Warhammer Quest

The Warhammer franchise began life as a DnD style tabletop war game but has since spawned countless comics and video games based on its extensive lore. Warhammer Quest takes place in Stirland, where a dark threat overshadows the realm and your mercenary company finds itself at the centre of the trouble. Warhammer Quest moves away from the open landscape war zone and focuses more on dungeon crawling.

Warhammer Quest plays like a tactical RPG, with each turn you move each of your characters and attack the enemy formation, once a hero has attacked, they can no longer move so you have to be sure your warriors are placed with strategy in mind. Tapping on any unit will show you how far it can travel by highlighting the grid white and available attacks are highlighted in red, if your character has a bow, units in range will be lit with orange. Tapping on an enemy unit will display its stats and show how much HP remains.

This is not a casual game, completing one dungeon can take anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour, with a deep level of strategy as the game progresses, that said though, it’s turn based and with no time limits you can take the time to think about your moves carefully and you need to as once they’re made, they can’t be undone. Most encounters occur on entering a new room but your party can also be ambushed at any time, often in the middle of another battle turning an easy fight into a gruelling encounter. There’s also a random event system that happens between turns much like DnD your character or characters will need to pass a stat check to escape the trap or event. Tapping end turn saves you progress and if you’re in battle, starts the enemies turn.

Warhammer Quest has amazing graphics, however the dungeons have a limited tile set and all look pretty much the same but it doesn’t have a negative effect on gameplay. I found it a little hard at first to pick which characters were mine but half an hour in you get really familiar with the forms. You can zoom out to take a better look at the game field but you can’t change the angle, however you can spin the field to a more favourable orientation. Skills and items are tucked away in drop-down menus to avoid pointless clutter on the screen. Outside of dungeons, everything has an ‘old book’ theme, statistic and inventory pages look like pages in a crumbling book and a nice touch was the way that towns are displayed, on entering a village or settlement a gigantic book will open up to display a 3D model of the buildings, it looks really good and adds to the overall atmosphere of the title.

The music is well crafted and registers in your subconscious, intensifying during battle sequences and helps keep you focused without getting on your nerves but the effects are too dull, they’re drowned out by the music and to fully appreciate them you’ll need to head to the options turn the music down to roughly a quarter and crank the sounds, even low, the music is still quite loud. When visiting towns you’ll get the background animal noises and in the market a realistic commotion of passersby and market sounds.

Turning your device to portrait orientation opens your inventory and you can do this virtually any time, map, market, dungeon and even in battle although in battle you can’t access your stash. It’s here you’ll also find your status page and skills page, the status sheet gives you a detailed description of your warriors and a little background while the skills page lets you check out the exact parameters of their skills including passive skills. I thought it a strange game mechanic but it works well even if its not entirely necessary, an inventory tab would have been just as effective.

There’s a lot of content for the price, depending on your DnD enthusiasm and how many side quests you do, there’s anywhere from 10-20 hours of gaming. Side quests give you a greater challenge but also offer better rewards. You can also buy an expansion pack that practically doubles the size of the game with new enemies and quests. Your warriors only level up to level 6 and while it does take some time to get there it still seems like you’re being shortchanged. You can retire your heroes and hire a noob but it seems like a poor trade off, alternatively, you can purchase new characters from the store, these are a little overpriced but offer new skills and strategies. Before retiring a warrior though, make sure you want to because the process is irreversible.

Warhammer Quest is a great title, fans of the franchise will be happy and DnD fanatics will feel right at home. It does have a few negatives but not enough to bring the game down, if there was one thing I could change though, it would be the price for the extra characters, perhaps even offer one with the expansion. Otherwise, this title is enthralling and well worth the time although be forewarned, if you’re playing on a phone, the text is teeny-tiny and there’s no way to zoom, but there is a lot of content and plenty of room for expansion.