Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem - Review after many Patches

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem had a really bad start. After a successful Kickstarter campaign it went downwards - many features were cancelled out. But how about now, many patches later? Lets take a look.

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What is Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem?

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is an action RPG in the style of a hack and slash dungeon crawler developed and published by Wolcen Studios and released for Windows in February 2020. The dark fantasy-themed game progresses across a three act storyline in which players explore procedurally-generated maps to battle hordes of monsters and collect valuable loot.

So, it is a Diablo like game? - Yes
Is it a Diablo clone? - No

The most noticeable plus point of Wolcen is the good graphics, which are based on the Cryengine and clearly leave its competitors behind: You can expect detailed environments, clean textures, pretty lighting and rich magic effects, and the almost 20 hour long campaign with lots of cutscenes garnished in game graphics.

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Playable Classes

The developers have dispensed a fixed class system, instead new talents are simply dropped as loot, similar to Path of Exile. You can change your skills at any time, which invites you to experiment.
Nice: The talents level up over time and unlock modifiers with which you can adjust the effect a little. Unfortunately, these effects are quite unspectacular: Where in Diablo 3 or Path of Exile you can change most of the abilities visually, many modifiers in Wolcen are limited to the status values, for example a higher chance of critical hits or lower resource costs.
That could have been more exciting.

The choice of active talents is only limited by the type of weapon: Whoever wields daggers, bows or pistols can access rogue talents, while magicians rely on staffs or corresponding off-hand items in order to be able to perform magic. Melee fighters can choose between one-handed and two-handed weapons, and combinations with a shield or two one-handed weapons are also possible. Mixed classes such as a pistol ice mage, a necromancer archer or a warrior villain are also feasible, but the options here are significantly more limited than with Grim Dawn or Path of Exile.

Wolcen also copied his passive talent tree from the latter. It's not quite as extensive as the competition, but it's still big enough to support a lot of play styles. In addition, the skill tree is divided into several slices, which you can turn as you like to arrange the network of status improvements and according to your wishes. So you simply choose what suits your style of play: Increased life point regeneration, higher block chance, larger resource pool and much more are available, right up to powerful special effects such as stackable attack bonuses, life suction, poison auras or a strengthening effect that is according to the armor put on.

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How About The Loot?

Wolcen did not redefine or reinvent the genre typical loot system. Items are plentyfull. From common to legendary in various optical versions. Only set items are missing.
Gems and sockets are also part of the item package.

Loot is in abundance, the majority of which is of course rubbish, as it does not fit the current style of play and is only suitable for selling. Thanks to the city portal, you can get to the seller in no time.

One thing that acually is new is the the option to rebuild Stormfall.
In fact it is not as spectacular as it could have been, but after you've completed the campaign you collect materials (to be precise its 2 types of ressources and gold) to rebuild the city that has been damaged in the war.

Those ressources are collected by completing portals that end with either special mini bosses or a singe mighty boss that has to be defeated.
The similarity to Diablos Rift-Portals is unarguable - but they are well made and typical for the genre.
Some new ideas would still be nice to have.

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What Else Is "Special" ?

Besides the mix of Diablo and Path of Exile the game offers rather little own innovations.

The actual chopping, slaying, firing, shooting, freezing, casting magic, etc. is well done, because the game speed and the simulated force of the attacks are right and feel good. Wolcen is not reinventing the wheel, but with evasive roles, automatic assault attacks for melee fighters, summonable comrades-in-arms and many status effects, the combat system has a lot to offer and benefits from classless development opportunities.

Another thing that is "new" is that you can choose between 4 different Apocalyptic Forms which grant you special abilities and a special form (obviously) for a short period of time.
This looks cool, gives more variation to the gameplay but feels a bit too weak once you have a proper gear level.

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Conlusion

After it's horrible launch a few years ago a lot had happened. Many bugs have been fixed (not all though) and server stability is fine - probably due to far less players than on launch period.

A very small team of about 10 people with a comparatively meager Kickstarter budget set up an impressive game that attracted a peak of almost 130,000 players simultaneously on Steam over the launch weekend. Wolcen has real hit potential. Unfortunately, there are still a few nasty bugs in the game.

However, it looks cool, it has a smooth gameplay and the free class system is well designed.
Most of the bugs that were haunting the game for a long time are fixed.

In my opinion it is a quite nice dungeon crawler alternative to the "big boys" like Diablo or Path of exile.
If you can, I would recommend it to get it on the next Steam-sale. Although, even the regular price is not that bad.

Last but not least:

The Soundtrack Is Awesome!