Warhammer: Chaos Bane

Let's get the air clear here right away. I love the Diablo series. I adore everything about the ARPG style of games. Chaos Bane had been marketed as the "Diablo Killer" since its early Alpha tests. I purchased Chaos Bane shortly after launch at full price. At that time, I was very let down. I played the game for about 10 hours with my cousin. We encountered numerous glitches, a crash or two and even had a character of mine get corrupted and couldn't play it anymore. So, I chalked it up to hype and marketing getting to me and put the game back on the Steam shelf. 

After recently hearing that Diablo 4 will still be a long way off, like not launching in 2021 even (WTF BLIZZARD, don't you guys have programmers? lol), my girlfriend and I decided to take another swing at Chaos Bane. I introduced her to Diablo via Diablo 3 and she fell in love. She has the "Diablo itch", just not as bad as I do currently. So we install the game and right off the bat, she has an issue with her system. My system installs the game around 10-11GB; hers ended up downloading almost 24GB for some reason. But hey, whatever. Different graphics cards etc, who knows. So we load up and play. This time the game starts as it should. It looks great but again almost immediately I scratch my head.

When deciding on the character to play, for some reason you have to click on the character, then click the select button for the game to actually tell you anything about the character. A bit of a pain in the a$$ to go back and forth trying to read everything about the characters. As we are choosing together talking back and forth, she says to me "How do I change the name?" I replied with a small laugh, "You don't in this game. They are what they are." "That's kinda dumb" she replied, and that struck me a bit. She was right. How long has it been since I came across a game in the realm of RPG style where I couldn't at least rename the character? Hell, even Final Fantasy 1 on the NES allowed you to name your characters. I was taken back. There is actually nothing that separates my character from another.

We quested a bit, and the game was much more fluid this time around. The spells reacted properly, control was smooth and decent, gear dropped, enemies were coming in the dozens as a good ARPG should have. But I still felt...weak. Yes, I was able to kill the enemies, but I wasn't destroying them in giant AOE storms of energy or cyclones of air, I was throwing a singular fireball at them continually until they died. And it was literally just that. I stood there while they attacked me and hit them with fireballs until they died. They couldn't kill me though. Standing still, barely defending myself and I wasn't even being scratched. This continued for a few levels. We encountered a glitch with her character where she doesn't have a universal Stash, and I do. She couldn't apply God points to her character, but I could. We'd complete quests and then go back where we have to go, the guy would physically be there, but we couldn't interact with him. Close the game, reopen, oh look, now we can finish the quest.

The game looks great and it feels great when things are working. Unfortunately, this is not the Diablo Killer it has been proclaimed to be. At least Diablo actually works. I still find it hard to believe that almost 2 years after launch, we were running into the same glitches and issues that my cousin and I ran into.

It could be a great game I think, I really do, but I can't say we'll be playing again anytime soon. I'll keep looking for something to scratch my Diablo itch I guess. 

Overall score: 4 out of 10 stars

Pros:

- Gameplay feels fluid, fresh and exciting. 

- The voice acting is very well done. 

- Game looks great. 

Cons:

- Launch day glitches still intact almost 2 years later.

- Lack of character customization. 

- Felt weak most of the time regardless of what level I got to.