up those skills apart from them leveling up as you use them. It's basically a speed booster to make that spell even more powerful.
One of my favorite aspects of the skill system is how each skill has a vast assortment of modifiers that grant perks, bonuses, or unique alterations to them, such as increasing my summons health or even spawning an additional one. You can also change the elemental affinity of the skill as well, and in most cases, it will change not only what it does, but even how it looks. For example, my Livor Mortis summon under the poison affinity is a large mass of a monster, swapping him to Rend affinity changes him to a red-colored knight called Liquid Smooth, who sports a whole different attack and look. Eventually, in the late game, you can duplicate skills to be able to equip multiple of the same one.
Another feature of Wolcen is a mechanic that kicks off the entire adventure, the Aspect of the Apocalypse. This is a feature where once you have built up your meter, you can transform into a demonic being. As you progress throughout the game, you’ll be able to equip your choice from up to four different forms, each with unique powers and their own look. From the winged Aspect of Dawn to the grotesque Aspect of Flesh, these monstrous forms certainly pack a punch and grant you a few moments of invulnerability. While I could never figure out why, my character would often automatically transform should I die with a full meter, but this didn’t always happen.
Wolcen also carries with it some pretty typical systems of the genre. You have a gem socketed system to grant you additional power, a skin system to carry forward the appearance of certain gear, to changing the color of your outfit with a series of dyes you’ll find. I’ll stress that the menu for equipping dyes is absolutely awful and felt incredibly messy to use. You’ll also find a series of Pets, but they really only aid in picking up any gold you may leave behind.
Wolcen is certainly a great experience, but its current state sadly doesn’t convey that due to its vast technical bugs and a pretty unintuitive control scheme. Nearly all of Wolcen’s issues are fixable, and once a few patches start to make their way out, then the majority of the game’s problems will certainly be addressed in some fashion. If you don’t mind the rough edges, Wolcen is a damn impressive action RPG that fuses the tone and presence of Warhammer 40K in the demon-infested terrain of Diablo, with one of the most versatile class systems in the genre. It can feel broken at times and indeed a might frustrating, but the game’s potential almost always feels within its grasp
Developer - Wolcen Studios. Publisher - Wolcen Studios. Released - March 15th, 2023. Available On - Xbox One/Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Windows. (No current-gen console version) Rated - (M) Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Use of Drugs, Violence Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
This review was based on version 1.1.7.10 as of March 30th, 2023. Some criticism of this review may be outdated in the future as the game sees more problems resolved.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.