The Waylanders is to be commended for the way it takes Celtic mythology and extracts cool moments and conflicts. It’s a great jumping-off point to learn more about the Tuatha De Danann and the stories of pre-Christianity Ireland. It also tries to innovate party-driven RPG combat by focusing on formations and their advantages. Unfortunately, engaging with the game world and its mechanics is not fun enough. Most combat encounters feel interchangeable, companions do not have much personality, there’s a lot of walking around. Working the camera never feels good, especially in tight quarters during battles. The Waylanders also needs major tweaks to its difficulty if it wants to attract more than a very niche audience.
The world with Celtic folklore and strange creatures is remarkable in itself. However, the overall result is inconsistent, unconvincing and even with bugs.
I really hoped the game would get better after the early access but sadly i've been wrong.
Missing translations, missing cutscenes ( on purpose ? ) , poorly optimized, lackluster combat, awful UI, overly complicated character stats that makes comparing items a headache, cringy dialogs, bare-bones character editor... shoud I go on ?
That's a shame because the voice actors are good, the artstyle is really nice and the setting ( celtic, ancient greece... ) is really interesting.
Everything about my experience points to GATO Studio either running out of time or money (or both) before they could complete The Waylanders. A story that starts off in a fresh setting and filled with interesting characters, nice visuals and outstanding voice acting is quickly derailed by technical flaws and an ever-growing list of bugs. I rarely complain about too many side missions or additional features like romantic endeavors being added to a game, but this is a perfect example where cutting out unnecessary features would have allowed GATO Studios to focus on the things that really mattered. Sometimes, less can be more, and that appears to be the case here.
The Waylanders tries to imitate a variety of mechanics from leaders of the RPG genre, but fails to implement any of them effectively, while offering nothing original apart from the astonishingly poor dialogue.
As such it is hard to recommend The Waylanders in its current form. Although it is charming and enthusiastic, its slapdash quality seriously hampers the overall quality of the experience. A middling narrative and minor bugs are easy to overlook if the overall game is enjoyable - which The Waylanders is - but potentially game-breaking issues will erode any good will the title may have gained.
Inspired by legendary RPGs and developers of yore, The Waylanders fails to honour them in any respect. Its story is as generic as they come, the characters completely inconsistent. The controls are clunky and some bugs prevent you from progressing. The combat system is fine, but that really cannot save this game from deserved oblivion.
OK, this game is such a mess I don't know where to start. I'll try to make it simple, what are the standards **** RPG? A nice and compelling story added with fun mechanics (gameplay) to go through the game. Well, in The Waylanders you have to deal with awkward un-consistent dialogues and daddy-jokes that ruin in-game immersion plus un-fun or unintuitive gameplay. I’ll try to avoid considering how shameful is to sell a game in this condition, almost broken, infested with bugs and missing string lines, even tough those hoaxes are fixed, not matter the nice visuals, voice acting or charming soundtrack , the core of this game (story + gameplay) its still seedy and lame.
The game at release is so unfinished that playing it feels like playing a beta that has never been fully tested.
It is sad because it looked like it had big potential and could have been a great game with a lot more work.
I played for a short while before quitting the game. I would rate it a 2/10. The moment I saw the game asking me for my pronouns, I knew it was going to be bad, I just didn't know it would be this bad. Voice acting while nice to have is atrocious, controls and UI are really bad. You will see this when you have trouble actually clicking the Start Game button on the Difficulty screen and trust me you will.
SummaryThe Waylanders is a classic party-based RPG featuring some of the top-talents who brought well-known titles within the genre like the Dragon Age, Mass Effect or Pillars of Eternity sagas.