Slaying demons seems to always be a good time. And mostly, in my experience, that demon-slaying was coming exclusively from Diablo 3. My wife loves Diablo 3. I mean LOVES it. It has been the only game we can really play together and get into. She loves the ARPG style combat, camera view, loot system and simplicity of kill baddies to get better stuff to kill harder baddies. And she is damn good at it. We recently started working on season seventeen of Diablo 3 when I began to really get tired of playing the same thing over and over and over and over and over. I really enjoyed it , but the game just does not have enough for me anymore to stay invested. That’s when I went digging and tried to find a substitute until Diablo 4 hits the shelves (looking at you, Blizzard). I came across Warhammer: Chaosbane, an ARPG set in the Warhammer universe and, at first glance, seemed to have everything we needed to enjoy it. After putting about ten hours into it so far, the game has delivered on some fronts and really fails in others. But my wife and I are really enjoying it at the end of the day. Let’s discuss.
Swing that Sword
The combat in Choasbane is pretty straightforward in terms of mechanics and how it works. You have your set of active and passive abilities to choose from just like any other game in the genre. Some passive abilities can help you reduce incoming while some active abilities can aggro any enemy around. Typical stuff there. One thing I like about Chaosbane is that there are a good amount of skills to choose from as you level up and progress through the game. My wife chose the mage and I chose the slayer. I may have chosen the most boring out of the four playable classes but I still find myself enjoying slashing down enemies repeatedly. The different classes play off of each other well too. As the slayer, I can throw down a banner where my wife is stationed and give her bonus damage so she can cast her spells as I keep enemies at bay. This synergy can make a difference when fighting bosses, which turned out to be a good challenge. It can get a little monotonous, barrelling your way through waves of enemies, but the game really turns up the heat during the boss fights. It’s fun.
What Are Those
The loot in Choasbane is okay. Each time you get something that can benefit you, it is mostly in small increments. One thing my wife and I really enjoy from Diablo 3 was the way new armor pieces would really change how your character looks. You would go from this simple looking soldier to looking like a god. In Choasbane, that is not really the case. Through about the first thirty levels, my character would get new gear pieces that did not change my looks too much. Most chest plates were identical and weapons were all the same in terms of how they looked. It was quite a bummer but was not something that held the game back. As the mage, my wife would get new staffs and one time she got a really cool one with a dragon on the top that was probably the coolest piece of gear we have seen yet in the XX hours we have already played. I think what would make the loot system better would be to handle the rarities as Diablo 3 does in terms of how the items look. In Diablo 3 legendary weapons look super unique, sinister and downright awesome, whereas legendary weapons in Choasbane just look like slightly modified rare items. It makes getting new loot a sort of “Oh hey it’s better than what I have now” and that’s it.
Cleanse the Palette
To be honest, Choasbane does not do anything spectacular. But it is perfect for my wife and I. We have been trying to get back into Diablo 3 and it gets harder and harder every season. We definitely needed a change of pace and while Chaosbane is not a better game, it certainly is entertaining. We constantly find ourselves spending time going through our abilities trying to figure which ones work best together and which ones we need to survive. All of the little micromanaging with your gear, abilities and skill tree (called the God Tree in Chaosbane) makes the game feel very granular. And my wife loves that. Putting the right abilities together to get the maximum amount of damage out of her mage is exactly what she is looking for.
Warhammer: Choasbane is a weird beast of a game. But at this moment in time with my wife, it’s pretty awesome. It’s something new and somehow familiar. A game that lets us slay demons without having to learn a whole system or slew of mechanics. We just pick up the controller, grab some drinks and unleash hell on those demons. And to me, that is a ten out of ten.
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