Review: Wardrum
- Guilherme Ribeiro
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Feel the rhythm of the battle.
THE GAME
Wardrum is a turn-based tactical roguelite developed by Mopeful Games and published by Team17. Unbalanced magic has taken over all the lands, and settlements have fallen. Now, only your band of warriors can stop this evil, using rhythmic spells and attacks to defeat the enemies that stand in your way.
MY IMPRESSIONS
At first glance, Wardrum might seem like a roguelite, a fact worth mentioning to avoid frustrating newcomers. Losing repeatedly will be part of the journey, and each restart will offer improvements, allowing you to enhance certain aspects for your next attempt. With that said, let's discuss its main mechanic: rhythmic attacks. In this turn-based combat game, every attack or skill, whether a melee strike or a spell, requires the player to press buttons in the correct rhythm for optimal results. This mechanic is essential, often being the deciding factor in battle—perfectly timing the rhythm for good or missing a beat for evil, leaving your opponent alive for another turn. Always pay attention to which buttons you need to press, as each action and skill requires a different button combination, which can often be confusing. Although there's a pre-attack phase that's a kind of training to learn the required combination, when it really counts, it doesn't make that much difference, since you'll need to concentrate to do your best. Despite each action always having the same rhythm and button pattern, this doesn't make your life any easier, as there are different types of characters with different abilities, and the variety of buttons is very large, making this part of the game much more important than any other.
Your journey takes place on a board where you decide which path to take, knowing what awaits you in your next step. Each character has their own characteristics, and throughout the game, you unlock new characters to assemble your team in the way that best suits your play style and skill combination. And if the variety of abilities already existing in each character isn't enough, you can forge rhythmic belts, which allow you to equip runes you find on your journey to create new abilities. The game is in Brazilian Portuguese, making it easier for the player to understand each of these mechanics, which are well explained through tutorials. The game's art is beautiful, a 2.5D style that is very animated in its beats, which are felt by the player; each impact makes you feel the weight of the game. The soundtrack shines, with the predominance of drums, obviously.
Despite being repetitive and sometimes tiring, Wardrum's main mechanic is very creative, as well as very punishing when played on higher difficulties. It's designed to be mastered, almost as if you were learning a song on a new instrument. It's up to the player to master the rhythm and have fun in the process.
ACHIEVEMENTS
While Wardrum demands a lot of rhythm, the achievements will be simpler. Besides beating the game with each character, each one has an achievement related to one of their main abilities, such as landing 100 critical hits with the archer. Traversing certain areas of the journey and defeating the bosses in those areas also yields achievements. Most of Wardrum's achievements are about numbers, such as defeating a specific number of enemies or dealing a specific amount of damage. Finally, there are, of course, achievements for perfect hits in rhythmic stages. And there are quite a few! Being a roguelite, repetition will eventually lead you to 100% of the achievements, although it will take time and require the player to maintain a good rhythm.
CONCLUSION
Wardrum's core mechanic is really fun and original. Hitting the various buttons in the correct rhythm really feels like playing an instrument, and in this case, you're learning it, so making a lot of mistakes is perfectly normal. I just think the variety of buttons is too confusing and might initially put players off, even though there's the option to play on a lower difficulty that's less punishing. While it's really cool, I felt the battles are so focused on this mechanic that everything else is too simplistic. It's not that it's bad, but it feels like the rest of the game doesn't quite match the fun of attacking with rhythm. As I said, the game ends up being quite repetitive, and being a roguelite makes it even more so. Would Wardrum be less tiring if it had a linear campaign? I don't know, but I think for short playthroughs, it works very well as it is.
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