The Slormancer Reviews

This game is so good that I literally credit it with breaking my path of exile addiction. This is what ARPGs can be. Fast, cool loot, generous crafting. The things that could be improved are difficulty. The game has about ~20 hours worth of challenge, and as much grindy fun as you want.

Buy this game. It is like either a fine wine or a good batch of drugs. Either way, this game is an unskippable ARPG that is fun for a veteran and also alot of fun for someone new to the genre in our household. The Slormancer > Most if not all other games in terms of raw fun (14 hours played in just over 1 day of owning it). Thanks!

Most fun and mechanically complex indie ARPG created so far.

Wow...is the best way to start this review. If you like ARPGs then this is absolutely worth a try for you. The game was built ground up with the gamer in mind. No false gating mechanics that help boost quarterly reports for investors, just straight fun gameplay with the flexibility to play how you want to. Want to spec skills, talents, change classes, gear? No problem! No artificial time gates or exorbitant gold costs, just do it whenever you want...for free! Nearly 50 hours in and I've only begun to scratch the surface in the end game. Highly recommend for any ARPG fan.

Fantastic little game. Seems to have a good amount of variety for only having 3 classes (each with 3 subclasses for 9 total) and 1 town hub. The progression is smooth too but once you hit 'end game' it gets slow and more than repetitive. Running through the same generated content over and over to get currency to buy your way into a wave-based area is fine and all but when you're gated from progression by requiring 100 consecutive waves in a single session is a bit much. Feels like a wall that's just slowing down progression and enjoyment. Other than that tho i've had a lot of fun.

I don't dislike the game, its cute, and at glance seems to check the boxes. But honestly, the combat is literally the same over and over again, and you have to go through so many of the same repetitive stages to unlock minimal changes that are some what standard elements for this sort of game from the start. Maybe its a slow burn to something better, but after 8 hours of the same things, I'm willing to call it.

Is it nice? Yes. Does it scratch that i-don't-want-to-deal-with-poe-skill-tree itch? Yes. Does the endgame suck? Also yes. Reached the endgame with one character in around 6ish hours after finding a good-ish build. Then realized I would need to endlessly farm battlefield, forge, temple just to maximize the build. Tried Adamus...heh, yeah no. The explanations of some systems is a little lacking. In my opinion the whole Inner Fire/Ancient Strike/Overdrive system is too much. Pick one... It's not a bad game but it could be much better, at least for me...

Very fun, Path of Exile meets 2d pixel graphics. Love the built in loot filters which are better than any other ARPG out of the box. You don't need to go download some 3rd party mod that has been fan developed for 15 years. Pick your items you don't want to see, and the game automatically transmutes them into gold or crafting materials. Crafting materials automatically pick up and go to a crafting specific inventory page.

Early in but such a huge fan of the flexibility in the skill system, quality of combat and overall more engaging feel of the gameplay.

I want to start by saying I am an APRG veteran. I've played PoE 1 for over a decade, Last Epoch, Torchlight, and PoE 2. I've got my eyes set on "No rest for the Wicked" next, and decided to give "Slormancer" a try while I wait for a good sale. I am currently 76hrs deep, finding myself feeling neutral about game, and this is another time where I wish Steam had a mixed-review option to accurately reflect my feedback. Slormancer has a lot of charm and it is fun to play, but there is nothing to do EXCEPT grind. I know... ARPG's are for grinding. You kill, get loot, kill bigger stuff, get bigger loot. So here's what I mean... and I will describe many of these aspects with PoE terms in parentheses. This game has exactly 1 mechanic, called Breach (Clearly PoE inspired.) You step on the circle, monsters pop out, you kill them, the breach closes. There's 3 different sizes, which determine the power and frequency of monsters. Once you've completed enough breaches, a portal opens to a new area and you do it again. That's it. Periodically there's a mini-boss that will pop up, you smoke it, and go back to breaching. This game also has a crafting system, but everything is deterministic eventually. You can freely reroll (Chaos), lock stats, improve the stat range (Divine), and enhance each and every piece of gear until you have perfect gear. This is Including the level, so if you get a nice piece of gear early in the game, you can level correct it to your current level and keep it. You can also turn it into a legendary (effectively chancing) and reroll the legendary effect if you don't like it (Ancient orbs). Don't even have to find a new piece. Of course there are costs for these options, and while this is an exceptional quality of life, it also means there's no thrill to the loot. You don't get the dopamine hit of finding something cool for your build, everything is just a 'block of clay' that can be shaped into whatever you need, as you need it. There are 120 different weapons for each of the 3 characters, which have to be leveled, evolved, and have their primordial power unlocked. This is completed by just plowing through monsters. The weapons are found randomly from Breaches, not regular monster drops. These weapons all have various effects with fixed stat ranges, and will serve as the centerpiece of your build. You can swap them freely, even in an instance and any weapons you unlock on one character can be 'reconstructed' on another one, so you don't have find all 120 on every character. You can also swap characters at any time, but you do have to level them independently. And then there's a few game modes, The forge, which is a tower with 100 waves and you choose how dangerous the next X amount of waves will be based on the rewards offered (The Simulacrum). There's a Pure Slorm temple which is another tower, but with a fixed amount of waves per floor. The whole floor is just Breach with a timer, but idk how you'd even fail this. Any mediocre build can just plow through these floors. It's not challenging, or engaging. Just the same room, over and over with 5-10 quick waves of monsters and then the floor is cleared. Every 10 floors rewards you with an Ultimatum (which is more like a trinket from Heist or the relics from Sanctum) but it gives you a bonus stat that can only be scaled by enhancing the Ultimatum, and all other sources do not affect your character, positive or negative. So for example the Movement speed ultimatum means you don't need speed boots or speed rolls in your tree, because they will not add together, but it also means you can't be slowed cause the Ultimatum has your movement speed fixed. And that's about it... There is a lot of build diversity, because there's 120 weapons, but there is not enough to do to make me want to try 120 weapons. You breach until you boss, then you Forge to target farm specific items, and then go back to breaching. The final boss of the game is buried behind an absolute slog of breaching. And I will say, the pacing and power curve, need some correction. You will feel TOO strong, until suddenly you are TOO weak. There are massive walls in progression (I'm looking at you Adam and Ohm Agad), and I would have appreciated more rewarding thresholds while trying to surmount those challenges. Lastly, I think this game has a lot of potential. I imagine the studio has plans to add more stuff in the future, but this game is truly a skeleton in it's 1.0 state. I do not expect this game to be PoE, or Last Epoch, but a singular mechanic is just not entertaining enough for the number of hours they may 'expect' someone to play this. I certainly wouldn't expect a single player game to be an RNGfest, but a little RNG makes things exciting and adds to the chase. I will not talk about the story or game balance, because it doesn't matter. No one plays ARPGs for their story, but if you want a good laugh it's in here. Balance doesn't matter either because there will always be something that's dominant, and you can choose to play something like that or just freestyle it. The game is structured in a way where you can play whatever you want, it will work for the most part. I would like to see a BGM selection at some point in the future. The music in this game is really cool but I have a couple tracks I'd prefer not to listen too. And I think I'll close by saying, if you're just down to smash through endless hordes of monsters and make a 'perfect' build, you can do that here. But be aware, there is no variety in how you'll approach this task. You will be breaching until your eyeballs fall out. If you read to this point, you will see I am continuing to play and that's because I always make a good attempt to finish what I start, but I currently don't recommend this experience as a whole. If you're one of those sociopathic grinders, I probably already said what you wanted to hear, so have fun!