Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem

Wolcen could have been a contender in the ARPG arena, but it can’t get out of it’s own way for more than two seconds. Perhaps in time WOLCEN Studio will patch everything up and allow the game to shine as brightly as it deserves, but right now the game fights you at every turn. Wolcen is a game that is as fun as it is frustrating. I like Wolcen; I simply wish I could love it.

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is frustrating to play for the majority of its campaign, leaving you with little motivation to dedicate more time to endgame events. There are many technical issues that can be fixed to alleviate some of this frustration, but it's the deeper ingrained problems with difficulty balance and character build viability that keep Wolcen from fulfilling its enticing promise of a free-form ARPG.

Wolcen's free-form character progression and enthusiasm for experimentation could be great additions to the genre, but most of the good is undone by the sense that, as we're slicing through throngs of enemies, we're really just beta testers. And where it's not buggy and in need or rebalancing, it's incredibly beige. Also, and I really can't stress this enough, Wolcen is a really terrible name.