https://steamcommunity.com/games/424370/announcements/detail/1745615744824958344
WOLCEN Studio, the development team behind this ARPG title (formerly known as SolarFall Games when they previously pitched the game name as Umbra during their kickstarter), finally launched the beta of Wolcen this weekend after spending the past year of alpha testing, redesigning the game completely from scratch (again). The beta includes a multiplayer co-op (4 players) option where you can keep your created game open to the public (or set it to private for your solo play).
While I normally don’t tend to purchase early access titles, I did so for Wolcen back in November 2017 when it was on sale for $15.99 (I believe the regular price was $19.99). The game is now listed at $29.99 which to be honest, might come across as a bit steep for those who haven’t been following this title early on. While I played through the earlier design iterations, your character would cap out fairly quickly and there wasn’t enough additional content to really keep you at least engaged in some form; not a surprise given the game had gone through earlier redesigns before their alpha test designation in 2018.
Previous players will immediately notice the major redesign during the character creation portion as well as the initial game play where you start off in a town hub (Stormfall) for your quests which is given out by one of the NPC’s. You then head off into the portal that opens to complete the objectives and return for your reward. Based on my first few set of quests (up to level 8 as of this posting), it seems like the open world questing and exploration has been supplanted by this new hub/lobby centric map design. IMHO, this is not a positive change; with an ARPG, I want to at least feel like I am traveling through the game world to other destinations as was the case in the iteration prior to this beta.
Enemies do feel more varied (not just a lot of zombie types) and engaging though with different mechanics including death animations which can deal out damage to the player. Loot drops of all types are abundant which allows you to cobble together armor and weapon types for whatever mix of builds you want to come up with. Like I’m saving up items for a ranger/rogue as well as some type of melee character (like an assassin mix). Health and resource potions utilize the same mechanic that Path of Exile uses for their flask system (where it charges up during combat and you can get higher quality ones that can hold more charges and/or provides more healing/resource regeneration). There’s probably a host of other changes that have been implemented (and I figure the best way to find out is to play and discover them).
During that whole technical testing phase that happened last year, I didn’t really bother trying to play or follow what their updated objectives were. However, I can understand the earliest kickstarter supporters who have felt frustrated by the lack of meaningful progress (towards its actual release) since 2015. This complete redesign for the beta probably won’t do much to quell those frustrations but for myself, some of the changes come across feeling very fresh and at least early on, a bit more focused. But I am again not sold on the lobby design they went with.
In the prior iteration (before the technical alpha’s in 2018), I attempted to play as a mage but for the longest time, my character felt like a mix of melee and spell caster. With the redesign, you select your starting weapon but build your character out as you find specific items and as you select your attributes and nodes in the skill tree (Gate of Fates); so for the first time in Wolcen, I actually do feel like a spell caster (remains to be seen how my choices in items as well as nodes affects my characters play). I will say the environment looks far more polished and also easier to see things (this is always one of the challenges in an isometric style game where certain color palettes cause readability to go downhill quickly). The combat and movement were fairly decent before but feels much tighter in this iteration.
Another thing that was removed was the limited character customization (no male or female selection; it’s right now gender locked to male but the model is at least much better designed than what previously existed). This is pretty much one of my biggest pet peeves with a lot of western design studios where the character models looked like they were designed by someone who has a preference for the most ugliest looking traits ever… but I digress.
Like prior design iterations, players are capping out again at around level 20ish and completing the quest chain (there doesn’t really seem to even be an attempt at a story arc like was the case with the prior design). So I can understand the concern again of earlier supporters who have observed this slow development cycle and the limited content (and now, a change from the original design they previously supported). Myself, I bought it out of curiosity even though my preferences around that time period, was shifting away from the whole fixed camera isometric view game (ArcheAge’s full open world spoiled me since I inherently enjoy exploring, and there is no better way to get that immersive feeling than with a 3D non-fixed camera view of that world).
Needless to say, Wolcen is still in early access (in the beta test portion of its production) so I am not going to give it a proper review at this time. This again is why I didn’t really discuss the game before this besides some cursory mentions because it has been in flux since it was known as Umbra. The biggest challenge I saw back in 2017 was producing more of the story/questing and that aspect hasn’t changed much.
