Windscape Review

Despite every ounce of resistance in my body, Windscape is really most aptly described as – and it pains me to type this – My First Skyrim. It’s there in the basic mission structure, where each main quest leads in to the next, with a vague thread of story holding it together. A hero who just sort of falls into saving the world, going from picking ingredients for dinner to discovering that they have dormant abilities that will decide the fate of everything. This is told through minimal written dialogue when speaking to main quest givers, and quite frankly is not only by the numbers, but not particularly interesting.

After only a short while I found myself just mashing A to skip it all and get the next objective. These in themselves aren’t all that engaging either; go here and bash a few skulls, then return to be sent off to bash a few more skulls. Occasionally you’ll need to bring something back, but this doesn’t amount to anything more than you not being able to leave a quest area until you’ve found it. This can sometimes be harder than necessary too – while you’ll be guided to quest locations on the mini-map, once you’re inside, it’s up to you to find anything of that is needed.

The problem is that the low-fi, polygonal visuals don’t lend to navigation well, with cookie cutter corridors and bland, repetitive environments making it easy to get lost. Areas are never so complicated that it’s game breaking, but it hardly inspires exploration or interest. Outside of tombs and caverns, there are needlessly large open world environments. With little to see or do between quest locations, things soon become incredibly tedious. There are enemies to fight along the way (we’ll get to the combat shortly) but your character moves at a snail’s pace at the best of times, with a stamina meter that necessitates you stop ‘sprinting’ every so often, further dragging things out.

Plants and the like can be interacted with in order to gather supplies, but even that soon becomes a chore – finding yourself looking at a small red circle diminishing for several seconds unable to move before you gather a single onion for example – and I found simply bypassing this and buying from a merchant a simpler and just as effective method. Coins fall out of every defeated foe in plentiful fashion (though the somewhat ineffective inventory merely says you have 99+ after a point, so it’s a guessing game as to how much you really have) so much so that just following quests gave me more than enough to get by.

It’s all well and good having a big play area, but if it’s not fun or interesting to traverse, then it’s pretty much pointless. The second area in the game, for example, had me running a good few minutes through a dull, repetitive landscape to rescue a character. Job done, he told me to meet him back at his house (where I had started) to discuss the next move. A few minutes, and a mere few lines of dialogue later, I’m back running across the (still dull) map again. Nothing happened in between that he couldn’t have sent me on my way the first time.

There’s just a lot of needless padding that does nothing but harm the game’s flow and feels like a waste of time. Still, you could always engage in combat to liven things up on the way… except… well, it’s just not very good. Played from a first person perspective, you have melee and magic attacks at your disposal. Various weapons and powers can be acquired, but none feel even remotely satisfying to use. Holding RT will charge up a more powerful attack, but even basic enemies will brush these off 99% of the time. There’s no skill or tactics involved here either.

Enemies will bullishly charge straight at you, though when hit will just stand in place, waiting for more punishment. Occasionally they may muster up the energy to hit back, but attacks are easily avoided or defended. There’s a distinct lack of feedback, combat feeling like you are just flailing at each other until one side gives up and falls over. Somehow, all enemies run even slower than you though, so can be easily avoided unless their defeat is required to progress.

There is a fairly involved crafting system here, but between the dull monotony of gathering resources and the minuscule difference you’ll notice between weapons and powers, what could have been something worth delving into just feels like yet more filler. One shining light is the soundtrack however. While nothing revolutionary, it at least is something pleasant to listen to as you aimlessly wander another copy and pasted corridor or flat, lifeless terrain. There’s not much in the way of other audio, with limited sound effects and no speech work, but that just allows the music to shine through even more so.

Conclusion

Even as a big fan of open world adventures, I simply could not find any real enjoyment to be had here. There’s nothing particularly wrong with a simpler approach to this style of game, but due to the sheer lack of active engagement with its world and its systems, I daresay that even dedicated players will grow tired of Windscape long before the quest is over.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox One. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version.