Warlander Is Fable Meets Smite In An Online Siege

There is not many free to play or even multiplayer games that catch my eye personally these days. The likes of APEX, PUBG and Fortnite have all had or continue to have an impact on the gaming community too. But I feel that is about to change with what I got my hands on recently with an exciting new titles Warlander.

First off, a huge thanks to PLAION for giving me the opportunity to check out the game in a closed beta recently with their PR team and other creators. It was super fun and informative experience, and I would do it again.

All footage in the below video is a closed beta build and maybe different come full release, so take that into account.

(Watch the video version here)

Toy Logic the developers of Warlander have created what seems to be a spiritual successor to Happy Wars and Happy Dungeons but with a MOBA/BR style spin on it. Two genres I rarely play, never mind enjoy. It’s a hack and slash type of deal that has a splash of fantasy in the mix.

I am all for new experiences though so after a few hours with the latest game from them, I am shocked with how much pure enjoyment I had. It was genuinely one of the most fun games I have played in years and the teams behind it are confident in this fact. It really shows with the product they have.

Warlander is a medieval action and squad-based game with elements from games like Smite, APEX and weirdly enough Fable. That is right, this is basically online Fable in my opinion, and it works so well. Its totally free to play and will release on PC later this year with consoles to follow if all goes well. So yes, expect a season or battle pass with an item shop but PLAION have assured us this won’t be pay to win and purely cosmetic.

You will spend your time in Warlander creating characters, builds and various attack/defence decks to get that advantage for the next match. It is weirdly addictive in that sense, for me anyway. For someone who loves huge narrative experiences or open worlds going to a PVP online experience was a bit jarring. However, PLAION and Toy Logic have done a great job explaining its mechanics verbally and in game via tutorials and training modes. After one single match I knew what we needed to do as a team to accomplish a victory.

Two teams of 20 making a 40 player round or five teams of 20 making a huge 100 player round, within its two currently available game modes is your base experience. you will have your work cut out for you to stay focused and not be screaming on fire due to ballista’s, I can tell you. But its balanced in many respects with only some minor issues relating to the castle cores health being noticed in play testing. You have access to various classes. A warrior, a tank, a supportive healer and a mage are the basic versions you will come to know and play with. They aren’t breaking the mould here but why fix what is not broken? Personally, I love the mage variations and cleric for healing my squad. I had a blast which each class but those felt super meaningful for me as a player. I just like hanging back and causing my own form of devastation on the battlefield.

When you are a tank or up close though, you want to push those siege weapons and drive the enemy team back with all your might. Each class features basic abilities, weapons, and clothing. All which can be upgraded, unlocked, and adapted to your playstyle in deck builds for every occasion. In a lot of these games, magic is overpowered but here it is surprisingly well done. Hanging back with my magic bullet fingers as a mage may serve well to mow down those supports and tanks but if they get to close your sliced up faster than origami.

It just works, as Todd Howard would say.

Valour points are awarded for kills and objectives being completed too in a match. Meaning you start with your weakest builds and characters but as you progress and do well, you will get those super powerful guys you have saved into the war soon enough. This is balanced well with a five-star character having a huge cooldown if the other team focus to kill them. Again, another thing I loved, you get advantages, but you can always pull a losing team back into an offensive position if you work well as a squad.

The maps seem to be mostly the same but with various biomes breaking up the environment to look fresh, I thought it was procedural if I’m honest but it’s not. Nevertheless, I liked what I saw, and the design team have done well with a fun landscape with bottle necks, openings, and flanking zones. Bashing open a door with a siege weapon or flanking round to build a ladder to scale the wall, its all very fun and involving.

Pure tension in the matches can be felt. And this gets worse when you have cataclysm come into play. These are ultimate abilities that can turn the tide of the battle in an instant. They randomly spawn on the map for one or the other teams to pick up. I managed to get my hands on two, a meteor strike and a robot steampunk mech but sadly did not capture those bits of footage. Trust me though, they are cool, and the robot especially had me chuckling with my squad, feeling like Godzilla.

Visually this is not Naughty Dog level, which who would even except, its completely serviceable and styled this way to allow each platform to run it smoothly without gatekeeping it and making it demand. I loved how it looked, as I said, very Fable in appearance. There is a competitive game mode coming to for those e-sports legends so don’t worry your head about beating other teams, with an endgame scoreboard to boot for boasting rights.

I did ask about the potential for cross-play and cross progression but right now their focus is a stable beta release and to see where things go. Which is fair but positive.

Clans are also being investigated as a possible addition, as combining this with a deck build of up to 40 characters you can create will be a fantastic social game to enjoy with friends. Something I feel, is missing sometimes for those casual gaming nights.

One major surprise is how well these game plays in a close beta form and the accessibility options of keyboard and controllers. I flicked between the two for around 5 matches and it functioned perfectly with no issues or bugs. This is something most developers struggle with, which I will praise Toy Logic for. Performance wise the game ran like a dream; I am utterly shocked at how fun and optimised Warlander is as a package. I went into the play testing assuming the worst, and that it would be a buggy, unoptimized mess that could be a cash grab.

I was proven wrong at every front. Serves my pessimist ass right. My only gripe is the UI, I want some scaling and field of view options, so it doesn’t look so mobile like and huge. But that’s a minor annoyance. I luckily had no bugs either but that is not to say there wont be in the open beta so bare that in mind.

But when can you get your hands on it? well, right now. The open beta begins, Monday 12 September.

I heartily recommended giving it a go if you love MOBAs like Smite or League of Legends or just battle royals like Apex and Fortnite. With an art style like Fable, the intense battling of a DOTA, and the competitive fun of Fortnite, I can see Warlander doing very well if it builds on the base experience.

By John Perry