[toggles behavior=”accordion”] [toggle title=”Minimum Specs”]OS: Windows XP SP2+ Processor: i5-4690+ Memory: 2 GB RAM Graphics: GTX 660+ DirectX: Version 9.0 Storage: 600 MB available space[/toggle] [toggle title=”Review Specs”]OS: Windows 10 Processor: i7-8750H Memory: 16 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 6GB DirectX: Version 12 [/toggle] [/toggles] It’s the year 1999. You come back from school sweating and hungry but your 10-year-old self is excited beyond measure. Mom’s calling you from the kitchen to wash yourself and eat your evening meal yet you don’t pay heed for you have in your hand a plastic cassette with 999 games in it. You connect your bootlegged console to your CRT TV, blow over your cassette’s memory card and insert it into the slot, watching with awe as the pixel-stylized logo of Contra rolls down from the top with an odd synth playing in the background. Fast forward to 2019, you’ve got your PC, PS or Switch where you can relive such side-scrolling pixel aesthetic adventures like Dead Cells and Celeste. Now the thing is, games like these fill us with such nostalgia that we become blind to their flaws. No, I ain’t talking about bugs or glitches (*cough … Beth…*cough … esda), I’m talking about flaws that stick out like a sore thumb on a safe work day.

Let’s consider the case of Warlocks 2: God Slayers.

Story and Narrative

You’re part of an ‘Order of Warlocks’ but are captured in the beginning by pizza-loving drunken goons. After being freed by the Shaman Noody, you’re given the task of proving your worth by undertaking various quests across the globe like killing some gods, finding someone’s pants, freeing and escorting a herd of timid cow-mammoths, and many more mundane yet hilarious objectives. True, the game’s comical approach carries it a long way and it owes that to hilarious dialogues between NPCs right from the start. For example, the Shaman tells you that in order to activate a quest you’ve to jump into a smoldering fireplace at an Intergalactic Canteen which is technically a portal to travel to different locations across the globe.

Now, this Canteen happens to have a bartender and a mutated merchant with whom you can trade items and fill up your inventory every time you embark because Warlocks 2 is basically a pixel-style, side-scrolling RPG. And did I mention the jazz band called The Rolling Spells that would play your chosen music out of their list for a nominal fee?

Gameplay and Mechanics

Warlocks 2 offers five different characters each with their own unique attacks, abilities and skill trees. Which means every time you start the game with another character, you’ll have a new experience as you try out their attack mechanics to maul through the enemies. This is mostly for better implementation of co-op gameplay since the game supports up to 4-person coop, which is a breath of fresh air because you’ll die quite a lot if you try to take on the quests solo. The enemies, though weaker, will overwhelm you in numbers making you beg for full party support from your friends and if you have none, you’ll feel as if you’re playing a 2D Soulsbourne game. In addition to it, when you start the game afresh you’ll come across a difficulty selection that would make any speedrunner pee his pants and therefore it is advised to mix the various magical powers of the characters to take on the enemies especially the bosses and their bothersome minions.

But sadly, at the core Warlocks 2 is a highly forgettable RPG with no significant innovation compared to its counterparts. There’s an inventory screen, an XP bar, a skill tree, a leveling system and many other hackneyed tropes like minimal scripted dialogue selections while interacting with NPCs. You eat food to regain health, drink potions to use magic or reduce ability cooldown, equip armor … you get the picture. As for the actual gameplay, it’s basically pointing-n-smashing your mouse buttons (default LMB for attack and RMB for special abilities) till you deplete the enemy’s health bar faster than they do yours with their swarming numbers. Thank god, when you die you at least don’t lose your inventory, but instead are spun to the start of the map with all the enemies you’ve previously killed being resurrected back to life. Adding salt to the already exacerbated wound are lackluster quests which will make you question “are they worth dying for again and again?” because the reward you’ll be getting is pragmatically ridiculous and you’ll feel as if you need to do more quests in order to get a proper reward. If the devs are trying to increase the gameplay hours using a carrot and stick method then they are probably using a rotten carrot because if you’re planning to invest a lot of hours by playing the game on the highest difficulty then all its flaws will show up.

Visuals, Sound and Performance

The visuals are pure 【ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ】. Lovely and highly detailed pixel textures would send you back in time to the good ‘ol days of bootlegged Sonic and Duck Hunt and in fact, I’ll go as far as saying that Warlocks 2 has the sexiest loading screen I’ve ever seen in a videogame! But there’s a catch; the pixel backgrounds are so detailed and there are so many shaded colors flying across the screen amidst a battle that you won’t notice your mouse pointer flying off the enemy you’re trying to attack until you’re half of your health. And here you were wondering why the boss ain’t dead yet. As for the music, it’s soothing and funky at the same time, perfectly fitting the locations you’ll venture into; the 90’s videogame synth score is spot on! Speaking of performance, though the game was tested on a medium-end rig, I’m pretty sure judging by the graphics you won’t get a single performance issue.

Verdict

Warlocks 2: God Slayers ends up being a forgettable romp in the park since it has nothing unique to offer other than dialogues soaked in humor here and there and pleasing visual and auditory aesthetic. But even in that department, there are far better games out there. Unless you’ve assembled a team of four people, it’s better if you let Warlocks 2 pass for the time being.