Wartales
Shiro Games · RPG, Strategy, Survival, Indie
Overview
Wartales is an open world RPG in which you lead a group of mercenaries in their search for wealth across a massive medieval universe. Explore the world, recruit companions, collect bounties and unravel the secrets of the tombs of the ancients!
THE GAMEQ VERDICT10,000 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Wartales players love the core of the game: running a band of medieval mercenaries through an open world, taking contracts, feeding and paying the crew, levelling professions, and winning turn-based fights where positioning matters and there is no hit-chance dice roll. A fifth of the longer reviews compare it to Battle Brothers, XCOM or Mount & Blade, and several describe it as a friendlier, better-looking Battle Brothers. People describe losing whole nights to it, and they like retelling the stories it produces, such as a pony sent to jail for the company's theft or a captured bear made lieutenant.
A fifth of the longer reviews also say fights start to repeat and levelling slows to a crawl in the later regions, and some players gave up partway through the map. Stutter that worsens over a long session, crashes, and bugs introduced by updates come up from early access to now, and co-op broke for some groups, mostly in reviews from 2025 and 2026. The DLC is the topic that grew most: a long run of paid expansions whose combined price players say dwarfs the base game, with taverns, quests and crafting options from DLC visible in the base map. 88% of the reviews written in 2023 recommended the game, and the share fell each year after that, to 58% of those written in 2026, while the share of longer reviews bringing up DLC rose from 9% to 59%. Players who say they changed their review to negative point to the DLC, broken co-op or new bugs after patches.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Tactical turn-based combatHigh
Praise for the fights runs through 25% of longer reviews. Some players single out that there is no hit chance, so a planned combo lands, and many enjoy how skills, weapons, oils and companions stack into synergies that keep revealing themselves. "Combat's solid, managing your team is fun, and it's surprisingly immersive," one player summed up, and another found the battles "intense and punishing without feeling impossible". Players on higher difficulties say the challenge is fair once the systems click. Some of the same reviews say the fights become routine in later regions (see the frustrations below), and a smaller group finds the combat shallow from the start, with classes locked to weapon types and an enemy roster heavy on bandits, wolves and boars.
Running a mercenary companyHigh
Hiring, traits, wages, camp upgrades, relationships and the threat of losing a companion for good make up the management layer players write about, and 25% bring up professions, crafting, mini-games or the camp. "Building and balancing a fledgling mercenary troupe stays fun and interesting," one player wrote, adding that "All the profession mini-games are better than they have a right to be." Blacksmithing, fishing, cooking and taming animals give the downtime between fights a purpose. A few players find specific mini-games (lockpicking, the Rouste ball game, slider puzzles) tedious.
An open world that rewards exploringHigh
Each region has its own scenario, hidden places, tombs and secrets, and 22% of longer reviews bring up the exploration, open world, sandbox or freedom. Players enjoy choosing their own path, including playing as outright villains who steal, kidnap and sell prisoners. Some like the low-magic, grounded medieval setting, while others wish it had magic or more monsters.
Looks, music and atmosphereMedium
The world map, weather, snow trails and finishing-move animations give a modest game an immersive feel, according to the 14% who mention the visuals, art style, atmosphere, music or voice acting, mostly positively. A few find the palette too dark or the camera too close.
Animals, prisoners and emergent storiesMedium
Players recount knocking out a bear and recruiting it ("He's Lieutenant Bare Hands now"), blaming the pony for a theft, or naming the crew after friends and watching relationships form. 7% bring up bears, ponies, wolves and other animals, mostly in fond anecdotes like these, which come out of the game's systems with no scripting behind them.
Hard to put downMedium
6% describe the game as addictive or say they could not stop playing, and a few compare its "one more contract" pull to Civilization. Several of these reviews also admit the pull fades in the later regions.
Where players are split
Battle Brothers comparisonsHigh
Fans of Battle Brothers split on Wartales, and 20% of longer reviews compare it to Battle Brothers, XCOM, Mount & Blade, Divinity or Darklands. One side calls it more forgiving and easier to get into, with better graphics, a camp and professions, voice acting, co-op and less punishing randomness. The other side calls it a shallower version with less tactical depth and a fixed map instead of a generated one, and some say the comparison sets the wrong expectations.
Expansion qualityMedium
Apart from the price (see frustrations), players disagree about the DLC content itself; 10% of longer reviews name a specific expansion or its content. Some single out a few expansions as worth it, as one player did: "I recommend Pirates and Skelmar." Others describe most expansions as thin, buggy, or locked behind high levels so they cannot be played until late. A third group says the base game alone already offers plenty.
Food, wages and upkeepMedium
For some of the 9% who talk about food, wages or upkeep, this pressure is the point: you can grow a huge company only as far as you can feed and pay it, and players like that the game "Treats the player like an intelligent adult". For others it is a treadmill, "running for food and gold for your daily wage all the time", with the constant need to camp, cook and return to town for armour repair.
Co-opMedium
Players praise it as "A brilliant co-op game" in a genre that rarely has one, and 8% of longer reviews mention co-op or multiplayer. It also draws technical complaints. Groups describe desyncs, infinite loading screens, null access errors, and lobbies that break "before we could get past the character customization screen". Most of the reviews that call co-op broken were written in 2025 or 2026. Players also object that every player must own a DLC to use it together, and that co-op forces the group into the same location and shared resources.
Difficulty and level scalingMedium
Players disagree on which scaling mode works: Adaptive (enemies scale with your party) or Region-locked (fixed enemy levels per region). 7% discuss scaling. Adaptive mode punishes a large company: "more recruits = more enemies you encounter", one player explained, and battles balloon. Region-locked mode makes later regions a grind until levels catch up, then turns early regions trivial. One player who switched found the game "flows much better now". Others report sudden spikes in the fourth region or against particular bosses.
Learning by doingLow
Some love being thrown in: "Throws you into the deep end. Die and slowly learn the world and mechanics." Others, especially newcomers who tried the game in a free weekend, gave up because of "No tutorial or guidance." In all, 4% mention the tutorial, the learning curve or poor explanations, and wage timing, camp jobs and class weapon limits are among the systems players say are poorly explained.
StoryLow
Players who mention the writing mostly agree it is light: each region has a scenario but there is no central plot, and choices rarely carry forward. Some enjoy writing their own story in a sandbox. Others say the thin story is why the later hours feel empty.
What frustrates players
Repetitive fights and a late-game grindHigh
"The combat is satisfying and thorough, but unfortunately is roughly the same exact fight, over, and over, and over," one player wrote. 20% of longer reviews complain about repetition, grind or a slog, and they describe the same arc: the first regions are excellent, then the same fights repeat, experience gains shrink, and battles with large parties drag on. Another player put it more bluntly: "After that it becomes a pointless, soulless XP grind." Some advise stopping early: "Pretend the game ends after the 4th area and it's solid enough for a recommend." The same reviews ask for auto-resolve on trivial fights, more enemy variety, faster turns, and options for large parties.
Bugs, crashes and stutterHigh
19% of longer reviews report bugs, crashes, freezes or performance problems (counted after removing "no bugs" style remarks). Stutter that grows over a session has been reported since early access: "the game runs great whenever you first load it up, and the performance takes a dump the more you play." Players also report black screens at launch, crashes on loading, corrupted Ironman saves, quests that break, and bugs inside paid expansions. Several veterans say updates make it worse: "Every time they update or make a new DLC it messes up the game." A November 2025 free weekend brought a burst of reviews from first-time players hitting launch failures and crashes within their first hour, and that week's reviews were 42% positive.
DLC count, price and paywalled contentHigh
27% of longer reviews bring up the DLC, and the share climbed every year: 9% of longer reviews written in 2023, 21% in 2024, 38% in 2025 and 59% in 2026. Talk of price, volume or paywalls specifically, most of it complaining, appears in 9% of longer reviews overall and 25% of those written in 2026. Players say the full package costs far more than the base game ("not worth 150 bucks to play all of the content locked behind paywalls in the form of DLC's"), that "with so many dlc's it feels like you're only getting half the game", and that DLC content shows up in the base game as locked taverns, quest markers and recipes. One player stopped after finding "a tavern in the game that was locked behind DLC"; another said the game kept "throwing stuff in your face about all the dlc content you don't own". Several players say they changed their review to negative over this. Players ask for a season pass, a discounted complete edition, or bundling, while some defend the model and say the base game is complete without any of it.
Battle setup, camera and controlsLow
A smaller group objects to random deployment that scatters the company at the start of a fight ("Your veteran mercs never go into battle in any type of formation"), a fixed close camera, and controls that cause misclicks, such as "move the end turn button away from the move button".
No mod supportLow
Players ask for official mod support or Steam Workshop, and those who use mods say each update breaks them; 3% of longer reviews bring up mods.
Overworld travel and pathfindingLow
Players complain that the party moves slowly on the world map and gets stuck on small obstacles: "Pathing problems where your team just won't move around simple objects in open world." Getting snagged on a ledge while fleeing guards is one story players tell.
3. The player conversation
At the full release in April 2023 the conversation was a celebration: in the first two weeks after launch 87% of reviews recommended it, and that period is full of short reviews calling it addictive or great. Positive shares then fell by calendar year: 88% of reviews written in 2023, 85% in 2024, 75% in 2025 and 58% in 2026. Over the same span DLC took over the conversation, and complaints about broken co-op and crashes after patches also grew in the later years.
The grind and repetition complaints come from people deep into a campaign, typically around 70 hours in, who enjoyed the opening regions and stalled later. DLC complaints come from players with long histories with the game, typically around 90 hours, including some who returned after a break, saw the list of expansions, and flipped their review. Co-op complaints come from groups who bought the game to play together. The November 2025 free weekend produced a separate cluster from first-time players with only a few hours, who wrote about launch failures, crashes, the missing tutorial and a slow opening. Throughout, 24% of the longer negative reviews still call the game good or fun, and 5% of the longer positive ones add a "buy on sale" or "skip the DLC" caveat.
4. What the developers could do
- Offer a fairly priced complete edition or season pass. 25% of the longer reviews written in 2026 raise DLC price, volume or paywalls, and players ask for a bundle, a season pass or a discounted complete edition before they will buy in.
- Fix long-session stutter and crash-on-load problems, and test patches before release. Stutter that grows over a session has been reported from early access onward, and veterans say updates and new DLC introduce bugs and corrupt saves.
- Ease the late-game grind and vary the fights. Players stall after the first regions because experience gains shrink and the same battles repeat, and they ask for auto-resolve on easy fights, more enemy types and shorter large-party battles.
- Keep DLC content out of the base game's way. Players who don't own the expansions object to locked taverns, quest markers and recipes in the base map and to in-game prompts about DLC, and several quit over them.
- Fix co-op loading and syncing, and let one owner's DLC cover the group. Groups report lobbies breaking at character creation, desyncs and infinite loading screens, and players ask to share DLC in co-op as other games allow.
- Teach the systems in game. Newcomers, especially free-weekend players, quit for lack of a tutorial, and even fans say wages, camp jobs and class limits are poorly explained.
- Improve overworld pathfinding and battle controls. Players get stuck on small obstacles on the map, dislike scattered deployment and the fixed camera, and misclick the end-turn button beside the move button.
- Add official mod support. Players ask for Workshop support and say updates keep breaking the community mods they rely on.
