The Game That Consumed My Life - WarTales - Indie Spotlight #13

talk about them and just enjoy myself the game is war tales and sadly I don't have most of the footage from my second run anymore I guess I somehow made the files unreadable or got them corrupted or something but I don't really care and nothing can faze me because that just meant I had an excuse to play it even more and gather some b-roll for the

background War Tails from top to bottom is incredible and I do mean that word when I say it today I'd like to discuss precisely why with a heartfelt recommendation for anyone who likes turn-based combat enormous open worlds flexible scenarios not crazy flexible mind you sometimes the choices are a little bit like a magician's Force but all in all it's an incredible game let's get started War

Tales if I had to describe it in a succinct way as much as possible is an open world Fellowship similar relation basically you gather mercenaries together into a party complete quests explore various different regions and manage their day-to-day lives that may sound pretty cool initially but let me assure you it gets a hell of a lot better after that it's been a long time since I

actually reviewed a game by the way so I'm definitely Rusty keep that in mind but I'll try to break things down as well as I can in terms of General atmosphere I had some frame drops I had some gripes with individual moments and various different quest lines and I certainly don't think the game is perfect not by any stretch but it's hard for me to put

into words just how engaging and enthralling it's been still is for that matter and just how much I respect what they have managed to build here they in this case is Shiro games funnily enough I actually heavily played another one of their titles as well called northgard which is a simplistic yet enjoyable RTS game themed around various different medieval Clans I almost did an indie Spotlight

for that one too but never pulled the trigger and this time with war tails the impulse to talk about the game is quite frankly irresistible wartales is a top-down open world isometric sandbox of turn base combat and group management what starts as a simple Fellowship of a few different mercenaries will rapidly become a large Caravan of Highly personalized customized and emotionally impactful characters with Incredible depth

utility and meaning like I said most of my footage actually got bricked but the journey here from a ragtag group of low-powered Thieves and recruits who can barely do a thing to a heavy-hitting Commando strike force of perfectly refined and battle-hardened Veterans is some of the most satisfying progression I have ever seen in video games from rough Beginnings where every single payment of wages can feel

daunting and every single meal is a struggle to a band of nearly Invincible Specialists the game has a remarkable ability to drip feed content and progression in a way that feels almost genius example as I went through the game on my first playthrough it wasn't until many hours in that I realized I could capture and recruit enemies that I fought picking and choosing how and when

to do so that's obviously not the only way since it's all about recruiting and building up your your mercenary band you can recruit elsewhere through specialized quests where hiring mercenaries and taverns or knocking out and domesticating wolves and bears and even capturing the Twisted creatures and mole rats you find in dungeons but the gist of it is that when you play this game the feeling of

discovery that feeling of learning something new that has incredible possibilities and makes you excited to fight just one more battle or sit down for just 30 more minutes and try something new is damn near omnipresent half of the enjoyment here is just learning mechanics I'm not going to sit here and explain all of them to you like I normally would in a typical review because that

would rob you of the incredible value that this game actually provides instead I'll try to describe the atmosphere with a few examples from my first playthrough to hopefully show people just how deep this game really is I started out with a rather Standard Group of mercenaries and shows region locked exploration that matters because it basically means that I could be either stronger or weaker than the

regions I was in meaning if I went somewhere too early I'd almost certainly die and if I stayed somewhere too long I'd feel like a demigod that was the correct choice for me certainly but it's also worth noting that Dynamic difficulty scaling can present a much more consistent challenge for those interested after starting out initially the game was quite hard it was difficult at times to

manage my resources but over time I began to realize more about how to run a successful troop of Warriors first I started signing professions one person Cuts wood one forges weapons one's a scholar one does the cooking etc etc very quickly I realized that you actually need to be thoughtful with professions choose the right one choose the right build and it quickly dawned on me that

the profession of the warrior is just as important as the skills they choose and the weapons that they wield from there I discovered that I could recruit wolves and bears I won't spoil how to do that I'll just say that once I found that part out I started to fall in love with the game even more then I learned that the individual perks and relationships of

each character affect each other appointing leaders lieutenants and officers would give them unique bonuses creating a sort of optimal rotation in combat of sorts with the abilities for every single battle and how you run them and then from there I realized that I could shape the relationships of the party to be positive and supportive or negative and hateful thereby awarding various different bonuses after that I

learned about food I learned how to chain professions together and increase my resource yield and I learned that every single time you camp the game transforms from an x-com style enormous open world combat simulator that's word soup I know but it's kind of descriptive to an intricate party management system that somehow threads the needle between complexity or tedium in some cases and ease of use in

a way that I now truly and substantially respect they threaded the needle here and it's really incredible to see but all of that was just the beginning I began to realize that choices matter you can pick sides in a conflict you can progress or end story lines and subplots in unique ways which is what led me to my second playthrough and you can focus on different

areas of gameplay by gravitating towards trade crime conflict or general success it's kind of hard to impress upon someone who has not played the game just how well the gameplay systems mesh together but I'll try my very best after realizing the role that professions play I learned about upgrading the camp I learned that you can passively produce resources in a sort of daisy chain that adds

tremendous strength to your party and that I could start radically increasing my power just by being thoughtful I realized that the combat skill ceiling was not low as I had misidentified previously but incredibly incredibly high with an enormous number of additional skills specializations and interactions that could be used to either win massive battles or lose them as a result of poor planning more importantly than anything

else in my opinion I began to develop an attachment to characters something that many games try to make happen but ultimately fail to achieve and I even started naming them something I pretty much never do in a game like this but after enough emotional investment there I was doing it and caring about them I started looking at who they got along with rearranging my Camp to

maximize Valor Point yield and specializing my troop to synergize as much as humanly possible from there believe it or not the game really opened up and I keep saying this but there's always more I found more and more regions bosses Dungeons and secrets normally I kind of rush through games that's just my Mo that's how I play but War Tales became so interesting to me I

actually slowed down that's a big deal I was scouring every single nook and cranny of a dungeon to find the codexes or click everything that I could click the runes and the items everything I was solving every single unique puzzle and exploring every Cliff or cave in the open world I was finding things at a consistent Pace that made me sit up straighter in my chair

with excitement and in a world where video games are meant to bring us enjoyment that's kind of the primary purpose that level of satisfaction that I got and still get and continue to uncover in war Tales is something that honestly demands a glowing Indie Spotlight review at the end of every Camp session I found myself hoping for one of those unique moments where a successful Warrior

can brag about his accomplishments to the troop I was carefully weighing the effects of spending influence versus gold and revisiting locations on the map to form resources multiple times I had two bears in my party for one of the runs as you can see on screen some of the footage that was never corrupted which required a massive amount of food to sustain it's actually hard for

me to even remember all the different moments where I thought to myself you need to put that in the review because I didn't even take notes come to think of it I probably should have but the thing that I keep coming back to is that this game manages to make you invested in nearly every single aspect of its own gameplay see a merchant yeah you should

probably check that you might be able to buy something you do really want even if it's just cloth or iron because the resource management has an ability to make nearly everything valuable in some way or another there's not really dead content here which further builds out an atmosphere of this world being a persistent and living thing where you are just a participant among many floating by

later on I started to really get the hang of things I found more and more regions unlocked fast traveling started to have storage boxes turned one city into my hub for smithing one city into the hub for cooking and started setting up Reserve companions in various locations just in case someone died or I ever wanted to tweak my party composition so far I've only lost a

couple of companions but let me tell you I actually went and found a special place to bury them the little funeral cinematic or screen that plays is minimal it is but it almost perfectly summarizes the atmosphere of the world your mercenaries there's no time for sentimentality in that particular moment but the months of time that these companions spend together in the hours upon hours of time

you spend building them up it does mean something I learned about Arena's unique bosses secret skill trees and eventually I became overpowered I go crit every game every time it's just my play style for the most part and eventually yeah I was hitting targets for hundreds of damage every attack and just destroying everything but the journey to get there the flexibility to play a different way

the Cooperative Dynamics between characters and archetypes plus a whole lot more factors on top of that like unique weapons with unique skills or one-time bonuses through inter-party Dynamics resulted in a feeling of unlimited possibility even after I had trivialized the game difficulty with massive damage War Tales is a story of success it's a depressing story mind you don't get me wrong oftentimes you get a terrible

outcome for a decision unexpectedly where the other option also felt dark and depressing but the moments of Hope and happiness almost shine brighter as a result the game makes you feel important influential and Powerful while also reminding you that sometimes things are just outside your control yeah you can redefine who controls them or governs a certain Province but sometimes when you execute everyone in a village

to save a man that they wrongfully accused or seem to wrongfully be persecuting there are consequences it's about the journey not the destination for countless hours you can explore the Unique Systems manage your party and build out something that feels incredibly satisfying but there isn't really a climax eventually you'll have seen everything all that there is to see and dear Lord I hope they have DLC

and more areas in the future because that is an instant purchase on my part I'll I'll go right to the steam store and buy it as soon as they launch it but when the time comes when you think you know everything even if it took a hundred hours to get there or 200 hours to get there I'm over 200 hours right now that's when The Game

Stops shining is bright I suppose I can't even really complain about that since I haven't even really gotten to that Point yet myself I'm still engaged and still interested and still kind of learning little details and things here and there and I have a whole idea for a new playthrough with just six different party members who get trained to a level of demigod style power with

maximized equipment and everything and then face the hardest content all by themselves but I know that time is coming I know that I've learned pretty much everything experience the world as it was meant to be seen and play through the bulk of the content with all of that said I Have No Reservations whatsoever in recommending this game it is fantastic Shiro games are deserving of the

highest possible praise here and I can say with certainty that if anything I described here is even remotely interesting to you if the gameplay on screen even seems slightly interesting the purchase is worth it some people will of course have their complaints it breaks immersion for example when the Caravan of party members and animals just runs headlong through buildings or walks off bridges into the river

because they're trailing so far behind and the tracking works that way it's a bit frustrating when you have to go farm for 30 minutes and get gold or food food just to even go to a new region or Province because the journey necessitates resources but when I stopped fighting the game systems trying to struggle against them stop trying to rush through them I guess and just

embrace the game for what it is and what the developers intended it to be it became one of my favorite games I've ever played not the top favorite mind you let's be honest but pretty damn close it's certainly without a doubt in my top 10 of all time there's a link down below to the steam page for the game if anyone wants to look at it

check it out buy it Etc but I'll cut it there and stop rambling it feels good to talk about video games again even if it's kind of more like side content on the channel now it just I don't know that enjoyment that level of enjoyment and just personal fun is fantastic and I miss it a lot thank you all for watching of course I'm Rusty at

this and I hope to get better there's another Indie Spotlight coming soon for a specific game that I've been tracking since the very early stages of development where I was the first YouTuber in the world to actually get footage but yeah more of the complex investigation stuff and exposure type things and videos and the ARG we're developing soon I hope also I'm looking for a high

quality company to help me with taxes by the way if anyone has recommendations please put them in the comments down below I need to get the [__] away from the current company that's handling that because they're garbage but yeah thanks for watching thanks for listening to me ramble links down below to support this game is amazing everyone should give it a chance have a nice night

[Music] thank you