izigame.me

UPD: my main point about party numbers may be wrong as of current version, as several other players have pointed out.
I want to make this clear from the start: I don't think it's a bad game. I think it's maybe somewhat above average, and has some fresh, interesting ideas. Also, I would totally recommend it if you want to just chill out and do some sword-swinging.
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TL:DR: the earliest versions were a masterpiece, even with missing features and full-on autoleveling. Then they have made some tweaks that destroyed a lot of tactical/strategic variety, as well as atmosphere. Now, however, my main issue is that everything in the world depends on the player's party, from enemy's numbers to contract rewards to costs of hiring additional people. But, the core features are quite good and "region-locked exploration" is a promising step.
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When I got Wartales as the very early and incomplete version, it was awesome, arguably the best "tactical RPG" I know, even devoid of many features. But, as the versions progressed and the changes were made, it became worse. Today, it's... just another tRPG, I guess. With a couple interesting ideas and a number of annoying problems, just like most games.
The changes themselves are quite subtle. (sorry for long explanations, it's fairly intuitive when you play).
As an example, there is a very nice implementation of turn order: both your and your opponents' men are "distributed evenly" in the turn order for the round, so if the number of combatants is equal, you and enemy take turns acting with a single fighter, until all fighters act. However, for the AI, the order of its units acting is fixed, while you can act with any of your guys (who didn't act in this turn yet). While "unfair" towards the AI, it provides many interesting choices and tactics.
Now, if the enemy has twice as many people as you do, for each of your actions, they make two. So, even if you kill (or otherwise deal with) the guy who acts next, another enemy will act after that and probably you'll be in some trouble. So, the difference in numbers turns out to be very, very important.
What did they change? Now, the number of your enemies is always quite close to yours, and in cases it somehow isn't, the extra units will arrive later (when you already killed many enemies) as reinforcements. So, the (rightfully dreaded) experience of being outnumbered is cut from the game. Now, a lot of battles follow the same pattern: you neutralize the enemy who acts next, then he doesn't do much (or anything at all, if killed), rinse, repeat. A hundred of perfectly forgettable battles.
See comments/other reviews for more examples. The early versions did convey the right experiences: you struggled to stay afloat with money, thoughtfully picked your contracts, took care of your men. But the updates made the game progressively worse. My best guess is, the game designers knew what they are doing and made bold (and really good!) decisions, but then some salespeople took over the game and made it "accessible for wider audience" or something - just another game.
UPD. A list of more concrete thoughts, as brief as possible.
1. The battles are similar to each other, despite good core mechanics that could allow much more variety.
2. Many units from other factions that you can imprison and then recruit (unlike Battle Brothers). Sadly, with auto-adjusting enemy numbers to your party size, the game punishes you for such experimenting. Yes, it works for region-locked difficulty too, only the levels are fixed, and also Guard is still autolevelled!
2a. Also, battles with larger parties take forever to play. I'm not saying it's wrong, just... a consideration.
3. The troop deployment is atrociously illogical (many "islands" distributed evenly along the map). It speeds up the battles though.
4. You're not burdened with strategy (thinking, planning, resource management), especially compared to the early versions. On strategy map, you only need to sometimes take a contract or two between free, sandbox-like exploration. On tactical map, the most dangerous enemy is the one who acts next.
4a. This means that I actually recommend the easy difficulty - it's the same experience, just less grinding. For anyone wondering: strategy is not the same as difficulty. Difficulty means the enemy has 100500 hit points and you have 1. Strategy means you do something other than charge head on.
5. There is a camp management layer. I believe it was originally aimed at giving you the experience of caring for your fighters (make them a mutton stew, share a drink, and they become happier). With updates, the camp became cluttered with buildings (seriously, beehive?), and now feels like a pixel-hunting mouse-clicking chore.
6. The plot is good in the first region (Tiltren), and very mercenary-appropriate in the Arthes County. Some argument can be made for Vertruse. The rest... belong in a bad Warhammer game. (for Alazar, I made this conclusion by reading the release announcement).
7. Level requirements for weapons - is an artificial and counter-productive mechanic (and also smells of MMORPG influence). Hiring a low-level character and equipping them with a nice weapon is definitely a choice, and it actually sometimes makes sense within the game's framework.
7a. Considering that looting weapons from battle is randomized, I'd prefer they didn't have any level (as in, quality tier) at all. Getting the fire bow requires enough grinding/luck as it is, and repeating it for a higher level bow... is annoying. (as an exception, low level fire bow is still good). Or, make all weapons upgradable.
8. Happiness mechanic is now an influence generation mechanic only.
9. Paying money by rests, rather that by hours, makes food and money basically the same resource. Also, you can march your companions to near death, so that they get less money for their time...
10. Plague ravages the lands, infectious are killed on sight!.. Also, you can buy a cure from most healers for a price of, say, an axe. Or, you can just eat meat and be fine. Common medicine made from two common flowers also helps.
10a. Random people from tavern are better fighters than the Legion, Guard, Inquisition.
UPD. The release actually happened while I was writing this. Congratulations! Despite all I wrote above, kudos for actually going all the way to the finished game, I know it's hard work.
My suggestions on how to deal with the numbers issue:
- Leave autoscaling option as is; the following applies only to region-locked mode. Maybe add an option to switch between the two, re-spawning everyone (maybe on rest) according to the new setting. (to be honest, I just want to make my old save region-locked).
- On region-locked exploration, make the number of enemies fixed (maybe with random +-N%) for every entity spawning on the map.
- Of course, the numbers in the later provinces should be higher. Use reasonable assumptions about the party's changes in numbers along with levelups, and grow the numbers a bit faster than that (this will make obtaining "temporary companions" a viable idea)
- Make the number of deployment slots proportional to the number of enemies, and independent of the party. This way, if you're badly outnumbered, you will be able to gather everyone in one or two corners and hold the line, while the "reinforcements" will happen more naturally, starting on the same map but taking time to arrive. (obviously no artificial "reinforcements" mechanic)
- Make the contract rewards dependent on the number and level of enemies, not on the player's party. This will disable the obvious exploit of the first region, and also makes more sense.
- Overall, let the world not care about players' party composition . Maybe with exceptions, when someone gathers people specifically to attack the player. The game has enough instruments to prepare and deal with fights that are hard with current party.