Midwatch

In an article I posted back in May 2023, I described Ravenswatch as potentially one of the best titles to come out when it was ready.  The title was in an Early Access state, steadily adding content on a quarterly basis over the course of nearly 18 months, with its 1.0 build releasing this past September.  The isometric style gameplay akin to games like Diablo and the developer’s previous title, Curse of the Dead Gods, provided a fun spin on the ARPG genre so long as the content provided by 1.0 was enough to keep fans happy over the many hours it expected you to play.  Lets, uh.  Let’s talk about that.

Ravenswatch tasks 9 heroes to choose from, ranging from fairy tales and folklore legends, to tackle the hordes of devilish creatures known as The Nightmare that is plaguing the lands of dreams.  You and up to 3 other players will tackle different worlds on a time-limited venture, powering up to be ready to face the Boss of each world before moving on.  If at any point you die and run through all of your continues, known as Raven Feathers, it’s Game Over and back to square one: no checkpoints, no saves.

You’ll take charge of your heroes in a control scheme that feels like a blend between your favorite isometric ARPG and your favorite MOBA.  Movement is handled via mouse clicks and your abilities are tabbed to your keyboard, with certain abilities being offensively or defensively minded: dashes, CC, buffs/debuffs and the like.  Each world gives players 3 days and 3 nights, roughly 18-20 minutes in real time, to collect as much money, XP, and items as they can before heading into that world’s boss battle.  Maps are specifically made so you won’t be able to do everything in a world so you must choose your route in terms of gambling and efficiency: do you want to run multiple easy objectives or try your luck on the harder tasks knowing a failure to complete could spell big trouble?

The speed and tempo of Ravenswatch lies solely within this chasm of manufactured busyness and benefits greatly as you really do not have much time to waste if you want a fleeting chance at defeating the bosses of each world. Routing a specific path and being on the same wavelength as your teammates is crucial.  Each map starts with a couple hints as to where certain objectives are and the rest of the map is covered in Fog of War, so finding and completing objectives is done on the fly. Those decisions on if and when to take on the harder objectives can mean the difference between a comfy run and a dead one.

But the time limit on each world feels like a blessing given to mask a curse.  Each world feels very empty and lacks character, especially with their size being inflated in an attempt at capturing a sense of mystery, requiring multiple playthroughs to see everything available.  Most of your time will be spent running from key objective to key objective with the occasional mob in between, but nothing during that run feels memorable or interesting.  A lot of the objectives themselves fall flat as well since quests divulge into “clear this base of minions for cash/perks/etc.” or “complete this objective from a NPC for cash/perks/etc.” and don’t go much farther than that.

Upgrading your character is handled on a leveling and bartering scale.  Defeating minions and finishing quests earns XP to level up your stats and choose from one of two upgrades to your abilities.  These ability upgrades can range from adding additional stat bonuses to your ability to changing the structure of the whole ability in itself.  You can push for quicker attacks while sacrificing damage then combine with “every X hit” upgrades, or go for slower but chunkier attacks that can do AOE damage to help clear minions quicker.  There are instances where it feels like some genuine crafting of builds happens within these level ups, though with only two options per level and often leveling fewer than 10 times per run, the amount of potential tinkering can feel minimal.

Stats can also be boosted by obtaining perks from completing objectives and also upgrading said perks in the world’s shop at home base.  These perks do help your character become more powerful but the plentiful amount of items available don’t do much outside of flat stat boosts to your desired ability.  The shop also has multiple items that provide short-term boosts of extra strength for a harder area, a refill of HP before heading back out into the world, or to tackle one of Ravenswatch’s world bosses.

World bosses are your marquee, bread and butter spectacles in Ravenswatch.  These bosses mirror raid bosses in your favorite MMO with sprawling area-based attacks, a circular arena to run circles in, and a massive lifebar to chip away at.  These battles will test your mental dexterity and actions per minute as you have to be constantly moving and on your toes or these bosses will tear you apart.  They are hard but they are fair and provide the best example of what Ravenswatch is really trying to sell you.  Which makes it so much more disappointing that of the 4 main world bosses, one of the bosses is a dual-boss fight with rehashed abilities from the other bosses.  Really?  Really?  I can’t explain the audible groan our team had when we finally reached this boss and started recognizing patterns from previous bosses.  Aside from a final unlockable fight, there’s only four and one’s a rehash! Either this is due to a complete lack of ideas for another interesting and specific boss type, or the development team ran out of time before their 1.0 release and had to pivot to assets already made.  It’s a shame since this boss takes some time to get to and knowing that’s your ultimate reward for about an hour’s work is brutal.

Once you complete a run, you gain permanent XP for the character you played where level ups to the overall character unlock additional ability options for mid-run levels, an additional Ultimate ability, or pages of lore for the character.  Completing the first chapter with the standard characters will unlock additional characters so you don’t need to go far in order to extend your character range for who you want to start the next game with.

And then, if you’re willing, it’s time to do it all over again.  The foundations of what is provided by Ravenswatch did show promise: the time management focus is a brilliant idea to hyper-focus team concentration with split-second detours within each world, and the characters all provide some interesting mechanics that are enjoyable to play.  But even as Ravenswatch turns the 1.0 page, it feels like it’s missing a lot.  The worlds feel empty, there’s very little variety to the objectives, the bosses are wildly hit and miss, and the rewards for a run well done don’t feel plentiful enough to run through another lusterless hour or so of leveling up your character.

4/10