Warhammer: Chaosbane

First off, before I say anything else, if you have a console or a PC, if you like playing with friends, you need to buy this. It's awesome. Even on PC, I can attach 2 controllers and play with a friend. 4 player co-op.

Now, into a more detailed review.

Chaosbane is a Diablo style ARPG with four characters and quite a bit to show for itself. The skill trees are intimidatingly massive (though with my archer character, I've only been using 4 skills for the most part.

Combat is fast paced, pretty much what you'd expect from this type of game. You're killing HORDES of bad guys. I would actually compare it to Grim Dawn over Diablo specifically. It has more of that feel (though to be honest Grim Dawn is a tad more generic in many ways).

What I like:

The powers: there are tons of ways to play your character. The archer in particular has some neat choices. I admit that I use the cone arrow thing the most but there's a power that shoots in all directions you can spam. There are multiple trees to explore as well. Definitely plenty of theorycrafting if you're so inclined.

The 'look': It's very warhammer. Plenty of bad guys, decent diversity (lots of chaos beasts). The environments are cool. Definitely taken straight from the pages of the various lore books out there.

The music: Dramatic, works well for the game. It's not intrusive, doesn't get annoying. If you've played other warhammer games, then you'll know this is pretty standard fare to be honest.

The story: It works. Compels you to go into sewers and fight unreasonable odds. I'm sure they'll add Skaven at some point since they work for rushing horde modes (though maybe they're in here, I haven't beaten the game).

Bosses aren't a joke: The first big boss was actually tough. It required a few tries to figure out his mechanics and take him out. Definitely didn't feel like we were able to steam roll him. That was good.

Replay: There are several other modes to play. Boss rush where you go into a dungeon to take one out, randomized maps to find mats and loot...plenty of stuff to do besides the main story. Quality of Life improvements happened at launch as well (like getting rid of all extraneous gear immediately).

Controller Support on PC: This is awesome. Feels like Console play. Makes these games more fun for me at least.

What I don't like:

Lack of direction: I mean a tutorial. The only thing it told you about is how to heal. Everything else, you have to learn on your own. In a game like Cultist Simulator, that makes sense. Exploring the options is what it's all about. But in this, trial and error isn't an option since you're being constantly assaulted by bloodthirsty beasts.

The voice acting: Some of it's good, but the elf I chose to play didn't do a great job. In fact, it's comical--like placeholder bad. If they were going to rip off the characters from Vermintide, they should've just picked up their respective voice actors too. They turn what would've been a serious, B movie experience into unintentional comedy.

One Color Mobs: Their health bars are all red. Tougher ones are just a little longer. I wish they would've stolen this part from Diablo and made blue, yellow and purple. Differentiating them would've made the monsters feel a little less generic in that way. Even Grim Dawn figured this out.

Currency Confusion: That part is annoying. There are 4 kinds of gems, gold, points for your God Skill Tree, skill points...it gets a little annoying and I can't honestly say how you gain the point parts. It makes it hard to 'farm' what you need.

Final thoughts:

Warhammer Chaosbane is an excellent ARPG experience that needs a few things to make it 100% complete. Adding another class would be good (I'm thinking Witch Hunter if they want to continue ripping off Vermintide). Putting in some kind of help for people would also be a wise decision.

Character customization happens through gear but it's too subtle for my taste. Maybe super high level stuff will look dramatically different. I would say this is going to be a fantastic game to play with friends, especially a full group.

And since you can play it all on one TV (2 to 4 players), that makes for a reasonable console investment.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5. Definitely recommended.