Wartorn was provided by Stray Kite Studios for review. Thank you!
As an Early Access title, gameplay and performance is subject to change.
I've had my eye on Wartorn for some time, and after a long wait, it's finally available in Early Access. Although there are some performance concerns, I'm enjoying myself with this one. It combines real-time squad combat with a brutal convoy management system and impressive voice acting to enhance the experience. It is also a rogue-lite with permadeath, featuring army recruitment and resource management. The game packs quite a lot into its gameplay, and the signs are promising so far.
One of the most challenging feats for an Early Access game is to make a strong initial impression. Wartorn, however, manages to do just that. Its content and polish are remarkably solid for an early access launch, featuring a complete gameplay loop with an ending, all game mechanics in place, and a compelling narrative to tie it all together. The production quality is evident, and it's clear that Wartorn has a promising future ahead.
The story begins with a captivating cutscene, setting the stage for the turmoil in the elven world amid invasion and war. Players step into the shoes of sisters Yara and Elani, who are on a mission to reach Beynun, their ancestral fortress, and reunite with their lost family. After a brief tutorial in their primary home, the sisters attempt to fight an invading horde of monsters but fail. That's when a strange deity brings them back from the dead through a magical item that can reverse time. I like how the narrative ties in with the mystical ‘death is only the beginning’ mechanic we see in most roguelites.
Yara and Elani are interesting protagonists: fiery and determined to find their lost family and deeply caring about each other. The narrative is brutal, with a sense of constant danger, and I enjoyed watching them react to each situation. Their habit of screaming their elven battle cry to nearly every conversation gets a little irritating, but it's part of the lore. However, the voice acting is solid, and it's clear how much the developers have invested in the world.
Wartorn is quite attractive for a squad-based real-time strategy (RTS) game. I have been blessed with some nice-looking strategy games in recent months, and while Wartorn has a smaller scope for its battles, I like the visuals. The battlefields might be small, but they are rich with detail.
The environments are also fully destructible, with weather and magical effects that have an impact on the battlefield. Fire spreads and burns, using tar can accelerate flames, and water conducts electricity. These are standard elemental effects, but the game goes beyond that. For example, for many plant-based units, water can serve as a healing agent. There’s a nice mix of subtlety in the level design that I appreciate, and the player can recruit a wide range of units to help them in battle.
The gameplay loop is quite fascinating, and Wartorn combines a multitude of my favorite genres into the kind of messy dessert I enjoy on the weekend. You move your party across a world map in real-time, though you can pause the convoy’s advance to manage your party and supplies. It reminds me a little of Wartales, though not as deep with the mechanics. The convoy is your lifeline, and you lose if it is destroyed. Morale, gold, and food must be managed carefully, as the scarcity of supplies necessitates difficult decisions. Branching paths offer different choices, such as vital convoy repairs, food, mercenaries, and narrative branches that offer more lore on the world of Talaur.
The combat is real-time, small-scale skirmishes with your squad, and alongside the sisters, you can bring up to four other units. Death and damage are permanent, so every battle counts. There are several scenarios to consider, including defending the convoy against attack, defeating enemy forces, or simply escaping. You can thankfully pause during combat, and with different units and abilities, there is a lot of micromanagement in play.
The gameplay loop is satisfying, although I have a few gripes. The escape missions, which are essentially scenarios where you need to flee from a battle, are odd. They often appeared as random encounters that made little sense from a tactical perspective. While the maps are detailed, I wish they would add small details to them to make them more engaging, such as salvaging extra resources or including some events. Controlling units can get messy, especially when using a controller. That isn’t to say Wartorn’s controls are inadequate, and there is full controller support. However, I found it easier to control units in combat with a keyboard and mouse, so some work needs to be done on that front.
The most significant concern I currently have with Wartorn is performance. You need a fair bit of power to play Wartorn at high settings, and while it plays well across a range of systems, I was expecting better. The game's performance can be inconsistent, with occasional frame rate drops and loading times. While the visuals can be impressive, they aren’t groundbreaking, so I feel some optimization needs to be tweaked under the hood.
As Wartorn is in Early Access, development will be in flux for a while, and balance patches will likely be frequent. I would like to see more options for adjusting your caravan during runs. Currently, the options are somewhat limited, such as adding starting resources and increasing unit statistics, but I'd love to see additional starting units or an extra wagon.
This is a strange one because, on paper, Wartorn should work great on the Steam Deck. I previously mentioned my issues with performance, and that is more apparent on the Steam Deck than elsewhere.
I was unable to achieve 60 FPS even with the TDP unlocked on standard settings, and Wartorn allows you to auto-detect settings. I also saw some very irritating bugs that I did not experience on PC. For instance, in the opening cutscene, pressing any button would restart it from scratch, which I had never observed when testing the game on the laptop. Wartorn allows you to adjust many graphical settings for performance, and the only way I was able to achieve 60 FPS was by setting all settings to low and the image scaling to 60%.
Wartorn is an unpleasant experience, characterized by flickering textures and shadows everywhere. Even when reducing everything to the bare minimum, I still saw some frame drops in combat with all the environmental effects being thrown around. The power draw is also exceptional, with an average of over 21 watts, even at these low settings. Wartorn is in Early Access, and I appreciate that optimization will be needed, as that is how development typically progresses. However, I was surprised by how poorly it runs on the Deck. I experimented with a 30FPS frame lock and lower TDPs, with little success.
Because of this, I cannot recommend playing this on the Steam Deck for now. At the same time, it is technically playable, but the sacrifices required for the visuals, combined with terrible battery life (I saw around 2 hours with the Steam Deck OLED), don’t make it worth it for me. Wait for some performance updates!
Wartorn can be played in English, French, German, Spanish (Spain), Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Russian. While full subtitle support exists for all, only English has full voice acting.
You can change language, auto-advance dialogue, reset tutorials, adjust the difficulty, including an awesome dynamic difficulty that tweaks based on your run, tweak the gore amount shown in battle, toggle the colorblind option, and adjust colorblind strength.
While you can change keybinds, the game warns that this is an experimental option, so use it wisely. The developers have done a solid job with accessibility options across the board, which is great to see.
Wartorn combines some of my favorite game genres, blending them with impressive production quality. Managing your fledgling convoy with limited resources and permanent death is quite the challenge, and the frantic combat only adds to the immersion. I felt like I was fighting for my very survival with every decision I made, and Wartorn’s solid worldbuilding and characters are an excellent complement to the rogue-lite gameplay.
It isn’t quite there yet, as I found controlling units in combat to be a little rough with a gamepad, and the performance is lacking in some areas, especially on the Steam Deck. None of these are deal breakers for me, as I know what to expect going into an Early Access release, and the launch version has much to like.
I recommend holding off on purchasing if you solely want this to play on the Steam Deck until we have more polish.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Wartorn is a brutal real-time strategy roguelite that packs some great gameplay into its impressive worldbuilding, although performance needs a lot of work.
