Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem originally dropped in 2019 on PC, and now it’s come to the dark side and made the move to the current generation of consoles. Wolden Studios both developed and published this title, and it is an action role-playing dungeon crawler that you don’t want to miss.

You begin the adventure as one of the three Children of Heimlock. You and the other two were rescued as children by the infamous Grand Inquisitor Heimlock. You have matured under his guidance into a soldier in the Republican Army of the Purifiers. They are known as the perfect soldiers whose sole mission is to find and destroy all the supernatural beings around. The storyline dragged me into this title quickly and the voice acting immersed me further. I was pulled in quicker than ever, wanting that new armor, or those new weapons to take on bigger, better enemies.

I was surprised by how well the voice acting in this game was done. There was plenty of character dialogue to immerse yourself into depending on how many characters you spoke to. The cutscenes felt like a movie at the cinema. It was done with so much emotion, and the dialogue really helped bring the characters to life.

Like all good stories, there were some corny lines that made me giggle, but all in all, the voice acting was amazing. It’s also full of unique sound effects, such as the clash of weapons or supernatural beings. At no point did I feel like I wanted to turn the game off from hearing the same sounds repeatedly. There was always something new to listen to and plenty going on.

I was worried about picking this title up as I’ve always refused to play dungeon crawler role-playing games on the Xbox, and I’ll be honest, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The controls seemed so well organized and everything was nice and responsive, apart from one issue I kept running into with the inventory. It had a little too much going on.

There didn’t seem to be a quick way to drop items to make room for new stuff as I went about annihilating the supernatural beings. This would stuff me up mid-battle if I was up against something that was overpowered compared to my loadout. You had to get used to doing things like LB + A to do particular moves, but once you’ve done that a couple of times it’s like second nature. I will always prefer my dungeon-crawler RPGs on PC, but I did enjoy doing this on Xbox.

The graphics were the one thing that let me down a little with this title. Having said that, they looked utterly amazing, but there was a texture bug I kept running into which made the game, at points, almost unplayable. I found myself having to swing my sword in pure blackness trying to work my way out of it relying on the mini-map. If you can look past the texture bugs which turned the screen black, the graphics were amazing.

I was surprised by how well everything had been textured, and looking at some information on the game in earlier days, it’s come a long way – the developers are definitely using the power of the current generation of consoles. The switch between light and darkness was so fitting running around the land. It was bright and vibrant during the day, and changed to dark and gloomy when you entered the dungeons to kill the dungeon boss and finish the quest.

If you love your dungeon-crawling RPGs, then this title is designed for you, and with it being brought to Xbox, you can play it from the comfort of your couch. It has a great story, rich gameplay, and amazing voice acting, and it will keep you playing for hours on end. Hopefully, you will find yourself pulled into this as much as I was.

Written by: Hayden Nelson