DLCWartales - Contract: Fires in the CapitalLoading store offers
Wartales
Wartales stands out for its tactical turn-based combat and open-world mercenary management, where recruiting companions and developing a camp matter as much as winning fights. At 
Kinguin, the current price is ≈ $9.97. Player reviews are 85% positive from 32,429 reviews. The Steam PC edition supports solo play, up to four-player co-op, full controller support, and shared money, loot and resources. Steam currently sells the base game at $34.99; this offer is lower by ≈ $25.02.
All-time low ~ $8.99across Steam & third-party stores
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $8.992026-08Current Low Across Stores~ $31.49GamesPlanet USvs. Historical Low+250%
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
DLC
DLCWartales - Expansion: The Curse of RigelLoading store offers
DLCWartales - Contract: The FiefLoading store offers
DLCWartales - Contract: The Beast HuntLoading store offers
DLCWartales - Expansion: The Skelmar InvasionLoading store offers
DLCWartales - Music: The Official SoundtrackLoading store offers
DLCWartales - Contract: The PitsLoading store offers
DLCWartales - Contract: The Tavern Opens!Loading store offers
DLCWartales - Expansion: Pirates of BelerionLoading store offers
01About Wartales
Wartales is an open-world RPG about leading a band of mercenaries through a medieval land where survival and profit matter more than heroics. Steam PC players can fight in tactical turn-based battles, recruit companions with distinct specializations, and explore villages, mines, tombs and camps. The campaign supports solo play and co-op for up to four players, with shared money, loot and resources. Player reviews currently sit at 85% positive from 32,429 reviews. The game released on April 12, 2023. Interface languages include Simplified Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian, and Korean.
Credits
Developer
Shiro Games
Publisher
Shiro Games
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$8.992026-08-03 · GamesPlanet USBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
Show 6 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Polish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Korean | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-19
02Before you buy
Language and audio
English includes full audio and subtitles. Other supported languages provide subtitles, with interface support listed on the store page.
Play modes
The Steam PC version supports single-player, multiplayer and co-op for up to four players. Teams share money, loot and resources.
Controller support
Full controller support is listed for the Steam PC version.
03Frequently asked questions
What kind of game is Wartales?
It is an open-world RPG with tactical turn-based combat, mercenary management, exploration and crafting.
Can I play with friends?
The Steam PC version supports co-op for up to four players, who share money, loot and resources.
Does Wartales support controllers?
Yes, full controller support is listed for the Steam PC version.
Is there a single-player mode?
Yes, single-player is listed alongside multiplayer and co-op.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
Good groundwork, lots of continuing work to be done. Not a diamond yet, but with polish it could be. 6.5/10 with 9/10 potential. The first 15 or so hours in this game are amazing, they built a cool world for you to explore. Great mini-games, great XCOM like combat, mid tier RPG system, cool art style, wonderful blending of Mount and Blade with XCOM with multiple other influences sprinkled in. Then you get to the 20-25 hour mark and realize that the game just becomes an incredible grind to get better gear. Your character levels don't really matter, your character abilities don't really matter without great gear, and your party size is almost more a hindrance than a help as enemy groups will ALWAYS scale with you. If you are super lucky you might get a single group of enemies that have the same unit amount as you. While this is usually isn't an issue as your characters are more powerful then the enemy, it makes you feel like you NEVER get ahead. You will NEVER have an advantage over the enemy due to numbers, which makes having a large company feel worthless. In cases like the rat hives, and in wolf packs great! In cases of bandits and high level opponents this is so painful.(Note that the enemies will not scale with the total level of your characters, they will scale with the highest level character. Having a group of 6 with 1 lvl 7, and 5 lvl 5s will get you an enemy group of lvl 7s.) To the devs credit, the enemies do NOT scale their abilities, they will always remain the same(exception for faction abilities that show with certain groups later on) making certain enemy groups easy to defeat at nearly any level. Here are a few more notes: -If you don't have the materials to create better gear, you will find yourself traveling vast portions of the map wasting your food and money, clicking on farmable resources that you wish you could buy in excess(wood, leather, ghost hides), only to get trapped in the gameplay loop of, mission->money->resources->crafting with looting speeding the process along. -Heal system makes sense, and is well thought out. -Armor system is painful and makes you want to pull your teeth out. Having to pay to consistently repair the armor on ALL my characters felt like an intentional method to slow the game down in order to stretch game time. Having an armor durability system allowing the armor to break, offering less protection at lower condition makes more sense, this system seriously sucks. -Food is a cool system and does a good job of putting a survival element feeling into the game. You will rarely go hungry, and food sources are easy to come across, or buy. No issues to speak of with this. -The amount of resources around the map is pitiful given how often you are expected to have them.(Purely map collected resource points: wood, flowers, iron, mushrooms, etc.) -Many resources can only be acquired from certain mobs, makes perfect sense, but the amount you receive is hardly worth the effort. Killing an entire pack of 8-10 wolves can reward you with 3-5 leather. An incredible waste of time that again serves to lengthen the game as this resource is fairly difficult to buy but incredibly important. -Crime and stealing is a very odd mechanic. It just makes no sense. The patrols are incredibly easy to dodge, the detriments are nearly nonexistent as your crime only lasts for as long as you can. Just makes no sense to me at all. That being said, its super useful and can help you avoid a lot of costs. -World map items are genius. The pinion mechanic is brilliant and more mechanics similar to this would really make the game shine. -Combat is easy to grasp and presents similar to XCOM. It is very odd that status effects never appear to end without player intervention. Poisoning and Burning can quickly become very dangerous for the unprepared player. Burning patches of ground continuing to burn during rainstorms, and poison clouds that never dissipate is another oddity. -Character RPG elements are mid-tier to lacking. While you do have the ability to customize your characters, many of the abilities that you get(whether active or passive) feel very similar and offers limited amount of playstyles with certain characters. Your characters stats do effect the gameplay, but only slightly, as the largest bonuses are gained through equipment bonuses and not necessarily through experience. Late game a high level character with many aptitude points will be better than a low level character, but a low level character with the best gear in the game vs a high level character with lvl 1 gear is no contest, The gear level makes a MUUUUCH bigger difference than the character stats. This is my biggest issue with the game as it feels that there is no point to developing your characters as the gear means much more than their stats.The exception to this is character professions -Character professions are a very cool element added to the game, HOWEVER characters being locked to one profession really sucks. If characters were able to still reach level 2-3 in other professions while specializing to reach level 5 in one main would make much more sense, and would offer much more options in team composition. The game uses this system to inflate the amount of characters you need in your party as you need more characters to fill all the professions. Additionally, you gain profession experience at painful rates. Thieves gain experience at a very fast rate, while anglers and cooks xp bars move like molasses. Regularly this would be no issue as character professions would be an afterthought and could be put to the side, however in this game many important recipes and buildings that offer numerous buffs are hidden behind character professions that much be individually developed. Don't like smithing? Too bad its really important or you are going to spend a ton of time farming. Don't like crafting your own medicine? Pay the price in time spent in the town at the apothecary and you will never be able to get too far from town. Don't care for the camp layout system? Too bad, it matters where your characters go and that you cook better food and create useful tools. My point is that the game gets so micromanaged at times that you feel as though you cannot even accomplish some of the simplest tasks without needing to make a mission out of it. -Capturing injured enemies and animals is a wonderful mechanic but its incredibly underpowered and should be avoided unless attempting to capture a powerful animal. The animal that you capture will be considered a new company member and will artificially inflate your company numbers against the next enemies you encounter. Perfectly fine if you have captured or bought a bear, but a wolf, or a boar? They are nothing but fodder and will get you killed against enemies more powerful than them. This title has so much potential and I can see a truly awesome game that just needs some polish.Show moreShow less
26.4 hours at review1,265 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Not recommendedSteam player
UPD: my main point about party numbers may be wrong as of current version, as several other players have pointed out. I want to make this clear from the start: I don't think it's a bad game. I think it's maybe somewhat above average, and has some fresh, interesting ideas. Also, I would totally recommend it if you want to just chill out and do some sword-swinging. __ TL:DR: the earliest versions were a masterpiece, even with missing features and full-on autoleveling. Then they have made some tweaks that destroyed a lot of tactical/strategic variety, as well as atmosphere. Now, however, my main issue is that everything in the world depends on the player's party, from enemy's numbers to contract rewards to costs of hiring additional people. But, the core features are quite good and "region-locked exploration" is a promising step. __ When I got Wartales as the very early and incomplete version, it was awesome, arguably the best "tactical RPG" I know, even devoid of many features. But, as the versions progressed and the changes were made, it became worse. Today, it's... just another tRPG, I guess. With a couple interesting ideas and a number of annoying problems, just like most games. The changes themselves are quite subtle. (sorry for long explanations, it's fairly intuitive when you play). As an example, there is a very nice implementation of turn order: both your and your opponents' men are "distributed evenly" in the turn order for the round, so if the number of combatants is equal, you and enemy take turns acting with a single fighter, until all fighters act. However, for the AI, the order of its units acting is fixed, while you can act with any of your guys (who didn't act in this turn yet). While "unfair" towards the AI, it provides many interesting choices and tactics. Now, if the enemy has twice as many people as you do, for each of your actions, they make two. So, even if you kill (or otherwise deal with) the guy who acts next, another enemy will act after that and probably you'll be in some trouble. So, the difference in numbers turns out to be very, very important. What did they change? Now, the number of your enemies is always quite close to yours, and in cases it somehow isn't, the extra units will arrive later (when you already killed many enemies) as reinforcements. So, the (rightfully dreaded) experience of being outnumbered is cut from the game. Now, a lot of battles follow the same pattern: you neutralize the enemy who acts next, then he doesn't do much (or anything at all, if killed), rinse, repeat. A hundred of perfectly forgettable battles. See comments/other reviews for more examples. The early versions did convey the right experiences: you struggled to stay afloat with money, thoughtfully picked your contracts, took care of your men. But the updates made the game progressively worse. My best guess is, the game designers knew what they are doing and made bold (and really good!) decisions, but then some salespeople took over the game and made it "accessible for wider audience" or something - just another game. UPD. A list of more concrete thoughts, as brief as possible. 1. The battles are similar to each other, despite good core mechanics that could allow much more variety. 2. Many units from other factions that you can imprison and then recruit (unlike Battle Brothers). Sadly, with auto-adjusting enemy numbers to your party size, the game punishes you for such experimenting. Yes, it works for region-locked difficulty too, only the levels are fixed, and also Guard is still autolevelled! 2a. Also, battles with larger parties take forever to play. I'm not saying it's wrong, just... a consideration. 3. The troop deployment is atrociously illogical (many "islands" distributed evenly along the map). It speeds up the battles though. 4. You're not burdened with strategy (thinking, planning, resource management), especially compared to the early versions. On strategy map, you only need to sometimes take a contract or two between free, sandbox-like exploration. On tactical map, the most dangerous enemy is the one who acts next. 4a. This means that I actually recommend the easy difficulty - it's the same experience, just less grinding. For anyone wondering: strategy is not the same as difficulty. Difficulty means the enemy has 100500 hit points and you have 1. Strategy means you do something other than charge head on. 5. There is a camp management layer. I believe it was originally aimed at giving you the experience of caring for your fighters (make them a mutton stew, share a drink, and they become happier). With updates, the camp became cluttered with buildings (seriously, beehive?), and now feels like a pixel-hunting mouse-clicking chore. 6. The plot is good in the first region (Tiltren), and very mercenary-appropriate in the Arthes County. Some argument can be made for Vertruse. The rest... belong in a bad Warhammer game. (for Alazar, I made this conclusion by reading the release announcement). 7. Level requirements for weapons - is an artificial and counter-productive mechanic (and also smells of MMORPG influence). Hiring a low-level character and equipping them with a nice weapon is definitely a choice, and it actually sometimes makes sense within the game's framework. 7a. Considering that looting weapons from battle is randomized, I'd prefer they didn't have any level (as in, quality tier) at all. Getting the fire bow requires enough grinding/luck as it is, and repeating it for a higher level bow... is annoying. (as an exception, low level fire bow is still good). Or, make all weapons upgradable. 8. Happiness mechanic is now an influence generation mechanic only. 9. Paying money by rests, rather that by hours, makes food and money basically the same resource. Also, you can march your companions to near death, so that they get less money for their time... 10. Plague ravages the lands, infectious are killed on sight!.. Also, you can buy a cure from most healers for a price of, say, an axe. Or, you can just eat meat and be fine. Common medicine made from two common flowers also helps. 10a. Random people from tavern are better fighters than the Legion, Guard, Inquisition. UPD. The release actually happened while I was writing this. Congratulations! Despite all I wrote above, kudos for actually going all the way to the finished game, I know it's hard work. My suggestions on how to deal with the numbers issue: - Leave autoscaling option as is; the following applies only to region-locked mode. Maybe add an option to switch between the two, re-spawning everyone (maybe on rest) according to the new setting. (to be honest, I just want to make my old save region-locked). - On region-locked exploration, make the number of enemies fixed (maybe with random +-N%) for every entity spawning on the map. - Of course, the numbers in the later provinces should be higher. Use reasonable assumptions about the party's changes in numbers along with levelups, and grow the numbers a bit faster than that (this will make obtaining "temporary companions" a viable idea) - Make the number of deployment slots proportional to the number of enemies, and independent of the party. This way, if you're badly outnumbered, you will be able to gather everyone in one or two corners and hold the line, while the "reinforcements" will happen more naturally, starting on the same map but taking time to arrive. (obviously no artificial "reinforcements" mechanic) - Make the contract rewards dependent on the number and level of enemies, not on the player's party. This will disable the obvious exploit of the first region, and also makes more sense. - Overall, let the world not care about players' party composition . Maybe with exceptions, when someone gathers people specifically to attack the player. The game has enough instruments to prepare and deal with fights that are hard with current party.Show moreShow less
100.1 hours at review1,798 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Here are some tips and the overall gameplay experience of Wartales. I hope it helps with your troubles: 🔸The game is based on regions and at each stage you will have to decide the fate of that region/country/kingdom according to the choices you have made. To complete a region fully thus progressing the game, you have to visit every place and do every quest (some places don't give a quest though). 🔸If you are playing as region-based difficulty, the difficulties in regions go like this (easy to hard): Tiltren, Arthes, Vertruse, Ludern, Grinmeer, Drombach. 🔸There are a total of 6 base classes. These are: Archer, Brute, Ranger, Spearman, Swordsman, and Warrior. They get second roles when they are leveled up. Archer: Excellent for ranged damage. Dexterity, Willpower, Critical Hit. Brute: Tank or Anti-armor, Area-damage (according to second class). Constitution, Strength, Movement. Ranger: Excellent for melee damage and movement but low health and armor. Critical Hit, Movement, Willpower, Dexterity. Spearman: Disruptor, Pushes the opponent, and has a great moving area. Movement, Dexterity, Constitution. Swordsman: Tank, Support, or Retaliator. Strength, Constitution, Movement. Warrior: Support, Damage, Area-damage. Strength, Constitution, Critical Hit, Movement. 🔸Instead of taverns, you may also recruit new party members from prisons too and you can even catch someone by chains and persuade them to join your party. If you want pets, try this using a rope. 🔸Piton really helps when you want to climb down from a hill. Right-click a piton from your inventory then select a cliff that you want to go down for the ground. 🔸You can reset your companions' specializations and upgrade their skills in the Brotherhood Training Grounds. 🔸Do not sell iron, leather, white leather, grey cluster, etherite, alazarian powder, and alchemical residue IF you want to craft your weapons and armor in the blacksmith. The tier and quality of weapons and armor go like this: Iron, Ghost, Rimesteel, Akhedian. 🔸You can easily get food for your party by catching fish from water sources. You just need an angler for that. Or else, you might also farm wild animals as they drop a large amount of meat. 🔸It is better to cook your food since it fills much of the hunger that is required from the party and it is cost-effective. Bread is the cheap way to feed your men although it doesn't compensate for the meat or fruit type. 🔸You can get recipes for different professions from vendors. Most recipes need to be discovered first. 🔸You may buy most of the things you want from traveling caravans. Some rare caravans which are shining yellow carry valuable things, always look for them – or attack if it is your playstyle. 🔸You can build caravan posts in town and from there, you can travel quickly to other towns. You can also trade with goods between towns. 🔸Stealing is very important and most of the time, it is beneficial. There is a suspicion bar whenever you try to steal an item, that bar is filled up a little bit. When that happens, try to avoid parties with star icons on the road. You may decrease that amount by perks and handing over prisoners to the jails. 🔸Some legendary items can be get as purple antiquities. You will need a lectern in the camp and someone with a scholar profession to research them. 🔸Don’t bother to solve tomb puzzles, when you quit from the puzzle screen without solving, a guy will appear next to it and it will solve it for you for a price or some influence 🔸Purple items are legendary items and you may get them from area bosses and tombs. You might upgrade them in the locations called “Brotherhood Training Grounds” for a certain amount of money until the last level (you can upgrade level 1 legendary weapon to level 13).Show moreShow less
68.1 hours at review499 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I like the base game, but out of principle I have to say ♥♥♥♥ the devs. I don't want to encounter ads for your DLC's in the game world. If I could play the release version of your game where I wouldn't constantly run into NPCs and adventures I can't engage with I would be having a much better time. Every 20 minutes I encounter a cool location just to enter and see it's an ad and something I can't do. If the DLC isn't enabled, don't make it visible in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game world. If the base game was free to play, I wouldn't bat an eye at it and it would seem perfectly fair and appropriate.Show moreShow less
9.1 hours at review995 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
3d battle brothersShow moreShow less
0.6 hours at review345 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Not recommendedSteam player
Company has turned into another Paradox. Literally nickel and diming customers now with DLC drops that are not giving any sort of increase in replay ability to the game. Last good DLC was the Skeimar Invasion. Not only this, they have game breaking bugs in the game that people have been telling shiro to fix, and they have YET to fix. Game breaking bugs that hinder people from continuing progress in the game itself. But yet they keep giving DLCs instead of fixing the base game first. Yet another company that has succumbed to the "Give out loads of DLC and screw fixing base game and just milk the game till it drys up"... I can not recommend this game to anyone. It is also very, VERY boring after awhile with the playstyle of just managing a mercenary team. If this game had BETTER MOD support, this game be a TRUE SANDBOX game to enjoy, but at this stage, I can't get myself to continue playing... EDIT: New DLC has ruined game even further with FPS drops and optimization issues. The game is literally being milked. STEER CLEAR! Avoid this developer. EDIT 2: They have a STARTER EDITION with selling ONE of the TWO only worthy DLCs to even have: Skeimar Invasion. The other is Tavern which is literally a Money Cheat in disguise. If they sold Pirates DLC with Skeimar, that Edition would be worthy of getting, but they don't cause Shiro wouldn't be able to truly NICKEL AND DIME people to buy the DLCs. What a CROCK of ♥♥♥♥ this company is... EDIT 3: You guys don't need to give me Steam Awards. I am just trying to help is all. EDIT 4: -.- You guys are still going to give me Steam Points...*sigh* You really don't have to...I'm just doing the review to help is all.Show moreShow less
568 hours at review648 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
I've never felt inclined to write a game review before, but I can appreciate that this dev team is VERY actively responding to critiques so I wanted to help out. I haven't played a turn-based game since the HOMM series and this little game is really scratching that itch (btw if you know what that stands for then congrats, you're old too!). Being early-access, there have been a number of rough areas of the game but a lot of them have been taken care of. My first play-through was about 55 hours and I was genuinely surprised by how addicting the gameplay was. Story Telling/Fantasy: I'm not terribly interested in elaborate cut scenes and hit-you-over-the-head storytelling. I like to feel immersed in the world and have some idea why I'm in an area killing or gathering but I don't want it to interfere just being able to play. This game feels like it walks that line perfectly, providing just enough story telling without it getting annoying. Combat: The tactics are simple enough to stumble through without reading any guides but surprisingly thought-provoking when you consider the difference between builds and how they play off of each other. I'm sincerely enjoying the challenges this game throws at you. Content: It's a good amount for an early-access game but I'm definitely excited to see more of this world and some new enemy types. The updates have been timely with significant content coming in with each new patch. Biggest Issue: Level scaling... the one everyone has been complaining about. It's what made me quit after a few dozen hours because the encounters get harder with every level you gain or for each member you add to your party so it feels like you are being punished for growing instead of the opposite. Improvement become solely based on gear upgrades and there is no point whatsoever to add members to your group since it just adds tactical complications and increases ration requirements. The fix: With the latest patch an option for 'region-locked' was added to completely disable level scaling. I began another play-through and finally hit a point in the story where I need to go grind up some levels to be able to pass the enemy I was facing. This is it! This is the game I wanted Wartales to be! I immediately stopped playing to come write this review. Additional thoughts: As an avid hardcore RPG player the 'hardcore' mode in Wartales seems a little too intense since you are locked into turn-based combat. Even losing a single member of your group is an extreme set-back and there often isn't much information about enemies prior to engagement so it's extremely difficult to play 'safe' and still explore all the game has to offer. On the other hand the 'save' modes are too carefree and don't carry any consequences at all since you can spam the reset. I would love to play something in-between these two modes but I don't know if that's possible. Maybe a version where you have to recover all your gear/weapons with only what you have stashed and/or a massive gold penalty. Last thought... PVP? Battlegrounds? This game hits a whole new level of tactics when an actual human is on the other end and the meta would be taken to an extreme. Minor stuff: - The hotkeys are great and seem to be a new feature. Can you add some labels like a little 1...2...3... in the corners of the buttons? - Compass-snap-to-north. I personally hate changing the view direction but it's necessary sometimes to see around obstacles. I just want to be able to reset it quickly to 'normal' both in battle and on open ground. All in all, solid little game. I'm really enjoying it and look forward to checking out whatever else Shiro games comes up with.Show moreShow less
62.1 hours at review341 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Not recommendedSteam player
Despite the 90-odd hours I've put into this game, I just don't feel it deserves a thumbs up, unfortunately. It has huge potential and there is a lot to like, but I'm 4/5 through the main story and have touched on a few of the DLCs, but , frankly, I'm just bored by it. I started off loving the scope and variety in the game, but fairly quickly came to see it as a whole host of small problems and poor design choices. Here's why (with minor spoilers): - 4/5 of the way through the main game, I hit the level limit... I mean come on, including all the DLCs, there's tons of content to explore and no more progress to be made with my troop. - Despite the limited fast-travel system, you will spend A LOT of time walking VERY SLOWLY between locations scattered across a continent, with ways constantly blocked by (in)conveniently placed rivers and mountains. That funnelling of your exploration I could understand if this were a linear plot, but it's not, it's open world. There are horses aplenty in the world, but can you ride them? No. Can you buy a wagon like all the merchants have? No. - You can run, but only for a very short time before your stamina is exhausted. Does dropping into a tracker camp, or stopping to chat and trade with a merchant restore you stamina? No, oh but walking (slowly) does... - Many resources are in short supply. Wood is one of them, despite you being constantly surrounded by forests and (in my case) having a master woodcutter along. You can pick it up off the ground, buy it occasionally or chop it at specially sanctioned wood-chopping stations where a certain amount of wood may be chopped within a fixed time period. - Speaking of chopping wood - the mini games, Oh my God! They were an attractive and really fun part of the game when I first started, but they wear thin, VERY quickly. Picking locks, mining, forging, fishing etc all become tedious in the extreme. - Animals are, by and large not very useful. You can encounter and recruit half a dozen different species. Horses are useful for carrying stuff and in the early game, bears make good tanks. After that, I got rid of all my non-horse animals. Trying to keep them alive on the battlefield was just a massive hassle. - Battles are slow. Even with the animations turned up to maximum speed, they are slow. Some animations don't make sense, and you always have to wait for them to finish. Defeated enemies leaving arenas, for example. Or lightning strikes - these take place one at a time and consist of two animations, one small explosion followed by the actual bolt. These sound like minor things, but they add up and end up becoming annoying. Later in the game when there can be 40+ combatants, battles can become a bit of a chore. Why won't those 30 under-levelled and massively out-matched wolves run away until you have slaughtered 26 of them? Who knows. Why did they attack in the first place? -Speaking of which, you have complete freedom to move your mercs to any of the available starting points in each battle, but no control at all over where they initially spawn. This means you will have to reposition most of your mercs in EVERY SINGLE battle. Why the game chooses to hide your tanks at the back or make the front like knife-wielders and archers, with alarming regularity, I have no idea. - I hate the escape battles in cursed villages with a passion - so incredibly tedious, slow-paced and poorly designed. - Cooking is tedious (and you'll need to do a lot of it to maximise your food usage). There's not one window where everything happens. Each recipe cooked is a series of pop-ups and confirmation clicks, with a drop back to the camp screen to show your cook 'receiving' the cooked items. It would be a lot easier if you could cook more than one thing at a time, but you can't. - Loot, like in so many games, is by and large useless and just stuff to sell. You'll be waiting for high-level forged items and legendary items (plus the money to upgrade them). - There are some natural resources lying around that you can't seem to reach - usually iron ore in the sides of hills, where you can't seem to get your characters close enough to pick it up - better pathfinding would help - see below. - When you are buying things, you can't scroll your inventory. Nor can you see how many of anything you already have, so you have to either just buy everything you think you need, or keep dropping out of the trade screen to check. - The tavern DLC is fun for a couple of hours, then just becomes a pointless background detail where you are constantly plagued by the same old requests over again. +10 Influence - oh, yay! I already have 8000... the tavern has a different currency for some inexplicable reason, which you can withdraw in very limited quantities. It's handy, but doesn't ultimately have much game impact. My tavern currently has around 40,000 currency and there's literally nothing to do with it. - The Feif DLC is very similar (and also has yet another currency). Once you've completed your feif after a few hours, it becomes background fodder. You can't withdraw the currency. It has almost no impact on the main game. There's no point in sending any mercs you garrison there on missions because there's nothing to do with the proceeds. Bad relations with other countries have absolutely no effect on you. It all feels a bit pointless. - All the DLC are quite expensive for what they are, and they don't seem to add much to the game. Each seems like a good idea poorly and minimally executed. - The pathfinding is really bad - inexcusable in this day and age. Getting across bridges and round small, sometimes barely visible lumps in the ground, becomes very tiresome. What tends to happen is they walk until they hit some sort of (usually visible, but not always) obstacle then just stop. The number of times I've had to click on resources, merchant groups or pitons multiple times to interact with them is annoying. Having to click 3 or 4 times on a piton whilst running from the guard because your guys just dumbly stand next to it is rather frustrating. - Being a bad guys is tough. The game implies it's a perfectly valid option, but the rewards are few and constantly dodging the guards who are, until later in the game, always more powerful than you, is just not worth it. You can't befriend bandits or anything like that - again, it feels a bit pointless. Robbing the odd merchant of a bit of cheese to reduce your food bill is about all it's worth bothering with. - And finally, there is the story & tutorials. Oh. My. God. Tiltren, the usual starting province is well written and provides a decent grounding in the basics. After that, good luck! You will inevitably spend a small age walking backwards and forward (and eventually Googling) trying to work out what the hell you have to do next or how certain mechanics work or where you find a resource you apparently suddenly need. The solve the murder quest was particularly irritating. Over all, my initial enjoyment descended to reluctance to carry on. I'm still playing a bit and I hate leaving games unfinished, but my over all feeling towards this game is, why bother? It's just more of the same and that 'same' is quite tedious to navigate.Show moreShow less
91 hours at review605 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
***NOTE: Updated at 1.0 Launch on 4/12/2023*** Pros: ++ It's a "party" survival game where you control the little figures and send them scrambling everywhere. Oddly entertaining. ++ Battles are a lot of fun. You have to consider troop placement, abilities and gear for not just your own troops but also for the enemy. ++ The music is beautiful and fits really well with the atmosphere of the game. ++ Different seasons, weather, etc. You really feel like you're part of the world as you play. ++ This game does not hold your hand & can seem very punishing. But this works out well with the survival aspect. ++ Combat is challenging which I consider a plus. Again, they don't hold your hand and enemies scale with you, so you will always be challenged. ++ Dynamic Happiness Gauge. Your troops still need to be fed and paid or they will leave (which I think is a great idea because they are mercenaries after all). That said, they won't just up and disappear on you in battle or something like that. They've done a great job on this since initial release for early access. ++ Customize your party. This includes adjusting their gender, physical appearance, names, and skills. You can design your party to be the way you want. Negatives: -- The only thing I can think of is the near non-existent story line. But the game is so much fun that you practically stop caring within minutes of starting a new game. This game is absolutely incredible. It is challenging but still fun, immersive, and has great music. Battles are fun. I was eager see the finished product and any improvements to the game; I am not disappointed. Since the first time that I tried this game, I felt that it deserved a thumbs up. I am glad that Wartales 1.0 release has not let me down!Show moreShow less
5 hours at review327 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Not recommendedSteam player
𝙈𝙤𝙧𝙚 "𝘽𝙪𝙮 𝙊𝙪𝙧 𝘿𝙇𝘾" 𝙏𝙝𝙖𝙣 "𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙮 𝙊𝙪𝙧 𝙂𝙖𝙢𝙚." I have over 90 hours in Wartales across multiple playthrough attempts. I first played it back in Early Access, and now, in June 2026, I decided to give it another shot, putting another 13 hours into a new save. Unfortunately, it still feels almost exactly the same as it did years ago. The biggest thing I noticed wasn't meaningful improvements to the core game—it was how much DLC content is pushed in your face. For example, the first town now has a new building. You walk inside, talk to the NPC, and then discover it's only available if you own the Tavern DLC. Why include the building in the base game if its only purpose is to advertise paid content? The same thing happens over and over. You find a ship that needs repairs, but you can't do anything with it unless you own another DLC. You reach a border crossing, look through the portcullis at burning settlements beyond, but you can't enter because that's tied to another expansion. Time after time, the game presents something interesting only to redirect you toward purchasing DLC. To make matters worse, buying all of the DLC costs well over $120 USD. Instead of making the base game feel more complete, it often feels like you're constantly being reminded of features you don't own. Out of curiosity, I checked my old saves from 2023 and realized I had stopped playing after roughly 12 hours. This time, I quit after about 13 hours. There's a clear pattern. Despite having over 90 hours played, I still find the game becomes repetitive long before it becomes engaging. Looking through community feedback, I've also seen many players asking the developers to focus on improving and polishing the core experience instead of continuing to release more DLC. I wanted to come back after several years and see how much Wartales had evolved, but I left feeling like I was playing the same game with more advertisements for paid expansions.Show moreShow less
93.6 hours at review406 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.