Wanderjahr: TryAgainOrWalkAway is a real timed strategy “rpg” that sees you sending in a squad of seemingly random specialists in order to dispatch the monsters currently attacking the Earth. With either a controller or the console in your hands, order your group of warriors forward to save the Earth and the people that they now fight to protect.
I’ll be blunt in that while Wanderjahr had great ideas, the execution wasn’t there. While the first few stages act to ease you into the action and the features available, by the time you make it to the first boss, good luck. It’s there in which the subtitle of “TryAgainOrWalkAway” becomes very appropriate because after trying for an hour, going back and leveling to the current level cap, and trying some more, I decided to walk away for a period of time.
I’m alright with “hard” games but the difficulty has to be representational of the overall. Dark Souls is hard, but as long as you learn what you need to do you can get by. Just look at Lobos and all of his crazy runs. Wanderjahr by contrast shows you the basics and then essentially throws you into an impossible fight against three giant foes in which regardless of which one you take out first, the other two will instantly wipe out your party. Making matters worse, they also reduce all of the items you bought down to one so good luck even bringing troops back from the dead.
The core gameplay concept is simple. You can have four troops on the field at any given time and you can swap then out as needed with those in reserve. To make things a bit tougher, and this part was fine, is that the positions you have available are tied to their HP bars. This means that if one character with high health was at 50% then the a lower health character will also only have 50% when swapping in.
Defeating enemies gives experience that can be used on any character once a stage has been completed. Leveling them up and a character becomes stronger and more durable. Level caps are in place presumably to make sure that a standard of difficulty is respected but with the bosses designed as they are? It makes things almost impossible.
Graphically and audibly the Wanderjahr is pleasant to behold but once you get into the more mechanical aspects it becomes a lot tougher and less enjoyable. Even in terms of using a controller versus holding the Switch in your hands, the controller wasn’t the most intuitive and it took a lot longer to issue your orders. Wanderjahr was really designed with a touchscreen in mind and it shows. This isn’t a bad thing if you are on the go but when you wanted to place the console in the cradle and enjoy it on the big screen? It wasn’t really an option.
Wanderjahr: TryAgainOrWalkAway is a title that has good ideas but sadly the execution just wasn’t there. Difficulty curves exist and are generally the sign of a skill but that is when they are done right compared to just being hard and ridiculous for the sake of being hard and ridiculous. With better balancing Wanderjahr could be a better title but for the current moment in time, and considering that it isn’t the first port, it sadly isn’t and probably will not be.
Game Information
Nintendo Switch
Developer(s):
Workyrie Game Studio
Publisher(s):
Corecell Technology
Genre(s):
RPG
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Sony PlayStation Vita
PC
Source:
Provided by Publisher
Article by Pierre-Yves
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