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Wolcen is a fairly divisive Diablo-style ARPG with some interesting ideas with mixed implementation but having a few highlights as well. From my understanding, Wolcen was very heavily changed from original Kickstarter plans which annoyed backers. Then released most of the game after ending Early Access leading to a really rough and buggy launch. I picked it up on discount years after it's release, a number of minor bugs here and there and a few crashes but nothing totally game breaking in offline mode and the campaign has been 'finished'.

Wolcen is currently getting a lot of hate due to announcing on May 30th 2024 that they are ceasing further development and support for the game and closing the multiplayer servers on September 3, 2024. It was already pretty obvious that the devs were finished updating game, losing multiplayer is a bigger issue. I assume they choose to do this because Wolcen player pop is pretty low. Unfortunately, like many other modern games, there is no alternate local multi-player supported so once the servers are closed multiplayer functionality will cease. The Community Manager reported that the devs are planning to release a "Import Online Character" button to download and convert your online character to an offline one, even when the server is already shut down so at least there's that.


Pros:
* Has one of the better campaigns in the genre I'd say. A bit cliche at times but well done with decent cutscenes, voice acting, good character designs and a few interesting characters. The final fourth chapter was released post-release and is weaker than original (no waypoints, it's more of a rougue-lite type experience with a couple of story missions and a lot of grinding to be able to fight the final boss Ahriman) but still overall worth finishing off the campaign.
* Graphics are overall pretty good.
* Has a passive 'wheel' instead of a passive 'tree' like most ARPGs. There are three tiers of the wheel and you can rotate the nodes in each tier allowing you to adjust the 'wheel' for a better path through the layout. Provides a bit more complexity than some other ARPGs while not being as complicated as something like POE's passive system.
* Attributes and skills can be refunded. Refunding attributes gets damn expensive at really high levels but it's available. Also, there's no fixed class and can learn all skills so if you want to try out a different playstyle you don't need to create and level an entirely new characters.
* Skills can be upgraded with a limited number of special traits which lets you make some big changes to how they function and also come with a pool of damage types they can be converted to.
* Hybrid builds are interesting; the game has two resources, willpower and rage, and hybrids have to juggle these resources by using rotating between skills that use either of these.
* There's an active Dark Souls type dodge you can use to roll out of trouble.
* In post-game you can gain ability to duplicate skills up to two times.

Neutral:
* Passive wheel could use maybe a couple of additional nodes maybe. There's only one node for summoners for example. Not a huge issue through.
* Duplicate skills share the same cooldown which is a bit of pain. It let you have two versions of a skill with different traits I guess but it's only really good for summon skills. Would have preferred zero cooldown but only one duplicatation instead of two.

Cons:
* The campaign is too easy overall. Trash is not a threat and boss health bars drop insanely fast. Combined with the multiple ressurects, there's not enough challenge in the base campaign until maybe final two bosses in Act 4. Some nice set pieces, the end of chapter fights have an epic feel to them but you got to push deep into post game content to get to the challenging content. I wish there was a 'Hard' campaign difficulty in addition to the existing 'Normal' and 'Story' difficulties where bosses had a lot more health.
* All bosses are one shot fights. So no farming of the bosses possible. Also you can't go back to past chapters. Not a huge issue in offline mode but I hear it might be able to mess up your game in online if you're in a game which is in another chapter but not sure.
* Post-game gets a little repetive. It's just doing random rogue-lite missions agaisnt increasingly high level enemies. Want more fights against big bosses.
* While you can learn all skills, the ones you can actively use are restricted to what you have equipped in hands. It's a bit too restrictive at times, wish they made some utility/defensive skills have no gear restrictions rather binding every skill to using a weapon/off-hand type. A few additional skills would also have been welcome.
* Skillbar is extremely small. You only get four skill slots (you can unlock a fifth slot for all chars starting from act 4/post-campaign). With the way summon skills work (summoning automatically) + duplicated skills, more skills slots would probably not balance well with summoners but feels a bit limiting for other builds.
* Stash space is a bit meh. Only five tabs available. You start with one, the second you can buy for a small chunk of gold and the final three are only available post campaign. I assume they were originally planned to be sold as MTX or something lol.
* Attack/spell animations cannot be cancelled which makes using the active dodge and potions extremely janky at times.
* Some balance issues. Bows for example, attack animations are slow af which makes it harder to active dodge attacks sometimes. Because they are slow it's harder to generate rage attacking. In addition, bows users have no skills for generating rage while melee have two!
* Apocalyptic mode is a massive letdown. You gain resource while playing which lets you activate it. It convert you into one of four invunerable massive aspects that come with fixed unique skill sets, you can de-activate it early or wait until you run out of resource to sustain it. They're extremely clunky to use and honestly I'd rather have my normal skills. The only real good use they have it become invunerable and avoid deaths and restore Energy Shield. Would have been better if they just provided your character with some buffs.


Personally I think Wolcen is worth at least a couple of playthrough through its campaign with a couple of builds. Going deep into the post-game can be pretty repetitive but the post-game content is unlocked for all characters so you don't need to worry about grinding up expedition levels on all your characters. If you're only interested in multi-player you'd probably want to pass as that will be gone soon. As part of the dev update, they announced that Wolcen will be available later (probably when multi-player officially closes) to purchase at a new, permanently reduced price. So either wait for the price to be reduced or a big discount (last big sale was ~90% off I think).