Hammerwatch II Review

The sequel to the highly praised Hammerwatch is finally here! Taking place immediately after the first's end, it's time to create a new character and delve into the world to aid King Roland with his resistance!

I've never really jumped into the original Hammerwatch — my first experience was actually with the demo for Hammerwatch II that my wife previewed. After that, I knew that I was on board to try out the game for myself on its full release, as the gameplay looked like something I would love to play, especially with my wife.

As you start your journey and pass through the shoddy character creator (don't get me wrong — this isn't necessarily a bad thing as you never see your character), you get introduced to a bit of what happened in the original Hammerwatch and you begin pretty much immediately after. The story is negligible at best, as you take part in the resistance to fight back against a ruler, but you'll mostly spend your time playing with little to no narrative elements in between.

The main sustenance behind Hammerwatch II is its gameplay. Picking from five different classes, you can join a game solo or in up to four-player co-op to take on the world with four levels of difficulty. I passed through the tutorial and spent several hours trying each of the classes, and I can confidently say that — against all odds — all of them were enjoyable in their own way. I was, unfortunately, unable to try the game in co-op to see how online works and how it might mess up the balance, but the single-player experience is very enjoyable.

You'll spend most of your time exploring the world and completing side quests, where you can expand on the story you are advancing or go off the minimal description you initially received from your quest giver. From there, it's a blur of killing hundreds upon hundreds of enemies in the form of wolves, pirates, thieves, undead... there are, truthfully, a lot of enemies to fight against. The various abilities you will use keep the gameplay fun and fast-paced, and you can use the numerous difficulty settings to decide how hard you want the experience to be.

I ended up sticking to my Wizard (the final class I tried) for most of my playthrough, as the gameplay was quite enjoyable and it felt like the easiest to get into. While the combat feels fair and balanced, the melee classes definitely have a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to fighting, so I decided that I was going to try out the Wizard throughout most of it and, conversely, play the Rogue to see how hard it really was. Now I'm no professional gamer, and one of my weakest genres is the Hack and Slash RPGs from an isometric perspective, so I'll freely admit that I was wholly unprepared to tackle Hammerwatch II's high difficulty, settling instead on normal.

Every class starts as an Apprentice and unlocks three other tiers through levelling up and the currency that moves the world — Gold. Every few levels, you are able to go to a trainer and unlock your next set of abilities, enriching the combat experience and ensuring that you can face the next threats that await you on the other side, all the while unlocking new weapons and armour. Character building is simply too fun, as you can choose from a slew of abilities and passives to upgrade, getting points for your usual RPG traits (Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity) and also for your skills to create your ideal build. If you screw up, it's fine, as you can then return to a vendor and spend your hard-earned Gold to reset your skills and respec entirely.

You can acquire Gold in numerous ways, including fighting enemies to sell their crafting materials, completing sidequests, or — the most profitable of the bunch — advancing through the main story and completing the dungeons. Every major area you complete rewards you with a hefty sum of Gold that you can utilise for upgrades, as completing different zones will often correlate to necessary levels to increase your class. You also use Gold for reviving yourself after death, causing me to lose a frustrating amount due to moronic decisions or miscalculations, especially considering that it takes a percentage of your total, not a set fee. This means that when you are high on Gold, dying is all the more frustrating, especially considering that you can't really do much about how quickly you spend it in advance and have no surefire way to safeguard at least a portion, meaning that getting stuck can lead to grinding endlessly to recuperate financially.

Your biggest threats will oftentimes be the bosses at the end of each area or the dungeons themselves, as otherwise random enemies prove to be mostly fodder mobs that you can deal with quickly (likely something that won't happen in harder difficulties). Bosses at the end of the dungeons are a gratifying experience because they have their own gimmicks and abilities that aren't too hard to memorise but offer a sufficient challenge to make me feel good about the experience.

That said, not everything is rose-tinted in Hammerwatch II, as I do have one major quarrel with the game's world traversal. While I am a big fan of the realistic feeling of using a map to guide myself through its large world, the game is very uninformative about your next goal and forces you to a frustrating situation of looking around for your next objective without any clear indicators. There wasn't a dungeon that I passed with flying colours, as the strange world design felt almost frustrating at times whenever I didn't know how to advance. You can buy keys that ensure you have shortcuts to different areas and make the world more straightforward, which is a great use of your Gold whenever you don't want to take an excess into a new location, but traversal felt frustrating whenever you weren't loaded with keys. 

This led me into a frustrating loop of wanting to enjoy playing the game more but getting stuck looking around at speeds that would shame a turtle as I looked for the unexplored section of the dungeon. While I'm completely fine getting lost and stuck occasionally, the frequency at which it happened was not only frustrating but unimmersive and oftentimes a bit boring. It would break the flow of the experience and force me into the chore of looking around for where to go and what to do.

This was only exacerbated in the Ruins of Malgar. After getting lost, I finally found my way through the previous dungeon and jumped into the most frustrating maze I've ever encountered, facing a constant onslaught of enemies that would burn through my mana despite my best efforts. Equipped with a large amount of mana regeneration, high health, and a lot of damage, the consistent waves of enemies that would evade my attacks at random would corner me. The usual kiting gameplay that Hammerwatch II encourages is completely nullified when you are fighting in a narrow arena where enemies can sneak up on you.

This is where the lack of indicator stopped being a minor quarrel and instead became a big issue: I was struggling to progress through the Ruins of Malgar because its purpose is entirely to be annoying (and this isn't me being angry — it literally is supposed to be perilous). I did manage to find a boss at the centre that I presumed would be the key to opening the area and progressing, but after numerous attempts and feeling like I was just tickling her with a chicken's feather, I had no other option but to assume, again, that I was doing the wrong thing and misunderstanding something... again. So my only approach was to — again — fumble around the maze like a blubbering fool wolfing down an assortment of Roasted Apples, Mana Shards, and Farmer's Vegetable Soup so my mana could survive long enough to keep me through the waves until I maybe, maybe found my way through the maze.

This was a frustrating experience that really highlighted Hammerwatch II's flaws. Not being able to find my way around or having a clear indicator of what I was doing wrong led me to feel like I was trapped and unable to progress. After trying to travel through the maze for a long time and dying helplessly, I tackled it from the top, from the bottom, I tried to run from the enemies, I tried to fight them... to no avail. It felt like, at that point, the game didn't want me to play it. And truthfully, I didn't know if I wanted to, either.

If you have the opportunity, then I could not recommend trying Hammerwatch II more with a friend or a group of them. The character building is simple and fun, meaning that the combat is nothing short of enjoyable. But the frustrating world design and uninformative approach of the quests and traversal could really use some more work.