I bought Warhammer Quest when I was on a, er, “Quest” to buy
all the Games Workshop licensed games – good or not – so that I could play them
and make up my own mind. Interestingly, those games that I have played have rarely
been “good,” in the usual sense, and Warhammer Quest is no exception – but I
tend to like them anyway because of my fondness of and investment in the Games
Workshop properties. Warhammer Quest is no exception to that either.
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| Skaven can be threatening in large numbers... |
At its most basic level, Warhammer Quest is a dungeon-crawler
set in the Warhammer world, in certain parts of the Empire. You have a group of
four Heroes: A Human Marauder, a Dwarf Ironbreaker, a Wood Elf Waywatcher, and a
Human Grey Wizard. They’re very simple roles – the Marauder is your attacking
hero, the Ironbreaker fights best in bottlenecks, the Waywatcher picks off
enemies with her bow, and the Grey Wizard pulls double-duty as the party’s
healer and magic user. More heroes are available as DLC but it’s not an avenue
I intend to explore in the short term. You travel to towns and get given a quest
which almost always entails going to a dungeon (and crikey, there’s a lot of
those in the Empire!) and are rewarded with experience, loot and gold. Your principle
enemies are Orcs, but in certain parts of the game the Skaven make an appearance,
and the Undead turn up from time to time – rarely as the main enemy though. There
are thirty-one quests you can get from towns, plus each town has a dungeon in
between that you can explore for more items and experience. You must at least pass
these to get to the next town, so it’s always worth a look. Later in the game
there are some special missions that are handed to you, and you must complete
these in order to beat the game.
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| The screen can be spun around to odd angles. |
This game was originally designed for IOS, and it shows. It
controls on a point-and-click strategy game basis, though in practice there’s
very little strategy to the game. You click on the enemies to attack them and
they lose some health until they die; that’s about it. There’s no positioning tactics,
no flanking bonuses – the nearest you come to tactical manoeuvring is deciding
whether to put your two fighters at the end of a corridor to limit the enemy’s action
economy, or use the Marauder to take the battle to the enemy in the room
knowing that his multiple attacks mean he’ll likely drop at least some of the
enemies, and he probably has enough hit points to take any reprisals. This was
fine by me, as too much complexity overwhelms me after a while. It looks OK,
the graphics are as good as they need to be for a game like this though all the
cut-scenes are text scrolls which takes away from some of the atmosphere. The
sound is pretty good as well; fantasy-level orchestral and choral scores, with
some functional if predictable sound effects for the towns and weapons.
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| Losing your ability to act isn't much fun... |
Warhammer Quest has several flaws, the main one being the
Spiders – try taking these on in any significant numbers and they’ll use their
webs to prevent your party from moving and slow the game right down, often
forcing you to quit out of the dungeon and start again. Randomly spawning enemies
every few turns are supposed to keep you alert but it happens a little too
often – sometimes in the middle of an already painful fight! Some of the
controls make sense on a tablet but could easily have been modified for PC. There
should be a hotkey for the End Turn button at the very least, and some of the
clunk could have been removed from activating abilities.
When Warhammer Quest gets it right, it can be a thrilling
experience; this usually comes in the form of a reasonable but challenging
timed mission. The rest of the time, it’s a solid, functional dungeon crawler.
It breaks no boundaries and has little to reward you for seeing it through to
the end, but if you like Warhammer or simplistic dungeon-bashing, this will
keep you entertained for a few hours at least.
Final Score: 2/5: If you’re sure.
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