TL;DR – After shitting on Diablo 2 for no real reason last year, I’ve done it again by playing through another ARPG for… reasons. Warhammer: Chaosbane is the definition of a perfectly acceptable if bland APRG experience. While it does have a handful of plot twists and one or two interesting mechanics it’s really nothing special. I’d give the game a dizzying OK/10 overall. The graphics are pleasant enough and there are some decent character builds, but the game is frankly mindless. It’s the type of game you can play while listening to a podcast or watching something without losing much. Yet it’s not a game that’s entirely bad either. Just kinda bland and forgettable.
Honestly I didn’t pay much for Warhammer: Chaosbane as it cost me 153 pennies thanks to a good deal. I’d bought it as a co-op game so that I’d be able to play it with my big buddy. Tragically his MIGHTY integrated graphics couldn’t handle the sheer indescribably adequate graphics of this beast of a game. As a consequence I played through it (all by myself ;-;) in 2 days. Altogether it took me 10ish hours before finishing up the campaign as the engineer class and reaching level 57. After blitzing through it, I can safely say that Warhammer: Chaosbane is definitely a video-game and is perfectly fine. It’s not great, it’s a bit monotonous, but seasoned Warhammer fans can rest assured that they’ll fight against all 4 of the Chaos Gods (well via their lackeys). You’ll even get to play a game with some mildly fun plot twists and decent enough characterisation of the setting. Unfortunately you don’t get to fight all 4 Gods and their servants simulatenously. To add insult to injury, the cannon-fodder you’re facing are both easy to deal with and pretty similar. You fight Nurgle beast-men, Khorne beast-men, Slannesh beast-men and Tzeentch beast-men and they’re all the same. Each God gets one or two gimmicks, one or two unique enemies (that die very quickly), some very slight roster tweaking and that’s it. You’ll kill the Nurgle baddies who have a damage over time de-buff, then fight the Khorne baddies who… uh… don’t. Then move onto the Slannesh baddies who don’t but uhm… sometimes give you a de-buff that means you take slightly more damage. Finally you’ll fight the Tzeentch bad guys, who do deal damage over time but THIS TIME in an area! Honestly it doesn’t change much. Then because your character gets more powerful faster than the baddies, each God gets easier to deal with. I only died once and that’s because my character got stuck. Like physically stuck in an area getting hammered by a semi-boss monster that is helpful repeated across all 4 Gods. It’s actually easy to defeat once you get access to your good abilities.
You see like any “good” ARPG, Warhammer: Chaosbane initially gives you a character that does feck-all for the few hours. Only as you level up you do you gain all of the stuff you need to play the game. The myriad abilities, upgrade points, more armour stats to compare in the inventory screen and so on. To the game’s credit, by the time you’re nearing the mid-game it’s all falling into place. You’ve got a pretty clear idea of what your build does, what abilities aren’t trash and what to focus on. To the game’s disservice, once you’ve reached that point it’s kinda over. Why? Well because you’re only going to become more and more overpowered to the point that the final boss fight took me 2 minutes. In fact I’d say that the main challenge of the campaign is the level pacing. As there is a lot of waddling through similar dungeons that aren’t particularly open, sometimes with backtracking thrown in (yay). In the first Act there are some timed missions to increase the stakes, but those steaks are then dropped on the restaurant floor and stomped on by the kitchen staff because the rest of the game is monotonous. Go here, clickclickclick on the baddies, move slightly forward, more clickclickclicking on the baddies, rinse and repeat for 10 hours. After you’ve semi-decently assembled your build , the only enemies that are occasionally concerning are the really big ones. They’re not even particularly strong, but they’re surrounded by really small enemies that act as bullet sponges. As stated the game has plenty of different builds across 6 characters. These 6 characters are only allowed 6 abilities at a time, with each ability having 3 tiers. These upgraded tiers are generally but not always better. As they sometimes deal different types of damage or trade a buff for more damage. That kind of thing. Ultimately by the twilight of Act 2 I was in the zone and nothing could hurt me because I had life-steal (well “life-gain on hit”) and could just clickclickclick my way through everything. Except the actual bosses which all have an invulnerability phase like the cowards they are. Fortunately you can easily defeat them by giving them a few seconds to take 5.
And at this point I don’t really have much to add. The game is now just about clicking on the bad guys and wandering through levels that only have 1 route. To be fair, sometimes there’s a side route! Which might lead to a chest, which could contain items, that are probably worse than the ones you have anyway. On that subject, unless I was blinded by the stupor that this game put me in you can’t sell items which is a novel change. Instead you can trade all the things you don’t want to the collectors guild. This levels up your collectors guild rank, which results in you occasionally receiving a passive perk. Much like the active perks you can only equip 6 (I think) passive perks at a time. These range from +10% health to +stackable buff when you make a boomboom and all that kind of stuff. They all sound lame but then they turn out to make your character freaking busted. It turns out +2.5% damage on every shot, stacking 10 times = +25% more damage basically all of the time. Then this boost means that you are essentially one hitting 98% of the bad guys. One other thing to mention about the perk system is that you have a set number of points. You do gain one or two per level up and these are then divvied out depending on your choices. For example you might always want the Tier 2 gun turret because it shoots rockets that make bosses a total joke. This tier 2 skill costs 10 skill points, and early on you might only have 20 skill points. Remember that these points are spent across all skill/perk slots. By the end of the game if you want everything maxed you need (potentially) 15*12 = 180 points. You probably won’t have 180 points by the late game, but fortunately the game has a SICK levelling system. You’ll hit Level 50 then hit level 0, panic, and then the game goes ahahahaahah no you’re on LEGENDARY level 0. You can therefore just keep grinding, if you are so inclined.
And uh other than that there are some side missions for you endure enjoy if you are the type of freak for whom mindlessly grinding is a fulfilling activity. These include a Boss Rush mode, where you fight bosses with some additional penalities applies to you or buffs applied to them, Relic Hunts which are the same thing but with whole levels (wow) and uh a Tower of Chaos mode where you fight your way through a tower where you can open a chest or keep going after every segment. If you open the chest, you get the loot. If you keep going the baddies get buffs but the chest gets better stuff in it. There’s also an “invasions” mode, but I honestly can’t remember what it’s meant to do as I lost interest. I’m assuming you just churn through the same content but with some arbitrary numbers changed so the ARPG addicts can brag about their items that no one else will ever care about. I think that’s about it, as mentioned the game does allow for online co-op with up to 3 of your big buddies so theoretically if you know 3 big fat greasy Warhammer nerds like me or 3 ARPG addicted losers (like you?) then you can have a great party game via either online or local co-op. The game also boasts that it has a great soundtrack but I couldn’t hear it over my character making things explode near endlessly, although the snippets I heard over “I CANT DO THAT YET” and BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG sounded fine enough. Similarly the graphics are good too (and there’s even a free 4K texture pack DLC). As for slowdown, I didn’t have any and only suffered 1 crash throughout my excursions (including one demon realm). In spite of there frequently being 50ish enemies on the screen getting exploded at once. Credit where credit is due, Warhammer: Chaosbane is an inoffensive game made by people who cared in a genre that’s for weirdos. Then again I can’t be too abrasive, as I paid for this game and finished it – obviously only because I care about my 0 readers so very very much.
In conclusion then Warhammer: Chaosbane is a game. More specifically it’s an ARPG that’s faithful enough to the Warhammer setting that provides up to 4 player co-op and can be classified as a OK experience. The graphics are decent, the plot has one or two mildly interesting twists and the slight spin on the “get a bunch of shit then sell it so you can not buy any of the vendor items because you’ll just find something better anyway” is a welcome change. The character builds? Yeah they’re fine too, as is the visual variety in the areas you fight across the game. The skills system? Yeah it’s a decent idea. There’s some stuff I didn’t bother mentioning like the fact that you can “bless items” with gems that drop or that there are legendary skill upgrade points but honestly this game is just clicking things and none of the extraneous faffing around the edges will ever change anyone’s mind about it. Altogether then Warhammer: Chaosbane is the boiled potato of the gaming world, nothing exciting but you would really have to go out of your way to be mad about it. Just a big, slightly under-seasoned but filling piece of content to distract you for a dozen hours. Alternatively you could watch like 6 good movies, but then again maybe you don’t care about Hollywood because they’re almost all tax cheats or child abusers. In which case Chaosbane will keep you mildly stimulated and perhaps even entertained!
