Wayfinder has plenty of potential, but it’s stretching the ‘early access’ label a little too far with this very, very rocky launch.
This truly seems like a cursed genre - I was really hoping to get some alternative warframe-adjacent game to play during content droughts but it seems it’s not meant to be. Looks like another mmo-lite looter shooter that seems to have missed its mark, both in terms of gameplay, grind and monetization.
It is still in early access (that you have to pay to access) but it’s supposed to be released and f2p within a year so we’ll see what happens then.
I think Austin’s review actually missed the amount of mechanical depth that exists in the game already. One of his complaints was that there’s seemingly no reason to put melee on “ranged” characters or vice-versa, but I can say that’s definitely wrong. I’ve primarily been playing Venomess with a Sword and Shield, since it pushes her to near-guaranteed critical hits. One of the SnS options has a potion interaction that lets it oneshot enemy guard meters, which puts them in a state of vulnerability and stunlocks them until they recover. I will say Gungrave is a bit lacking since his skills have extremely low multipliers, so his ability to clear dungeons with a gun is extremely lacking until you get the railgun with infinite body and terrain punchthrough.
On a related note, I wouldn’t say the itemisation is lacking either. They’re taking the modern Warframe approach of every weapon doing something cool. There are basic store-bought weapons, but all of the crafted weapons do something interesting that changes your playstyle. One pair of daggers is unusually good at breaking guard meters, and also places a unique buff on you that boosts all damage, including ability damage, which is totally unique to that weapon and that weapon alone. Another pair poison enemies, which lets one of the two “ranged” Wayfinders (Silo in this case) keep a damage vulnerability debuff rolling on the enemy.
Also disagree with the comment about buildcraft being lacking. Different weapons and weapon types interact with the heroes in different ways, so there’s quite a good loop of doing some theorycraft to find your optimal stat ratios for particular combinations, and what your playstyle is. Two weeks in, and the Venomess community on the official Discord are still debating whether to focus on weapon attacks or abilities, which weapons to use, how to balance crit vs base damage, etc.
Also being a huge Warframe fan, this is scratching that JRPG fiend itch for games with weird synergies and interactions and a really rich character building space to experiment in. Haven’t had this much fun since the first six weeks of the Incarnon launch.
