This game is an old school rpg inspired by various 16 bit games.
The controls take sometime to get used to, and this game from the start tries to teach you the basics, but then you are on your own.
If you are one of those players that expects the game babysit you from the start till the end, then don´t pick this game up, this is game aimed at people who play the game several times till they get used to the controls and they find a character class they like.
The game difficulty also gets increasingly harder as the game goes on, so don´t judge it it on the first chapters and make sure to make use of the block key.
The user interface is not the best, but it does it job and it provides with enough information to the player.
Overall, I think the greatest strength of this game is combat, it can be hard at times and unforgiving, but once you understand the monster combat patterns and each monster does, you should be able to do well.
A lot of what some of these reviewers have posted is actually incorrect or misleading information. All 4 character classes can be played with a controller. People who say there is no strategy to the game is obviously only playing on normal mode and completing chapters at 50% ratings. If you want to get 100% on chapters, you must use strategies to get a lot of awards to hit that high %. Epic mode is ruthless, and all the players that just hack-n-slash their way through normal mode gets stopped instantly once they hit epic mode.
There is a fix for the memory issues, and it is detailed in the FAQ; simply run Steam as admin to resolve these issues.
Port forwarding is an issue in nearly all online games that do not run through one large central server. Rating a game down because it requires port-forwarding knowledge is a bit unfair considering port-forwarding has been a necessity in online games for years. If there was some easy/magic way around it, then that would defeat one of the purposes of routers.
What a lot of these reviews fail to mention is that Wanderlust sports several game modes: PvP (team deathmatch and relic rush modes), story mode (normal, hard, and epic modes), and crawl mode (with lots of goodies). It also includes 3 different endings, bunch of items to collect/craft/and socket, 4 character classes that all play differently from each other. 44 different types of enemies that fight differently from each other, as well as 4 secret boss encounters.
All in all, if in doubt jump on the main website and grab the demo for yourself.
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 **** 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.
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.
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 not 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.
I know, I know, five years late to the party. This is just one that has stuck out in my mind years after the fact for how absolutely mediocre and frustrating it was. Among dozens of bad Steam library titles that quietly recede into the night, this one just frustratingly refuses to leave my memory, and that's probably because I really wanted it to be great.
It promises: old-school Secret of Mana hack and slash fun
It delivers: a series of tiny little maps, each with a group of enemies who desperately rush you as soon as you appear on screen as if to say, "Please! Kill me and release me from this hell!" Mercifully, you can deliver on your promise, as they don't respawn once dead.
I jumped in with three remote friends for a night of online gaming, only to be thwarted by poor controller support, then poor networking support, then poor controls, then just blah gameplay. Good friends have a way of mitigating even the most disappointing game nights, but I think it's fair to say we all felt shorted over paying the full price tag.
The negative reviews here and on Steam highlight exactly what's wrong with the game, while the positive reviews spout fluff and gloss over the very real problems. Due perhaps to some suspicious damage control, even the quite descriptively written negative reviews get quickly downvoted while the positive ones get propped up. Fortunately there's enough of a reviewer base at Steam to overwhelm these attempts and let buyers know exactly what they're taking on before they commit to purchase.
Avoid at all costs. The tutorial is confusing, the GUI is bare, the music is painful, the chat system archaic, controller support awkward, and most of the features go unexplained. If a player doesn't feel like playing past the awkward start, it's a poor excuse for a simulation, not a game. Before attempting to sell this game for 8 dollars, try creating a clear tutorial (Ex. Super Meat Boy), A familiar GUI (Ex. Dragon Warrior/Quest 4, NES), high fidelity music (Ex. Rogue Legacy), an up-to-date chat system (Ex. WoW), Mindfulness of controller context (Ex. GTA4), and maybe some in-game help system or documentation (Ex. Civilization 4). Widescreen support wouldn't hurt, and having options and other menu items available at the start screen is a requisite on consoles for a reason. The basic idea is nice though, in theory.
SummaryWanderlust: 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.