Wanderlust: Rebirth Image
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User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 14 Ratings

  • Summary: Wanderlust: Rebirth is an online four player co-op arcade-action RPG set in the uniquely crafted fantasy world, Valandria. The heroes are summoned to Westhaven Arena to prove their worth as heroes of old legend.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 3
  2. Negative: 0 out of 3
  1. Aug 20, 2012
    88
    Wanderlust: Rebirth blends classicism and innovation, resulting in a truly excellent cooperative RPG.
  2. Aug 23, 2012
    60
    Wanderlust has few redeeming moments and is ultimately hard to recommend.
  3. Oct 11, 2012
    60
    Has its pieces of heart in the right place, but its unholy retro-modern mechanics will leave you unsatisfied. [Oct 2012, p.79]
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 6
  2. Negative: 3 out of 6
  1. 8
    A wonderful old school RPG.
    Good Points:
    Nostalgic overload - You liked the Mana games? Or Chrono Trigger? Wanderlust: Rebirth is a game for
    you
    Easy to learn: The tutorial is easily understood and well made, IF you are not afraid of READING.
    Fun to play: The single player mode is fun, the gameplay is fast and the combo mechanics are great. spend hours to find out all the combos and I'm not done! The spell system is quite unique and fun, combine runes of a runecircle to create spells and cast them with left or rightclick. You are never alone! So often used phrase...But you really are never alone, despite you want to be. In singleplayer you get a npc party to aid your quests, you can toggle them off via menu if the game seems to easy for you.
    The Multiplayer: Gather with up to 4 people and let the carnage begin! The multiplayer is just awesome me and my friends can't stop playing! Our Tank has a freaking lot to do keeping us away from the enemy or the other way round ;)
    Crafting: The crafting is easy understood, simply select the blueprint and every needed part...finished. Even if the crafting itself is easy most of the ingredients are rare and crafting a weapon becomes a real challenge...I like it this way, you build up an relationship to your crafted things.

    Negativ: The music can be annoying, as it is kinda repeatativ.
    The menu: It would have been better if you could use your mouse for other things than simply aiming.
    The graphics: You NEED to like the oldschool rpgs. If you don't the game looks crappy to you.
    (I personally enjoyed the graphics and the details given at many points)

    If you liked the good old times, you will like Wanderlust: Rebirth. The class system, the rune system...Everything about this game.
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  2. Quite a disappointment, I bought it mainly to support the Starbound team. I think the controls are hard but just a question of habit, much like anything, and that, like many other things, once you get into it you get addicted and farm for the best gear if you are into that sort of stuff, but this game has no... "twist". It's generic. The graphics are not that great by themselves and not appealing to any specific target/referencing a specific platform or something. The story is overly simplistic, and with this little requirements, what with the retro graphics and everything, they couldn't even manage to make it a little bit explorative, you are stuck in very very small maps all the time which would make sense for a 3D online action game but here? meh. The idea of an old school rpg with online cooperative is kinda cool but done boringly, and despite what everyone thinks about them I kinda liked the controls, they felt a bit different at least. Expand
  3. 4
    TL;DR: Fun, but hampered by poor controls, unpolished feel, and driver conflicts.

    I had a fair amount of fun with Wanderlust, but I would n
    ot recommend its purchase to others, at least not considering the game's current state. I last played as of Dec. 2012. The game is sold on Steam as a finished product but it still feels like it is in beta.

    As another reviewer mentioned, the controls take a bit of time to get used to. However, they can be customized in game. The game was on sale on Steam as part of the Big Picture sale: It was advertised as being fully controller compatible. This is partially true. Three of the character classes use the keyboard only and can be handled with a gamepad after you customize the controls. The fourth class requires a mouse to play; I could not find a way to map the mouse control to an analog stick.

    Regarding gameplay, this game feels a little grindy. Item drops are infrequent and stat points (for leveling up a character) are awarded in an unusual fashion. Passing each new level will award you with some stat points, but to get the most points possible you'll need to repeat the level until you get better and more efficient at it.

    If you die during a level, there is always an option to continue right where you left off, even if you were in the middle of a chapter. But this action penalizes your final score and sometimes choosing to continue will simply rush you through to the next area rather than letting you try the same challenge over again. Monsters don't respawn until you play a chapter over from the beginning, and the AI will usually just rush you as soon as you appear on screen. It is exciting and the game often throws new and varied enemies at you, but I wish there were more of a strategic element in approaching these fights. The story is very linear and areas are broken up into very, very short segments, each usually containing one clump of enemies to fight. During multiplayer, there is no way (that I found) to share or trade items with other players.

    More importantly, however, the game has some hardware compatibility issues. The game does not play nicely with some HID drivers, among which wireless keyboards, mice, and gamepads seem to be particular culprits. If you're unlucky, you may install the game only to find that it uses a very large amount of system resources as it tries to collect information from your input devices, ultimately causing the game to lag badly during play. I searched online for a workaround, but for now it seems like the only solution is to uninstall the offending drivers. Because of this, I couldn't play Wanderlust on my main PC. I was eventually able to enjoy the game by playing on another system on which the game ran very smoothly. In fact, I enjoyed playing a whole evening away once everything was running as it should.

    Regarding multiplayer support, if you are familiar with port forwarding and have an uncomplicated router setup, playing with friends won't be difficult. But multiplayer doesn't "just work" straight out of the box. The host of the game, at least, will have to fiddle around to make sure his or her ports are forwarded properly in order to play.

    In summary, Wanderlust is still a bit rough around the edges. I don't feel like it should be advertised on Steam as a finished product with a price tag to match. But if the developers continue working on it, I'll be interested to see how it progresses over time.
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  4. I'll update this when I have the heart to bother with this game again. The game play is interesting enough so far and is in a style I like but so far the execution seems like a joke.

    I run this game through steam from launch it took upwards of 2 minutes to actually load. This is on a machine that loads Borderlands 2 in a minute or less. No biggie but feels weird.

    The game prompts me to press 'A' to start the game a big green button that should look familiar to anyone who has ever seen an X-Box. However the game does not recognize my controller. I play 5+ games on the PC on my controller (borderlands 2, super meat boy, braid...) all of em work. First time every time no hassle. Maybe I'm pampered or maybe I think indie company shouldn't offer features they can't support. I don't mind playing games on the keyboard and mouse, but when I picked the game up to play on a controller, and the game says it uses a controller and IT JUST WON'T WORK, I honestly can't think of much else. The game kinda goes right by me not a lot of fun.

    Quit wasting my time with your technical problems.
    -A note from gamers everywhere.
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