Fun game with nice art, gameplay mechanics and great potential, but the wonky UI, extremely poor controls and spartan tutorial text makes it incredibly hard to figure out how to do anything in the game. A quick Google search will bring up a lot of these frustrations. Devs apparently haven't bothered to address any of these issues for over two years. I'm hopeful that their new game will be much easier to figure out. Had some fun while I was trying to figure it all out, but it just doesn't feel worth it.

If you do decide to give it a shot, here's a heads up: You'll probably want to play this with a controller. As painful as the controller was, the keyboard setup was next to unbearable.

4.5/10

I bought this game on a sale because I had read a few reviews on-line suggesting it would be a pretty decent action/RPG type of game, but after having sunk a considerable amount of time into it, I honestly cannot recommend it.

On the surface, the premise is pretty simple: You battle your way through 10 chapters of action as the story unfolds, and you earn Character Points to use in developing your fighter. You can replay chapters to try and earn 100% in them, but at times, it's not clear what this even entails, and from what I can tell, there's no way to review this information once play is underway. This is just one of many holes in the game, however.

On the good side, the graphics are charming and fairly well done, and there are some pretty decent musical tracks throughout the game, as well. You won't have problems picking out the enemies, and it's nearly always obvious when an item has been dropped to pick up. The gameplay itself is fairly straightforward, and there is the occasional side quest to keep you occupied. Combat is pretty much button mashing; there is some nuance when it comes to the block function, but aside from this, you'll basically be spamming your weapon strikes and/or special ability--at least in my experience.

I've managed to get 100% in the first 5 chapters on Normal mode, build up my stats significantly, and equip better items. Yet there is STILL no way for me to beat the final boss. The game has three difficulties: Normal, Hard, and Epic. The game is structured to basically force you to play through every chapter at every difficulty level to be able to complete it. Without doing so, you can't win.

This is my overall perception; a lot could be resolved if the game simply provided an instruction manual! Virtually every single nuance of the game requires you to experiment and figure it all out for yourself. The biggest offense here is the crafting system. You can occasionally pick up blueprints for better weapons and armor; I have about four of these right now. However, I cannot craft ANYTHING yet because of the sheer costs, and the crafting process itself is not explained anywhere in the game that I have found so far! Additionally, you don't just find the necessary items; that would be too easy. Nor are the items themselves even remotely easy to come by. I've had to replay the same chapter where I know I can find a particular element multiple times to earn enough of it. You ALSO have to have in your possession three of the type of item you want to create. Want to craft a new helmet? Well, you have to already have three other helmets in your possession. On top of that, you have to pay a staggering amount of money (tokens), earned primarily by completing chapters over and over again. The item I want costs almost 6600 tokens, which I have now. But I don't have three helmets, so I'm going to have to spend about 1600 tokens to buy two more helmets, spend a ton more time grinding for more coins, and then maybe I'll be able to craft the helmet I need. As someone who is used to grinding in video games, I find this to be absolutely LUDICROUS. Adding even further to this insult is that such items are EXTREMELY rare as far as loot drops from enemies; in fact, you'll virtually never get an item drop from an enemy unless it's the occasional orb that restores all of your energy. It seems that only certain enemies drop such items, and they apparently only do so in pre-determined places throughout the game. So you can't even effectively farm for what you want during your multiple replays of the game.

And this doesn't even go into the truly major problems of the game. The afore-mentioned block function actually requires focus points (the yellow energy bar) to use; even if you're not actually blocking an attack, that meter drains just from holding the button. Once it runs out, you can't defend again until you recover some points by resting. In the early chapters, this can be troublesome but isn't completely insurmountable. However, after you get past about Chapter 4, the enemy barrages and patterns make it to where it's virtually impossible to block every single attack and effectively retaliate. Every retaliation opens you up to another enemy, whether it's from one that's close in (you will likely get surrounded A LOT) or from a long-range monster throwing boulders at you. In later stages, where you begin dealing with mages that can quickly spam you with fire and lightning attacks, you can be dead before you even know what hit you. Some enemy barrages come so quickly and in such fierce numbers that getting surrounded is almost an inevitability. When you're trying to block and retaliate with special attacks, your focus meter will drain very quickly, and it only takes a few hits to kill you at that point. Additionally, some enemies have attacks they can just repeatedly spam, forcing multiple blocked hits and draining your focus points at an extremely high rate, meaning within seconds you can be forced to take the damage and likely die as a result. (This is especially true of the final boss, who has a multi-hitting attack that he sometimes just spams over and over again.) At this point, just trying to complete the game seems like nothing more than an unending slog.

There's also an extremely nagging control problem in the game. I'm not sure if this affects game pad users specifically, but there are maddening moments every time I play where my character just simply STOPS MOVING or simply will not move in a direction I press. I have to let go of the controls and then press again to get him to move at all, and this happens frequently right in the middle of combat. To be fair, I use profiling software with my Logitech controller, so it's possible there's some issue with this setup (which works in almost every other game I play, by the way) that I'm not aware of. But it's another issue that brings down this game. There's also an apparent sound bug that prevents Direct Music from initializing if you have an Asus sound card; make sure you disable GX in the DSP Mode settings of the driver software (my apologies to whomever posted that solution for my not having the link to the thread for this review).

In short, I find this game to be the worst combination of tedium and frustration, with really no sense of completion or even a feeling that at some point, you can actually complete the game. Yes, I have beaten the final boss on Normal mode, but you get the worst ending for doing so; you apparently can't get the "real" ending without beating him on Hard Mode, if not in Epic Mode, which brings me to my original point about forced replaying to actually win. Wanderlust: Rebirth is an unforgiving and at many times unfair game that only leaves me more exasperated after each play session as I discover some other roadblock to my progress when I know intrinsically what I need to do to win. I simply cannot do it thanks to game design that prevents me from even getting any better weapons or armor that would give me a chance in the final battle. I cannot say enough to avoid this game unless it's completely reworked and rebalanced.

This game, I'm going to be honest, this game is bad, BUT worth every penny spent.

I simply love this game, the fun that I have while playing this is genuine, it may not be the most perfect game, and its story may be super generic but this game is a gem among friends.
Screw it, I can't really explain this any better, and I could list the downsides but the only ones that you should know about are the ones that would be considered for not buying the game, the other ones can be taken in a comedic light.
1. the game is buggy, there's no real way around that, and yes sometimes its game breaking but it would only last until restarting the game.
2. the game is rather short, 10 levels and that being on 3 different levels of difficulty (which by the way is actually difficult)
3. The game has little guidance involved, sometimes you are left with figuring out some parts of the game that really should have been explained by the tutorial.
4. The game is impossible to 100% without playing with competent non AI players. (steam group for remedying this situation)
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Betterthanmybuttocks/

But honestly, the game is a fun time and if you can look for a coupon for this, there are plenty floating around. Get some friends involved, or make some new ones in the steam group mentioned before.

Story: 3/10 (Generic as hell)
Gameplay: 10/10 (Refreshing rare fighting style and general combat system.)
Presentation: 11/10
Soundtrack: 7/10 (Eh)
Replayability: 6/10 (Replaying is a chore)

I really wanted to give this game a chance, for some reason. Maybe because I spent $8 on it. It fails in several ways:

The AI companions are awful. They often stand around, not attacking, and when they are attacking, they are in the way.

The landscape can obscure where you're fighting, so you don't know where the enemy that's hitting you is, or where you are.

The damage numbers are the same color for you getting hit, your party members getting hit, and your enemies getting hit, and non-boss enemies don't have a health bar, so you don't really know the status of a fight.

Perhaps more importantly, I couldn't see any health bars for my AI companions, so as a cleric, I just had to spam heals without knowing when they needed it.

The sprites/animations are pretty poor, you can't face/attack diagonally which really sucks, and I couldn't tell if my party members were dead, or if they were alive and just standing around (which, as aforementioned, happens in combat).

The difficulty/loot scale is awful. The first boss was super easy, and your rival who apparently lost to it comes back next level and wiped my party, constantly stunlocked me and killed me 4 times, so I just had to hold block and get in one hit at a time. Then the loot I got from finally beating him was worse than what I already had.

The game doesn't inform you of many things, such as when I thought I was stacking enhancements on an item, I was actually just overwriting them with another. No info on that.

Your AI companions have no dialogue. Zero. No story, they just follow you around and no one else acknowledges them. Awful storytelling.

Speaking of which, the main story doesn't come in until 40 mins in. That time is spent winning a tournament you didn't join, and fighting through tons of boring battles to get to the celebration of your really easy victory.

The one cool thing is the abilities are cool, but the hotkey system is annoying, you can only have a few powers hotkeyed at a time.

Overall, I really wish I didn't spend my money on this game. Don't get it. It feels very unfinished. Oh yeah, the most annoying part: after suffering through the story to see if it improved, there were some enemies that spawned behind some terrain that neither they nor I could get through. Their ranged attacks couldn't get out, and I had no ranged attacks, and my party wasn't even moving (they might have been dead, but the sprites are such that it's hard to tell). I couldn't leave the way I came, and I couldn't progress until they died, but they were stuck and therefore so was I. I had to quit and lose all progress in that chapter. Now I'm done.

If you liked games like Chrono Trigger and many other old school rpgs then this is a game for you. The npc party you get in the single player mode is amazing. The multi player mode can be a bit confusing. Overall an awesome game for people who don't care so much about graphics.

I can't recommend this came to anyone anymore no one plays it. I played it none stop when it came out. It always had problems but the grind was enjoyable. Don't buy it no one hosts servers no one plays. Unless you have very specific people beforehand who will play 100% don't get this game it's boring alone.

Me and my buddy have had this game for a long time and played a fair amount. I enjoy it and totally recomend you guys grabbing it! The games on sale FFS!!

I can't seem to find any public parties and I mostly play solo in games. My solo experience is that the AI party members prevent you from getting a good score since they rob you of hits and damage. If actualy party gameplay is like this as well, then you are constantly competing with party members to attempt to get a semi decent score sadly. If that's the case, I don't think I'd play with other people even if I could. Also, the AI is simple so naturally they die all the time and are barely a distraction for monsters. AI party members in the crawl die way too fast even on the early levels. They would need to have better AI or be significantly stronger to be actually be a viable helping hand in single player mode.

I like the look and feel of the game but the solo experience is not really good. I would really love to play Wanderlust Adventures pre-beta/beta and see if the solo experience is still like that. I really hope it's been tweaked to be more rewarding and entertaining. Having AI party members hold back your score/dying easily in harder difficulties is terrible honestly. I hope a Dev reads this when making Wanderlust Adventures. I have high hopes for WA and will definitely be a backer if that's what it takes for the game to get better and my feedback to reach the Devs.

A very deep game that takes time to learn which is cool, but unlike other games that do this like DotA or The Witcher 2, this is a huge disapointment. its not that fun, the co-op is badly put together, the combat is boring and not skill or stratergy based really. overall this game is worth the 99c i paid for it and no more.

Dont buy this game unless you truely want to waste time and money, if you have $7.99 witting around, wait for a good game to come on sale or just go play Legend of Zelda.

2/10 +1 for nice idea +1 for being cheap as ArseMonkeys

Do all of your friends hate pixel games? Do you hate playing online with strangers? Then this game is not for you. The game has a lot going for it in terms of content, but playing alone is just you mashing buttons in a maze. There's not some kind of great storyline to pull you in and neither is there a huge amount of customization you can do to the world like in their other games.

Very poor tutorial. Game doesn't even let you exit without a struggle. Had to use task manager!

looks like chrono trigger + link to the past. combat is pretty fun. killing hoards of enemies feels good and not a chore. kind of wonky controls but you'll get used to them. getting multiplayer to work isnt a hassle unlike some other steam indie games. grab a friend and play for good times.

Unfortunately. I find this game generic. Controls are a mess, the game itself seems to run in a clunky manner, and it's attempt at recreating the 90's style RPG is a bit off. At no point during gameplay did I feel engaged. The storyline isn't original, and there is little depth in what you are trying to accomplish. The reward system for "Missions" in this game makes it feel as if they broke away from attempting an action RPG and decided halfway through to attempt an arcade game. Many claim this game reminds them of Secret of Mana. However in my own opinion, had this game came out at the same time Secret of Mana had, I would still have chosen Secret of Mana. The art style did hit fairly close to target in trying to emulate the 16 bit era, however once again, depth and immersion are still a huge issue. The towns, the map, the lands feel all bland. Many of the areas in this game use a rather dull color palette, which to me personally is very unappealing. One of the big strengths in Secret of Mana, and even Zelda, aside from their gameplay and mechanics, was the color palettes and music used to really hit on target with the feeling you get from certain areas in the game. I commend W:R for attempting to recreate this feeling. But I suggest the developers go back and really spend a lot of time analyzing exactly what made those games of the 16 bit era classic.

gross.

This game is terrible, don't play it.

I challenge you to find a bigger waste of time and money.

CLERIC

"I wasted an hour of my life in that?" - Arameus

Don't need a sleep machine anymore.

It crashed so I wasn't able to play very long. The controls are awful. The tutorial was confusing, I had to find a PDF online to figure out how to craft. The multiplayer is wretched, you have to get your whole team to stand on a symbol to move to the next "map" and the maps are very small so you're doing this constantly. If someone doesn't stand on it, you can't move forward. The multiplayer server list is really slow to load, only shows a handful of servers, and then you have to hit F6 or F7 to flip through these tiny pages of servers which it makes you wait to retrieve. You can't use your mouse in the menus, you use W A S D instead. The mouse is only used for aiming your weapon, for example fireball. The fighting itself is boring and repetitive and brings nothing to the table. Not a fun game and it is badly written. Avoid at all costs. The tutorial is confusing, the GUI is bare, the music is painful, the chat system archaic, controller support awkward, and most of the features go unexplained. If a player doesn't feel like playing past the awkward start, it's a poor excuse for a simulation, not a game. Before attempting to sell this game for 8 dollars, try creating a clear tutorial (Ex. Super Meat Boy), A familiar GUI (Ex. Dragon Warrior/Quest 4, NES), high fidelity music (Ex. Rogue Legacy), an up-to-date chat system (Ex. WoW), Mindfulness of controller context (Ex. GTA4), and maybe some in-game help system or documentation (Ex. Civilization 4). Widescreen support wouldn't hurt, and having options and other menu items available at the start screen is a requisite on consoles for a reason.

Did not like this at all