For a while now, thanks to watching Critical Role and other D&D inspired YouTube channels, I've been itching for a D&D fix that I can play by myself without having to set up a bunch of character sheets or session times with other people. I downloaded Warriors of Waterdeep to see if it would scratch my itch, and while it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, it was still a game that had lots of potential.
Overview
Warriors of Waterdeep is a new spin on the turn-based strategy game genre based on the established Forgotten Realms universe in D&D. It manages to mix together the tactical positioning of games like Fire Emblem: Heroes and the planning of games like RAID: Shadow Legends. In the game you play as a group of up to four characters at a time from a roster of the different D&D classes or roles. You start off as an Elven cleric named Halbenet hired to protect Waterdeep, and you build your party as your renown rises. As well as unlocking new characters to play as your renown grows, you also get equipment for each of your characters as you open chests gained from the shop, dungeons or events.
The game does have quite a bit of content, and it's clear that the developers put a lot of thought into creating the game. It is understandable that there is a sizable audience for this game, but at the same time there are some reasons why I myself am lukewarm to the game. Let's start with the good things first:
Graphics and Aesthetics
I've always been a fan of the many artists that have worked on Dungeons and Dragons lore for using distinctly western imagery and grand perspectives. In its first impression, Warriors of Waterdeep has managed to capture the essence of D&D in its visuals. The environment in-game is consistent to the D&D universe in terms the grandiosity and scale; the animated transitions from room to room are great and contribute to the immersion. I remember at one point seeing an animated giant spider, and it made me excited for what could come.
The character designs aren't anything special, but this is a bit of a good thing for me. The heroes you play as look familiar; characters from Forgotten Realms look like their previous representations, and the newer characters are different and unique, but aren't designed to be overly fancy like some other RPG's I've played in the past. They are designed to be relatable to RPG players. The characters also look their part in that they fit the image of their races, even if the race-class combination is not something I would have imagined. The Dwarven thief, Naomlen, is a good example. Yep, she's a dwarf, and yep, she's got thief clothing and equipment.
The monsters are essentially the same deal. You have your standard orcs, goblins, giants and kobolds, all of which are the meat and potatoes of western RPG bad guys. Again, nothing too new, but that's a good thing. Our good friend the gelatinous cube also makes an appearance, and it's really difficult to make a wad of living mush unique.
Sound
There is a great soundtrack to this game, and it is worth noting that the sound effects sound really good as well. Good sound effects add to the experience of any game, and Waterdeep accomplishes that. There's also some great voice acting sprinkled in throughout the game, with dialogue narrating what your characters are going through. Whoever provided the voice of Mirt deserves praise for her work.
Gameplay
As mentioned earlier, you control up to four heroes at a time, moving them forward or laterally to get in range to attack your enemies. The game has four unit types: Mighty, Sturdy, Skilled and Tough. Of course, these types are stronger and weaker than one other. Sturdy is stronger than Skilled, Skilled finesses over Tough, Tough manhandles Mighty, and Mighty knocks over Sturdy.
The game understands that this power balance isn't as intuitive as the standard Earth-Water-Fire dynamic that has been around since the days of Pokemon, so it helps out during combat by showing you which monsters you can knock over by sneezing on them, and which ones you might as well attack with a feather duster. Coloured arrows show on top of the enemies when it is your turn to attack, with red being resistant against you, and green being a pushover. A yellow arrow would mean the monster is on even footing with you. I loved this mechanic because it meant that I didn't have to keep track of what beats what.
To see these arrows, your heroes need to be in range to attack them. The bottom row of the screen shows the actions your heroes can take during their turn, and on the very left is the icon for movement. All characters on the screen can only move to a position along their current row, on row ahead, and one row back each turn, with no follow-up attacks. However, you can equip your heroes with gear that could trigger an effect on the enemy at a certain probability. The twenty-sided dice icon will turn red when the effect is triggered. When the effect triggers, it does give that satisfying sense of good luck.
Equipment doesn't just give chance effects. They also change the skills that your hero has, give statistical buffs, and even change your playstyle. The wizard Shevarith, for example, had a staff that could let her attack at a distance, but when I equipped her with a ritual kris, she had to be played within melee range. It sounds logical, sure, but I've played many games where equipping the character with a melee weapon did not mean they changed from range to melee characters. The equipment can also be upgraded to give further stat bonuses and, more importantly, experience to level up the hero.
Game Modes
The heroes can go off to explore, battle, or do challenge dungeons. In standard player language, that's do the story mode, PvP, or survival, respectively. Story mode follows our heroes in their investigation on the dangers of Waterdeep, and is a pretty standard, linear fare. This mode takes you through two or more rooms per level. After clearing each room, you come into a fork in the road that gives you a choice between two rooms. Sometimes one of these rooms will be a secret room, triggered by chance or by your party meeting a certain criteria. The secret rooms will usually have stronger monsters than the rest of the level, but will always have a more valuable chest hidden inside. You have to beat a certain number of levels to get to the boss of the floor. On the last floor, you face the dungeon boss, which unlocks more events for you.
Survival mode works in pretty much the same way, but you work your way through infinite rooms with exponentially more difficult enemies. Exponentially is not an exaggeration. In the span of three rooms, monsters go from level one to level nine. With a group of level five heroes, the events are definitely a challenge.
The boss appears every three rooms, so you are at least able to plan your moves accordingly. After beating a boss, you earn a twenty-sided dice to roll. Each number gives you a different reward on rolling. Entry to the survival dungeons requires gold, but you can wait a certain time to enter for free. The game gives you a timer, and you get notifications when the event is available.
PvP works a lot like Supercell's Brawl Stars or Clash Royale in that it sets you up with an opponent, and after every win you are rewarded with a chest that would take at least three hours to open. If you defeat twenty heroes over the course of your duels, you can open an additional chest. Winning or losing your duel with the other player changes your ranking, and it places you in tiers accordingly. Lose too much and you get put in an easier tier with worse rewards per win, win more often and your loot gets better and your match-ups harder. PvP can be fun if you get a good, even match-up, but no matchmaking system is perfect. I tend to go up against people with better gear, and by extension, heroes when I hop into PvP.
Time Gates and Pay Walls
Now that we've talked about the game play and the game modes, we come to why I don't like this game as much as I had hoped: time gates. A lot of the content is hidden behind time gates. Remember when I mentioned that you upgrade your heroes' equipment to get them to level up? Yeah, that takes gold with each upgrade. Remember when I mentioned that events get exponentially harder with each room? It could be easier if I had higher level heroes.
Doesn't sound like a problem? Well, what if I mentioned that most of the gold comes from the chests that take at least three hours to unlock? Or from the shopkeeper that gives you free chests every four hours? And even then, I tend to get a paltry twenty-something gold coins when I need 175 coins to upgrade my equipment. If I don't want to wait, I can pay for the VIP service, but we all know I'm too cheap for that.
"But you can just do the story mode or the event mode to get more coins, can't you?" you ask, skepticism in your eyes as you read my opinions. No, my friend. No, I cannot. You see, when I say that the story mode is linear, it's linear. Once you beat a level in story mode, there's no way of replaying the level. The only way I can revisit the same level is to eat dirt just before the last room and replay the level, and that rewards me with a solid three to eight experience points and zero gold. What's worse, sometimes the rewards for beating the level aren't that great, even with the inclusion of the secret chests.
I also mentioned earlier that the survival mode gets free entry after a few hours or so. What if you don't want to wait? You pay gold. That's the very same gold that you need to upgrade your equipment and level up your heroes! The unique events are also hidden behind the gates of the VIP section, so you would need to shell out money for this method as well.
In essence, farming in this game is next to impossible, which is a strange thing to say because of the inclusion of quests, or bounties. The quests essentially are a tally of a certain type of monster that you meet, and the goal is to kill upwards of fifty of a certain type. While the rewards from the completing the quests is actually quite sizable, the cost of entering dungeons and the lack of story replayability take an annoyingly long time to complete.
If I truly was desperate for the gold coins, I could sell off my unused equipment if the shopkeeper asks for it. The highest price I've seen him offer was 500 gold, but with the rarity of the item I was giving up and the amount of chests I would have to open for me to get it again, I didn't think it was worth the sale. Common items get sold at a measly five gold per piece, which I was also hesitant in letting go of since they were the easiest way to get levels on my heroes.
Final Words
Warriors of Waterdeep isn't actually a bad game on paper, with its accessible yet strategic mechanics and familiar aesthetics. However, the curse of the mobile gaming industry is the presence of pay walls or time gates, and Waterdeep is no exception. The game loses out on some potential player base by limiting the farming options and relying too much on the time gates to get players to pay for the game. People with more self-discipline and patience or those that have more going on in their real-world life could probably get a rise out of it for a good period. Unfortunately I'm not one of those people, so my time playing it was short-lived.
Thanks for reading this review. If you have a mobile game you'd like to suggest, drop me a line and I can give you my two cents on it as well!
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