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Warlander Review: Roguelike, Emphasis on the Like
Ever since the very first Star Wars film hit theaters back in 1977, the general public has had a shared dream: to have their own lightsaber and swing it around. Numerous video games have attempted to cash in on the fantasy; licensed Star Wars products like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Vader Immortal spring readily to mind as recent examples, but unrelated titles like Beat Saber have also channeled the fun of wielding a sword made of lasers. Now Warlander, an indie game from Clock Drive Games, attempts to bring a much different perspective to the lightsaber joyride.
Warlander is a third-person action roguelike that puts the player in control of Bruce, a barbarian whose clan is wiped out by the evil Techno Forces led by Morven the Immortal. In order to get revenge, Bruce makes a pact with the old gods and receives a mystical talking sword of pure magical energy named Ferguson, with which he wages war on Morven's forces. The story is far from original, but the developers sure seem proud of it, because the opening cutscene plays every time you start a new run. A skip option is clearly provided, but one would think the developers could have excluded it altogether if the game new you weren't on your very first playthrough. They seem to generally treat every run as if it's your first; the opening cutscene plays each time, Bruce and Ferguson have the same introductory dialogue at the start of each first encounter, and Ferguson explains the progression system every time. It's a minor annoyance, but a persistent one.
At the start of each run, the player is presented with a vertical map featuring several branching, interconnected paths, not unlike something that could be seen in Slay the Spire. Combat encounters drop Bruce in an enclosed arena with four to five waves of enemies. Once Bruce slashes his way through all enemies, he's free to leave. There's a decent variety of enemies, but most of them are relegated to the later areas. This results in a rather frustrating lack of variety in the early game.
Combat is fast-paced and frantic, and that's only sometimes a good thing. At its simplest, it's a blast; the swings feel very satisfying and the game is pretty good at tracking where your hits land on an enemy. This adds a layer of strategy; if you cut off your opponent's head, that'll usually end the fight immediately, but it's a very hard blow to line up. If you go for the legs, you could knock them down and execute a finisher to take them out of the fight almost as quickly. To up the challenge, some enemies will appear wearing armor that will deflect sword blows aimed at certain body parts; these can appear on any part of the body but will almost never cover the whole body. This adds a further layer of strategy, as you have to quickly size up your opponent and find the weak point in their armor. You can destroy armor if you hit it enough times, which can also be a possible route to take if you're desperate. As comprehensive as this combat system is, it can sometimes fall apart in execution; when you get within striking range of an enemy you can see a little line appear on their body that will indicate where your sword blow will land. But in the thick of a fight it isn't always easy to get the time necessary to line up your strike where you need it to go; it's easy to just resort to button-mashing.
Combat arenas aren't the only thing to be found on the map. There's also the Devouring Tree, a large tree that eats body parts you passively harvest from fallen foes. In exchange for these appendages, and XP you earn, you get to choose abilities and powerups from a very literal skill tree. Some of the boons from the tree are simple passive buffs, while others unlock new abilities, like the ability to grab your opponents with a vine and throw them around, or a jumping slam attack. In addition to visiting the skill tree, you can find treasure chests. These will offer you a choice between two buffs to stats like your health, energy pool (which functions as both stamina to power your sword swings and mana to fuel your tree-granted abilities), or less ubiquitous perks like movement speed, ability resource cost, and even a life steal effect that will heal you a bit each time you land a blow.
You'll also encounter "Techno Champions," which function as boss encounters you must overcome on the path to defeat Morven. There are five Techno Champions in the game, and when you defeat one for the first time you earn a power from the skill tree that is permanently unlocked and persists between runs. These boss powers are the only things that carry over from one run to another, unless you count codex entries, which flesh out the world and offer no other benefit. When you die, you're given a "You died" screen and then dumped unceremoniously back to the main menu, ready to start all over again. There's nothing you can do after one run to impact the next. This makes going from one run to the next a bit discouraging; aside from a small handful of abilities that you already had access to, there's nothing new to look forward to in your next attempt. Even the cutscenes are the same. This also means that facing a Techno Champion you've already defeated is largely pointless; once you have the boss's special ability there's nothing further to be gained. The more Techno Champions you kill, the higher your incentive is to just avoid their spaces on the map in future runs.
All things considered, Warlander almost feels like it doesn't want to be a roguelike. The permadeath mechanic isn't particularly interactive, and individual runs don't feel as memorable when they leave no impact on the rest of the game. One's experience with Warlander doesn't feel like a single cohesive game where permadeath is a feature; it feels like multiple failed attempts to beat a short, difficult game. If the developers found a way to format the game where permadeath wasn't a feature, they'd have a solid acti0n-adventure on their hands. As it is, the game struggles in its own skin. Combat is entertaining and challenging, but the stakes are too high when the threat of death means loss of all meaningful progress. Warlander is a considerably fun game, but it's far from perfect. Still, if you want to chop up some cyborgs, you could do much worse.
Warlander is available PC.
