We really wanted Wander to be brilliant, but unfortunately, it comes across as half-baked, lacking in things to do, and underwhelming in almost every area.
I love to wander around and enjoy the scenery and the breeze that the wind carries around. It is refreshing and calming to my soul and nerves, and give the air a sense of tranquility. Wander without aim, wander without purpose, carefree and relaxed.
Wander
Relaxing But Unfinished
Wander is a decently pretty and relaxing game
You start out as a tree
in my opinion the tree is a great introduction into the world
it moves very slowly forcing you to soak in the environment and get a feel for what the game is about
its about taking your time, sitting down and just getting lost
The tree though is extremely slow and I feel like the developers made a mistake by not putting a faster character on a direct math maybe 30 minutes from start that players would intuitively go to
I was stuck as a tree for a good 2 hours trying to find a spot to transform, almost quitting.
There are currently 4 forms available in the game
In laymans terms. A tree which takes larger steps, and can light up the night with fire flies, a water lizard that can swim very quickly, a human character that moves faster than all other forms, and a griffin than can fly and lessen travel time when youre trying to get to a specific point.
I feel like Wander was inspired by journey, this is a MMO but you can only communicate through the games language which is written by symbols and then spoken
if you want to really spend some time in this world, you have a new language of about 50 words and phrases to learn
so much like journey you for the most part communicate through a foreign language that neither of you understand, but at the same time still are able to communicate
For example I found a tree when I was roaming around and I know how horrible it can be to be stuck as a tree, so I communicated the best way I could to get the player to follow me, and I led them to the human stone and then flew them up to the griffin stone
it feels great to help other players out, and this is really where the magic is at in wander.
There isn’t much else to do but explore and find lorestones to learn about the world you’ve been placed in, so trophies and achievements kind of take front and center just by human nature if you trophy hunt or not, sadly though there are issues with some trophies that are currently being worked on.
Im actually surprised achievements and trophies came out of the gate broken since really these are the only objectives the game gives you.
While the adventure is up to you, I oddly enough found myself sinking hours into this game searching for lorestones and speech stones,
soaring the skies searching for new caves to explore, swimming to the depths of the ocean for trophy progress
I appreciate the vision of wander, but do find the scenery to get a bit repetitive, and the 2nd islands especially kind of just smacks you with how little there is to do in the game
Not many people are playing wander right now, I was lucky to see maybe 10 people total in the 20 plus hours ive spent in wanders world so far,
so don’t expect to run into groups of friends exploring together, I hope this happens soon, but right now this isn’t the reality.
There are plans for more islands and talks of more forms and lore stones.
I’m excited to see what Wander brings in the future, but this game clearly isn’t finished yet
Many of the games mechanics are patched in and out of the ps4 and pc versions of the game to improve based on feedback on a daily to weekly basis, so this to me shows promise, like a typical mmo, this game will be in development as hopefully the months go on,
right now youre essentially paying for early access, there isn’t even enough to complete some of the trophies and achievements in the game.
Will you enjoy your time with wander? It depends if you don’t need action in your life.
You cant die in wander, there is no threat
Wander is meant to be a relaxing time and it can be when you aren’t dealing with the frustration of achievements and mechanics not working the way they were intended.
Is the current price tag a bit steep for what you get?
I personally believe it is.
There are plans for a lot more in wander, and I may and probably will do an updated review as the game grows, but at its current state I can’t say youll be missing much if you hold out.
I believe so much in this games potential and in the team developing this game, but im here to save your wallets and have to be honest.
For what it is
Non Combative MMORPG 6/10
Overall 6/10
Without character customization or any semblance of proper communication, the game has nothing to offer in place of its sacrifices. Like Sisyphus on a treadmill, I fruitlessly walked around in hopes of discovering something worthwhile. Unless this game can find its way, discovery will remain a lost cause.
First twenty minutes in Wander looks just like the next hours. Everyone's running around without any interaction and the enthusiasm quickly gives way to bitter disappointment. Wander is a boring mess in the form of a video game.
When I first heard about Wander, I was curious. No fights, no quests, nothing but exploring? Could that even work? Screenshots and trailers seemed nice, so I jumped the gun on release day. I shouldn't have, as I noticed the moment I entered the main menu. Navigating the menus didn't work correctly, and it's not a good sign for the upcoming things if even that has problems already. My negative feelings were proven right as soon as I entered the game. There is no animation for walking sideways, which makes movement animation quite stiff, but the worst thing are the constant popups of textures and effects. Everywhere you look something appears out of thin air, there is literally no real seeing distance as even a few steps ahead of you things pop up out of nowhere. This bugs me very much. Maybe if this gets patched I'll give it a go, but I somehow doubt there will be anything fixed here.
Save your money, SAVE YOURSELF FROM THIS HORROR.
- Sub-par graphics, seriously what is this? Why would I want to explore a game that looks potato.
- Terrible textures, I mean it's actually hilarious.
- Broken gameplay, you will phase through existence regularly.
- Unbelievably boring!
This game is phenomenal if you're having trouble sleeping, I can assure you it works better than any sedative I've ever taken. Where is the wonder? The excitement? The awe inspiring beauty? I'm guessing all of that was utilized in the entirely misleading trailer for this garbage.
All jokes aside, this game is a joke in itself!
What the hell is this? I was looking forward to this game. I love exploration games. But this feels like some early stage of alpha version. With some very bad gamedesign decisions. I Iove the idea of transformation to four different species. But the game starts you in the role of walking tree. The walking is soooo sloooow, that there is no fun in exploring. You may walk for hours and basically dont get anywhere. Exploring with this spped is just pain. Not fun. Then there is this ingame language, you should be able to use by drawing gestures. But there is no help how to do it. maybe it works on mouse. But honestly, i tried hundreds of times. I was not able to make simple cicrce to work. I tryed drawin with different speeds, with different buttons pressed. It just dont recognize the gesture. I consider this part of the game broken. Thn there are graphics. Normally they shold not be so importnat. But in the game that is only about exploration, there should be something to look at. believe me - game does not look like the trailers (at least not on PS4). There are constant popping objects. All the time. It looks terible. Then there are problems like objects you can walk throuht, etc.
Basically, this game is not just boring (no content, walking 0,5km/h), but also technical mess full of bugs and glitches.
Save yourself money, time and mental health and just avoid it.