Wildermyth is out of early access and receives a final splash of polish. The game crisscrosses genres, fusing Xcom-like tactical gameplay with Dungeon and Dragons character-building and decision-making.
Everything is a paper cut out. Like two kids using colored-in pieces of paper to tell a story. Wildermyth manages to capture that whimsical imagination and then levels it with a genuinely complex mix of abilities, items, and tactical top-down gameplay.
The game isn’t easy. Let’s just get that out of the way. There are a lot of overlapping systems that take a bit of getting used to, like using your Mythical characters to infuse pieces of the environment with magic, working out strategies for your hunter which don’t get them one-shot by an angry enemy, and making sure your warrior doesn’t just get their head caved in during every fight.
And having your character die can be pretty upsetting. The procedurally generated story forms some serious connection between the player and the characters, and between the characters themselves. One death isn’t the end for your characters, but more than once and they’re gone for good.
Because of the way progresses, with each campaign flowing into the next, once you lose one of your best characters it can feel like every battle is an uphill struggle through raging hogs and big tentacle monsters.
You might be tempted to restart once you lose your starting characters, and I’ll be honest, I did, once, but the next time I lost someone important I just thought I’d keep going and see what happens. The game does offer you chances to get back into the game even when you lose your level six warrior, but it’s not easy.
However, it’s the challenge of Wildermyth that makes it compelling. Though the story is procedurally generated with dozens of different unique events, at some point you will begin to experience the same rough story outline, even if the actual writing, scene-building, and character relationships are different.
The game still feels very fresh with its unique character creation, though
You can have a character stay with you for two hours of gameplay, fall in love twice, have their lovers die, have children, have their children die, get sucked into a storm, which covers their body in lightning that imbues their abilities with electrical energy, before finally having their head turned into a werewolf…
Wildermyth feels very replayable with a variety of unique mechanics that make each run very enjoyable. Worth picking up if you enjoy Dungeons and Dragons, Xcom, or anything in between.
Oh, and there is a co-op multiplayer mode available, although this review was written from a solo player’s perspective. Just as fun!
