Developed by Crackshell and published by Maximum Entertainment, Hammerwatch II is an old-school RPG trying to find its place in the busy RPG crowd. Having not played the first game I went in with a fresh pair of eyes as I am an old-school gamer who enjoys RPGs. The interesting graphic style and epic-looking battles in the trailers had me itching to try it out.
You choose from one of 5 classes: Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard, and Warlock. You can customise your appearance with some colours and apparel and set off to face the blight and assist King Roland in his resistance to being overthrown. There are a variety of townsfolk to meet who have quests that you can aid them with and plenty of areas and dungeons to explore.
The controls seem simple enough with dual stick movement. One for moving and the other for aiming which is used quite often but it soon falls down as you progress in the game. When you unlock more skills they are often mapped to the main ABXY buttons. That doesn’t sound so odd but unless you have some skilled dexterity in your right hand it is not easy to aim with the right stick and press one of the buttons at the same time. It’s not impossible but very uncomfortable to try. The game does allow you to bind the skills to different buttons but you soon realise the limitations that has once you have used both bumper and trigger buttons. That also doesn’t take into account you also need to map the potion/food items to a button as well. It can all get quite easily confusing and a pain to switch between the buttons and the right stick.
It seems more often currently that games no longer want to hold your hand. There is no difficulty slider in the game and there is a distinct lack of direction when it comes to quests. I know there is a desire to make games a bit tougher and make you earn your progress through the story, but when all the story and quests are in walls of text and you are not sure where anything is or where to go it can slow the game down to wading through honey. There are times when caves are hidden in scenery that you have to just stumble upon as there are no hints given on the map. This gets worse as you enter any cave/ dungeon area as the map screen becomes a ? meaning you need to have a good memory. Not knowing where to go in a quest is just as annoying as knowing if the cave you are in is the right one.
The combat in the game, controls aside, is alright. It’s not original but not boring either as there is plenty of challenge to be had. There are many waves of enemies that sometimes it can feel like you are in a bullet hell as you get surrounded by enemies quite often so you have to make use of those skills. But heaven forbid you get killed as this game double punishes you. You don’t just load the last save, instead you have to make a choice of which respawn option you want. You can either respawn at the beginning of the cave at a high cost of your gold or respawn further back at the last town for slightly less cost of gold. Not great options either way as trawling through these caves can become mundane when you don’t know where to go.
There is plenty of loot and crafting to be had as well as stores to buy from but some of the boosts on the equipment aren’t clear on what they enhance. It is hard to know what equipment would be better suited for you and the menu itself lends itself more to a PC environment than a console environment as you have to use the left stick to move a cursor around. It’s a shame it’s muddled with so many annoying little hang-ups as the game offers multiplayer online for up to 3 others which would have given me vibes of playing Gauntlet back in the day but even they had the sense to give you some direction. The thought of playing this with friends and neither of you knowing where to go would be quite painful.
Conclusion
Hammerwatch 2 made some bold decisions on ways to make the game challenging. I am sure there are those out there who enjoy this kind of challenge but the lack of direction is something that really soured my experience of the game. If this is up your street then there is plenty of content to be had as it boasts tons of quests and the combat is great if you are not going round in circles killing the same respawning enemies.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
