Official Site Review By Kevin Tavore, 01 Nov 2016 Comments FollowtopicsMordheim: City of the DamnedWarhammerFocus EntertainmentOnline MultiplayerGame reviewReviewStrategyKevin Tavore Mordheim: City of the Damned is the latest title in the vast Warhammer universe to make its way from the tabletop to the digital world. With turn-based combat in the same vein as XCOM 2 or MASSIVE CHALICE combined with the narrative, character development, and all of the other elements that normally accompany a tabletop game, Mordheim is certainly a dutiful homage to everything of which the genre and Warhammer itself stands. Do the city of Mordheim and all of the game's parts come together to create a title that's worthy of your time?Mordheim is set in the city of the same name. Once prosperous and full of life, the city has been decimated by a comet that struck its center, destroying its people and bringing wyrdstone with it. Capable of great magic, wyrdstone is extremely valuable in the universe and there are many who would pay for it. This is where we come in. We lead one of five warbands into the remains of the city to collect wyrdstone and defeat other warbands.The game's five factions do have various causes and goals, but the core goal in going into the city is almost always to collect wyrdstone and gear to make money. As far as motivation goes, it's a bit hard to get excited for that. Each faction does have its own story, but it's primarily told through narrated loading screens that contain 500 word snippets about the story. This makes it hard to follow and, frankly, it's tough to really care about the factions and their stories. As players, we're left with the combat and whatever personality we can squeeze out of the heroes in our warband as the motivation to actually move forward with the game, instead.When first beginning the game, it's nearly impossible not to be overwhelmed by the sheer depth of the gameplay. When I first started the game, I thought that it might be best to play through the four combat tutorials so that I had a firm foundation before starting the campaign. Two hours later, I was finally back at the main menu while burdened with detail after gritty detail about the gameplay. I was ready to create my first warband. With a solid background in strategy gameplay and my new-found knowledge, I figured that things should be simple. I hired soldiers and began my first incursion into the city, but it's at that point where everything began to fall into ruin. Twenty minutes later, I quickly retreated to the main menu after being soundly defeated in embarrassing fashion. It's hard to care when your goal is set out only in a narrated block of text.I took the lesson well and it's one you will too — this game is not necessarily hard but it is brutally unforgiving. In some other games, players can grow complacent with the safety net of easier difficulties and "save scumming," otherwise known as constantly saving and reloading until you get a positive outcome, keeping players safe from their own mistakes. Well, Mordheim doesn't believe in difficulty levels and the developer clearly doesn't look favorably on save scumming. There is no difficulty setting; it's simply as hard as it is, which is pretty tough. There is also only one save that autosaves after every action. Since failure is usually the result of multiple bad decisions that collapse on you all at once, save scumming is essentially impossible.In its favor, this does mean that every battle has a minimum level of intensity that you won't find in many turn-based strategy games. Every move that you make should be carefully considered as it might push over the dominoes that lead to your doom. Now that's not to say that one move will break your entire campaign — it won't. The combat moves slowly, which means that you'll have plenty of time to reposition your soldiers and correct mistakes. Your soldiers and the enemy alike will suffer repeated blows before falling. It's nearly impossible to take a strategy where you simply overwhelm enemies one by one as you move slowly across the map. This further increases the intensity and is a welcome variation on the genre, but it does mean that longer battles can last over an hour.While ranged and spell combat exists, Mordheim relies heavily on melee combat. This is something that is typically very dull and unrealistic in strategy games, but this is where the game really shines. Soldiers move into combat by approaching the enemy and colliding with the circle around it. At this point, the two are locked into combat. The player will need to decide whether to attack or simply go into a parry or dodge stance and hope to counter-attack. If things are going south, you can flee or disengage but either one brings with it a cost, meaning that you're often locked in to the battle. Further depth comes when you start adding additional soldiers to each skirmish, causing overwhelmed soldiers to potentially flee while leaving themselves open to attack. These elements come together nicely to create melee combat in a turn-based game that seems realistic and turns what would have been a rather drab affair into combat that is both interesting and truly strategic.My band of warriors, the Sisters of SigmarThere are two types of missions on which you can send your warband. The bread and butter of the game is the generic filler missions where your warband searches for wyrdstone and kills enemies. The primary objective is always to defeat the enemy, while secondary objectives require the collection of a certain amount of wyrdstone or to kill and loot specific enemies. Unfortunately, these missions come in torrents and make for rather dull gameplay as you repeat the same strategies over and over again. This issue is compounded by the fact that the environments all look similar. This makes sense considering that the entire game takes place in one city, but even the different parts of the city are very similar to each other. It makes it feel like you're running the exact same missions over and over again with slightly different layouts.Luckily, there are also story missions. While the story is nothing that you'll ever remember, at the very least you are tasked with new objectives that really spice up the gameplay. It's a breath of fresh air to take a break from a search for wyrdstone and to replace it with unique objectives. Additionally, you gain access to your faction's hero soldier called a Dramatis Personae. The Dramatis Personae are very powerful warriors that crush even the strongest enemies. It feels fantastic and makes the story missions something to look forward to. On the downside, looking forward to them is something that you'll do a lot as you can spend over five hours of gameplay grinding regular missions before you're in a position to take on the next story mission.Beyond the combat, management of your warband in between missions is deep but not rewarding. Each of your heroes gains stat increases and skill points as they gain experience. You can allocate these as you please to customize each soldier. On the downside, the stat increases are so small that it never feels rewarding. It's hard to get excited about spending your point on Strength to increase your damage while only going from 40-44 per swing to 41-44 per swing. Even worse, some of the stats seem worthless, which means that the stat point feels like a waste. Skill points have a similar issue — the skills aren't particularly good. To make matters worse, it also costs gold and time to train, which meant that I often had soldiers with 8-10 skill points and no desire to spend them at all.Bertha is a Dramatis Personae. She destroys everything.Finally, you can also play multiplayer skirmishes with other players online. Sadly, it seems that the multiplayer was dead on arrival. Even a week after release I am simply unable to find a match whenever I check, so you'll likely need to go through forums to find other people.The game has clearly been designed for you to spend hundreds of hours with a single warband and the achievements follow suit. Even completing the story missions will take dozens of hours and you need to do it four times. You'll also need to spend an entire year with a single warband, which means that you'll need to grind for well over a hundred hours. Along the way, you'll be earning general achievements for completing all kinds of basic actions like sending wyrdstone shipments and stunning enemies. Finally, the game is topped off with achievements for playing 100 multiplayer battles. Overall, you can expect this list to take hundreds of hours.SummaryMordheim is a game for fans of its tabletop sibling. As a strategy game, it offers enough depth and complexity to stand out from the crowd. As an RPG, it's simply burdened by too much complexity to reward the player. Sadly, thanks to a story that is difficult to appreciate and a heavy focus on run-of-the-mill missions, the gameplay becomes repetitive far too quickly as there are not enough interesting story missions to breathe life into the experience. If you're a fan of the genre and enjoy the Warhammer universe, this is likely a game in which you can find a lot to like. Without both of those, there are better alternatives for those who are interested in a strategy game or an RPG.5 / 10Positives Story missions are a lot of fun Melee combat is uniquely realistic with plenty of depth Gameplay demands more strategy than your average turn-based game Negatives Filler missions are very simple and dull Environments are boring and mainly look the same Story is only told through loading screens and isn't interesting Story and character progression are far too slow EthicsThe reviewer spent twenty hours developing his warband and exploring the city. He earned 8 out of the 53 achievements. The Xbox One copy of the game was provided courtesy of the publisher for the purpose of this review.More Mordheim: City of the Damned stories: Interview: Hell is Us creative director talks civil war, gateway drugs, and quest markers XBL Content Roundup: October 21st, 2016 Take A Look At Mordheim: City of the Damned In This Latest Trailer XBL Content Roundup: October 7th, 2016 Mordheim: City of the Damned Preps for October Launch ReviewXbox One
The reviewer spent twenty hours developing his warband and exploring the city. He earned 8 out of the 53 achievements. The Xbox One copy of the game was provided courtesy of the publisher for the purpose of this review.