I had been waffling on this game for some time now when I saw it was once again on sale for $20. Which seemed like an acceptable price for the base game plus all the DLC.
Ended up… decent, I guess? Rather than Diablo, it reminds me more of Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms in structure, gameplay, and visual style. It does a few interesting things, such as having all skills unlock as you level (you can only equip a limited number), not having a level cap (legendary levels go into increasing a unique set of triggerable passive abilities), and not having any merchants (you donate equipment in exchange for progress toward unlocking extra skills).
And while repetitious enemies and backtracking are still a problem, fortunately many of the early complaints about the game appear to have been addressed over time. The only issues I’ve had with it so far (just completed the base game with the archer; Health Regen/Poison build) beyond the repetition issue were not being able to re-enter areas if I accidentally left them, and one time it looked like my character had been deleted. Turned out the game just created a new profile and copying over the data from the old profile (in the “Warhammer Chaosbane/Data/Save” directory) to the new one restored them.
Some things to be aware of:
– There’s little reason to wear +Loot Quality gear. Save a set for opening chests though.
– The 3rd level of a skill is not always better than the 2nd level.
– On the inventory and skill screens, take note that some functions (appearance changes, DLC skills, Legendary skills) appear via small tabs on the very bottom.
– Raise the difficulty as soon as possible (the difficulty system here is like Diablo III‘s). I started on Normal and raised it one level each chapter.