Wantless : Solace at World’s End Reviews

An unbalanced, dull and unintuitive game. Don't let the skill tree fool you - there is virtually no development choice here, and skill crafting boils down to creating one or two combat skills, one healing skill, one jerk and a couple skills of your choice. There is a plot, a couple lines every two hours. The whole RPG element boils down to +15% poison damage or -4% to the cost of a skil. Enemies are always plentiful and their abilities are simple and extremely nasty - a couple arena shooters will cheerfully run away from you while attacking you for 15-20% of your health, and mushrooms will slow you down and summon friends. I really tried to understand this game, but judging by the fact that the game after the release received 2 mini patches, the developers just threw their project in the release and left to do something else.

I played the demo and I liked the concept of the game. Purchased full game after release. Yet with every session I was becoming more and more disappointed. I think the ambition of the authors wasn't matched by the quality of execution, and I'm not talking about bugs (although some are there). The frustration is coming from overly engineered management which tries to grasp some modern features from MMO games (I'm talking about forge/fusion) as well as the reward system, which is by all means inferior, given the difficulty of the combat. The combat is a huge failure, and it's not because of imbalance. Some games do have complex mechanics, and the best examples are very careful about keeping its players knowledgeable and informed at all times. Wantless has a GLOSSARY. And it's the most useless glossary I've ever seen in a game. It doesn't tell you about nearly half of things like tiers, disciplines, types of effects, etc. You won't find any help on how different types of damage work with counter-effects, resistances, etc. Basically you're thrown into a huge pool of skills, effects, tiers, modifiers, resistances, buffs, debuffs, upgrades, quality and other mumbo-jumbo. And you have to figure it out yourself. Now, back to the problem with combat, the game is designed to have multiple skillsets so you're kinda expected to come to battle prepared, with the most efficient skills against given enemies. Does this concept work? Jack shit. You gotta learn by heart all that little nonsense. And I have no fucking remaining capacity of my brain to deduct, analyse and memorise all of that. Every time it's just a guess about which enemies would appear in the next transposition and WHAT ON EARTH I HAVE TO EQUIP MYSELF WITH TO BE FUCKING EFFICIENT. Pardon, but this is not rage but frustration. And you know what? I'm not even stuck here. I'm slowly progressing and 12 hrs into the game I continue to unlock the map and move through the story. Why'd you say am I frustrated? It's because 12 hrs into the game I feel like I'm still playing the fucking tutorial and the hints are waaay overdue. I feel no certainty, no support, no foundation for anything. Every new game day is pretty much random and I gotta rely on one and the same skillset that somehow works. And the way it works is pathetic. No matter what I get after battle, the situation remains the same. It's like playing chess with random people in the street. I mentioned poor reward system. Amongst the issues with UI, lack of information and overall complexity, that is the worst. The golden rule of any game - video or not - says that the effort must be matched with the reward. I've been waiting for a long time where I will get some feeling of accomplishment here or at least a big juicy unique buff. It never happened so far. Fun fact: those unique equipment items seem to always have some debuff which will diminish the value. So, it's kinda yeah nah after each battle, over and over again. Well, I'm OKfor the devs to take my money and spend it making a better game next time, listening to my (and others') complaints. With Wantless, however, I'm done for now. Consider me completely transposed so I no longer want any of this doubtful entertainment.

I don't wanna discourage others. Game just throws serious inescapable and unpredictable scenario on your way. That alone is so discouraging for me after long grind. I see no incentive to start the game again and play, knowing the unpredictable random destruction bosses inflict. My recommendation is for those with significant pain tolerance. Cheers