We Are The Dwarves Review By Kevin Tavore, 28 Feb 2017 FollowtopicsWe Are The DwarvesWhale Rock GamesLocal MultiplayerLocal Co-opReviewID@XboxGame reviewAction-AdventureKevin Tavore At this point it seems clear that the Souls series, with games like Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, has made an impression in the gaming landscape. Before that series, titles had generally become easier and easier as content took the place of tough as nails gameplay to encourage longevity. But the Souls series flipped everything on its head and proved that we can still appreciate crippling difficulty...if it's executed well. We Are The Dwarves can clearly count itself among games inspired by Dark Souls' difficulty even though the gameplay is nothing like it, but it's unfortunately not a game that's likely to find a lot of love outside of those circles with particularly masochistic tendencies. We Are The Dwarves is a very difficult game, if for entirely the wrong reasons. The Dark Souls formula is at play here where your heroes, a group of up to three dwarves, are completely unprepared to fight the hordes of enemies they'll need to face. Individual enemies are rarely much weaker than your dwarves and many of them are stronger fighting toe to toe. The only way to defeat them is to use all your abilities and tactics to their fullest extent. Even then, it won't always be enough as more and more enemies join the fight and eventually you will undoubtedly die. In these types of games death is a familiar friend. What differentiates We Are The Dwarves from Dark Souls is the feeling of frustration at the game's mechanics that joins death — you'll get to know the two of them well.The combat is the best part of the game. To be clear, it doesn't play like Dark Souls at all. When it works, you can create tactical maneuvers to decimate foes you'd never normally conquer. Combat is real time and similar to Diablo but you can pause to give orders at any time — it's exactly like the Dragon Age series if you're familiar with that. In We Are The Dwarves, rushing headfirst into battle will often get you killed very quickly, so tactical combat can be essential especially when you have more than one dwarf under your control. You'll assign different attacks to different units to help control the battlefield and defeat your enemies without taking too much damage. Sure, sometimes you can simply wade in to a group of enemies and demolish them, but the times you can't are where the game shines.Unfortunately, you'll often find the battle before you is impossible to win despite the strategic depth. There will be far too many enemies to handle and the ones you do aggro will only call more of their friends upon you until your group falls apart and dies. This is where the game's worst mechanic, stealth, comes in. As much as We Are The Dwarves is a tactical action game, it's equally a stealth game. Enemies can see, hear, and even smell you so sneaking past them is difficult. The enemies will also begin a search if they find a dead comrade and they will not give up, unlike any other stealth game ever made. They will search relentlessly across the entire map. It's possible to hide from them, but you'll need a very good hiding place and there aren't many of those. Chances are you'll be found. It's another form of difficulty and it's one that doesn't work well at all.Your dwarves have very little ability to move stealthily. There is no crouching other than that triggered automatically when behind certain types of cover. You can't walk slower and you can't do anything but walk normally. To make matters worse, while sight cones are implemented you can only see them from one enemy at a time. So you'll need to watch the enemies carefully and then try to slip past them. It's certainly always possible but it almost instantly becomes frustrating; enemies will hear and smell you and come running at you despite your best attempts at sneaking by them. The enemies seem to be hyper sensitive to everything — they'll hear your slightest movement, follow your scent if you walk across a patrol's path, and see you out of the corner of their eyes. It's perhaps more realistic but it isn't more fun. The game mechanics here are unforgiving and it feels like the developers made a game based around stealth without giving you any of the tools that make stealth games fun.Still, difficult games can still be enjoyable. There's usually a fantastic feeling awaiting you once you finally pass a difficult section. We Are The Dwarves doesn't have that because of the atrocious controls. The game was developed initially for PC and only later ported over to console, and it shows. These are, bar none, the worst controls in any console game I have ever played. They're not responsive at all. Targeting enemies is a painful experience that boils down to simply spinning the right stick in circles and hoping the correct enemy would finally get targeted. There's a shortcut to target a new enemy with the d-pad but how it chose the new target was impossible to figure out, and it often did nothing at all.Manual targeting is even worse. You have to hold LB to keep manual mode activated while you aim. If you let go before hitting the attack button again, the targeting will reset and you'll have to do it again. The simple fix is that you just do it all in tactical mode where the game is paused while you aim. For ground targeting that's okay as the cursor moves unbearably slow. For cone or line targeting (such as arrow shots or shotgun blasts), however, the right stick is hyper sensitive and when you let it go your aim will always change somewhat significantly. This means you'll need to use a weird claw grip where you hold a direction on the right stick with precision (the aiming line will move very quickly) while holding LB also, and then you press a controller button to use the ability and hope that hitting the button doesn't cause your aim to shake slightly. It's frustrating and it's an issue that comes up in nearly every fight.The awful controls are a symptom of a careless console development and those symptoms arise in other areas of the game as well. Screen tearing was noticeable, the framerate would drop when battle was engaged, and shadows would constantly flicker. These visual issues arise constantly and they mar an artistic direction that's really quite nice. It's a wonderful setting where the scenery is alien and strangely appealing, but I never want to go back because of these visual issues. Beyond the visual glitches, there were problems with clipping where dwarves would sink into the ground in certain areas. Enemies could be knocked back into the geometry of the level where they would be immortal but never drop aggro, which means you can't complete objectives until you reload the level and try again.The achievements, luckily, are quite easy. The first thing you'll notice is that they're almost entirely "kill X of enemy Y" achievements. This seems in conflict with the game's intent that you play through stealthily and avoid contact when possible, but ultimately you'll kill enough enemies when dying and restarting that you'll get what you need naturally, even if you play with stealth. There are only two non-kill achievements. The first is for hiding from three enemies that will be got naturally. The second is for getting caught by a trap monster seven times, which will probably come naturally too and is easily farmable if not. The final achievement you'll likely get is killing four shamans, which are enemies that appear about 70% of the way through the game. You'll certainly finish before you get to the end, and if you play on a lower difficulty it'll likely take about five to seven hours.SummaryWe Are The Dwarves is a game with some great ideas that are simply executed badly. Its tactical combat has depth and requires some strategic thought, but the game's difficulty is so high you're encouraged to actively avoid it. This means relying on stealth mechanics without any of the abilities you'd normally have in a stealth game and nothing to make up for it. The result is a game that seems unsure of its identity or even how it's meant to be played. Couple those poor stealth mechanics with dozens of technical issues (both visual and in gameplay) and the worst console adaptation of PC controls ever experienced, the result is a game that simply isn't up to par. If a stealth/action hybrid with tactical combat and a Dark Souls-like obsession with making you die sounds great, then this game is something you might like. For anyone else here simply to see if the quick completion is worth it, you should wait for a deep sale on this one if you get it at all.3 / 10Positives Tactical combat has depth and can be fun The world is well-crafted and unique in a way that makes you want to know more Negatives Stealth mechanics are strongly encouraged but very poorly designed An enormous amount of technical issues visually and in gameplay Controls are unacceptably bad EthicsThe reviewer spent 7 hours playing through the game making tactical decisions, attempting to sneak past enemies, and battling the controls. He collected 10 of 10 achievements for 1000 Gamerscore. An Xbox One download code was provided by the ID@Xbox team for the purposes of this review.More We Are The Dwarves stories: Easy Gamerscore: 94 quick completions from the Xbox sale TA Podcast: We Talk Scorpio and Games with Jez Corden from Windows Central We are the Dwarves - First Hour of Gameplay Beam Streaming Schedule for Week Commencing February 27th We Are The Dwarves Achievement List Revealed ReviewVideoXbox OneID@Xbox Written by Kevin TavoreKevin is a lover of all types of media, especially any type of long form story. The American equivalent of Aristotle, he'll write about anything and everything and you'll usually see him as the purveyor of news, reviews and the occasional op-ed. He's happy with any game that's not point and click or puzzling, but would always rather be outdoors in nature.
The reviewer spent 7 hours playing through the game making tactical decisions, attempting to sneak past enemies, and battling the controls. He collected 10 of 10 achievements for 1000 Gamerscore. An Xbox One download code was provided by the ID@Xbox team for the purposes of this review.