WARSAW Review (PC)

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key review info
  • Game: WARSAW
  • Platform: PC
  • Show system requirements
  • Gamepad support: No
  • Reviewed on:
WARSAW keyart

WARSAW is a little game developed by a Polish studio called Pixelated Milk and published, ironically, by gaming company. It's one of those games that bluntly copy the Darkest Dungeon formula and tries to resell it in a slightly different package.

Unlike Darkest Dungeon, WARSAW is trying to take advantage of an already established setting, World War 2. The game is based on the Warsaw Uprising, a major World War II event operation, in the summer of 1944, by the Polish underground resistance, to liberate Poland's capital city from German occupation.

It's an interesting and rewarding setting if you know what to do with it. Despite having some good ideas, WARSAW lacks too many core aspects to make it a fun and engaging journey. It's not just that it's rough around the edges, but it completely misses the Darkest Dungeon formula, something that developers wanted to copy.

However, I have to give them credits for the art style and animations, which are spot on compared with Darkest Dungeon. WARSAW does manage to build a tense atmosphere suitable for a World War II game, but everything happens on the war map and little outside of it. There are no stories to be told or characters to fall in love with, just pure resource management sprinkled with so-called “events,” another gameplay element borrowed from the Darkest Dungeon.

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Moving on to combat, there aren't too many differences between WARSAW and Darkest Dungeon when it comes to combat formula. You gear up a team of four and take on missions throughout the six districts of Warsaw. One of the goals is to prevent each district's morale to drop to 0, at which point they will surrender to the Nazis. Once it surrenders, you will no longer receive any resources from that district, much like in XCOM.

The main goal of the game is to survive the Uprising. You start at 100% momentum, a resource that can easily go as Health. After each mission, the momentum can drop or increase by a few percentages, depending on how you fared and whatever “events” you've been given to solve.

Each day you're presented with three missions in three different districts, but the problem is you can only tackle one of them. Each of these missions takes a few (or even several) days to complete, so for each day you spend fighting Nazis, Warsaw's districts will lose morale. If you fail to complete a mission, that district will receive one point of attrition, which means its morale will drop by one each day. The more attrition a district has, the bigger the daily morale loss.

My first playthroughs were a bit of a nightmare, but not necessarily because of the balance issues. When you deploy your troops at the beginning of each mission, you are basically on the streets of Warsaw with no knowledge whatsoever as to where exactly are your objectives.

On top of that, your troops use action points to move on the map and when all 100 APs are depleted, you have failed your mission. There's no minimap that you can check to see where you have to go, which many times results in useless fights with the Nazis. Not to mention that your troops use ammunition for every skill they use, ammunition that is scarce and expensive. You can't see anything on the map until you're close to it, such as enemy troops or “events.” Some enemy troops have a higher alert radius and will detect you from afar, while others won't engage you unless you want to.

It's a weird mechanic that probably wants to emphasize on the attrition aspect, but I find it rather flawed. I believe the latest updates added some sort of minimap, a list of troops, events and loot that you can find on the map (so that you won't continue to look for them after completing your mission), and a compass that indicates points of interest (not objectives). Also, I noticed that in missions with more specific objectives, the compass will show you the direction of the main objectives with a golden arrow, but you have to be in a certain radius.

Just like in Darkest Dungeon, you can recruit troops to replace the wounded. Unfortunately, WARSAW doesn't want to complicate things too much, so all recruits are just cannon fodder that you take with you when the “protagonists” are too injured to fight. You can level up these recruits and they have fewer and weaker skills than the main characters. Speaking of main characters, each of them can carry two weapons, which depend on their specialization. You have everything from the sniper, heavy weapons and flamethrower specialist, scoundrel, medic, infantry, office, and a couple more.

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Most of the fights you'll be outgunned and outmanned, so using skills and positioning is mandatory for minimum losses. And when I say looses I'm talking about recruits because you can't afford to lose your main characters. Also, it's important to spend as little ammunition as possible, which is no small feat considering that almost 90% of the skills require more than one bullet. Unfortunately, there's no melee in this game, which might lead to rather hilarious situations where you run out of ammunition for a certain type of gun and you have to spend 30 turns killing one enemy using a pistol or flamethrower.

Unlike Darkest Dungeon where you can put four characters on a single line, in WARSAW there are two lanes with 4 rows where you can put your four characters, which is why you'll be facing enemy troops comprised of 5 or 6 soldiers. Not to mention that some enemy specialists can activate twice in a turn, so you'll probably have to take these out first.


The Good

  • Atmospheric, tense-filled world
  • Interesting World War II setting
  • Decent combat mechanics
  • Art style and soundtrack

The Bad

  • Many design flaws and bugs
  • Complete lack of story despite the great setting
  • Balancing issues
  • Rough around the edges

Conclusion

WARSAW does benefit from solid combat mechanics, but it's like the developers build the foundation and forgot to add the middle and top parts. There are too few weapons, not enough skills to choose from, no side quests, but most of all, there's no story. Yes, you have to survive the Uprising, but that's about all you get and I don't think it's enough to keep you going until the end if you're in for this aspect in particular.

Unlike Darkest Dungeon, there's no narrator in the game, so you can stop hoping for any memorable catchphrases. The gameplay mechanics clearly lack depth and the balancing issues make it unfair for players save for veterans of the genre. The game feels very rough around the edges and needs lots of quality of life improvements before more solid aspects can be tackled.

WARSAW wants to be a mashup of World War II and Darkest Dungeon but doesn't bring anything new to the table. WARSAW is a blatant Darkest Dungeon copy with no innovation or unique gameplay mechanics whatsoever. Everything that it might go as original in WARSAW exists in Darkest Dungeon in a slightly different form. Add to that the design flaws, bugs, and balancing issues and you have a subpar experience that can't be balanced by the tense atmosphere and interesting setting.

story 4
gameplay 6
concept 7
graphics 7
audio 7
multiplayer 0
final rating 6.5
Editor's review
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WARSAW screenshots (17 Images)

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