Waven first impressions - "Satisfying turn-based combat with a lovely art style"

First announced earlier this year, Ankama has announced a demo of its upcoming RPG Waven will become available from June 19th to 26th as part of Steam Next Fest. I recently had a chance to go hands-on with the game before the demo's arrival and was intrigued to see if it lived up to Antoine Thiebaut's claims as an accessible RPG with plenty of depth for those who seek it.

To look at it, you would be forgiven for thinking Waven was an entirely casual RPG unless you're familiar with the developer's previous efforts, Dofus and Wakfu. It sports a bright and cheerful aesthetic that's not usually indicative of challenge. Everything plays out from an isometric perspective. However, unlike many turn-based tactical games, the screen isn't overloaded with detail until you need it. Instead, Waven possesses a clean user interface that lets the minimalistic grandeur of its varied locales pop.

Hidden depth

Again, that's something you might commonly associate with a more straightforward game, and Waven certainly can be if that's how you'd rather play. After booting up the game, you can choose from one of 25 character choices, each offering a different playstyle and star rating based on how difficult they are to use. If you stuck with a one-star character, you could still get through most combat encounters without issue or having to fully optimise your spell deck. When upgrading your character, you could opt to increase your damage and HP to keep things simple and still be a force to be reckoned with.

But, for those who love to tweak their builds to make them as devastating as possible, you won't be disappointed either. As you progress, you will unlock spells to put in a deck of 15 cards. Alongside dealing damage, these can provide numerous effects that synergise with multiple other cards, meaning there are dozens of combinations to discover. Your spells are upgradeable, making them more potent, and you can also purchase skills for them to unlock additional effects, potentially making them synergise even better with the rest of your deck.

It's not just finding spells that work well together, either. There's also equipment to consider. You can have four rings, a brooch, a pet, and an armband equipped to bolster your chosen path. As with spells, your gear is upgradeable with unlockable skills. Beyond that, there's your character's skill tree, which opens up yet more options for strengthening your chosen playstyle.

As you can see, lots to tinker with, which could be a blessing or a curse for some people. While you can still progress without engaging too much with Waven's more intricate tactics, some of the fun would get missed. Likewise, if, like me, you often get choice paralysis, you might spend most of your time staring at the different classes on offer before creating a new character over and over until something clicks.

However you view it, impressive depth is meaningless if the combat itself isn't a good time. Thankfully, in the early knockings of the game, Ankama seems to have nailed it. In terms of gameplay, it's nothing new. We've all engaged with turn-based combat and there's nothing too unusual in that department. You can move or attack once per turn alongside using AP to cast your spells. Nothing too drastic.

Varied turn-based combat

The area where Waven excels is variety. Turn-based games often become repetitive over time. Once you become familiar with the best way to approach a battle. Waven might keep this feeling at bay longer than most by offering surprising diversity to its encounters. As mentioned, the world is made of several islands, each with different inhabitants that offer distinct strategies to contend with.

For example, the Taurs are bulky individuals often protected by an infant variant boasting many a buff who you'll probably want to take out first so its allies don't become unkillable. Elsewhere, Chafers can set traps and will try to manipulate your positioning so you end up snared by them. Then there are Pigs, which possess a higher critical chance than most enemies. Simple enough, but deadly nonetheless.

All of this keeps you on your toes, and if you're big on efficiency, you'll probably want to adjust your spells, equipment and companions to better deal with each island. But you'll also have the additional elements thrown into the mix to keep everything interesting. One mission sees you battling against Chafers with Cursed Kamas littered across the battlefield. Standing on them will instantly kill an enemy with the highest health, meaning you might want to prioritise moving about the battlefield more than usual to take advantage of this.

Meanwhile, another quest sees magical mirrors flood the field. Standing next to them will increase your attack damage, but it will do the same for your opponents. Here it becomes a balancing act. Do you want to destroy the mirrors to prevent your foes from becoming too powerful or use that power for yourself?
It's in these specialised missions where Waven elevates itself. If Chafer Island was full of the same combat encounters only with enemy variants with more health or different numbers, it would get old quite quickly. I'd work out the best tactics for that location and plough through it. By bringing other elements to the table, it manages to keep things interesting. Whether or not that'll remain the case for the whole game is another matter.

In its current state, Waven isn't without issues. On the larger islands, finding some of the quest-giving NPCs is a bit of a chore. You can't scroll around the map - which is strange given you can do this in battles where it's not needed - meaning you have to traipse around looking for them, sometimes doing laps as some NPCs are unintentionally well-hidden. Similarly, if the quest giver is in a building, it would be nice if it were marked at the entrance so I didn't have to dive into everybody's home in search of giant exclamation marks.

A few issues

You could argue that exploration is par for the course when it comes to RPGs, but I don't believe that's truly the case in Waven. Once you accept a quest, you're immediately teleported to the battlefield, which is often one screen, and even the larger dungeons aren't overly complicated. So, searching for quests in the overworld seems a little jarring compared to the fast-paced nature of the rest of the game.

Another slight issue is with the cards themselves. If you hover over a card with keywords such as Oil, Wet, or Muddy, another pop-up will give you more information about how that works. Most of the time, anyway. On a few occasions, the game refused to provide that information, leaving me to work it out or ignore it altogether in favour of cards that provided all the details I needed.

Of course, you could work that out over time, and the issue with finding quests isn't a deal breaker. They're merely some quality-of-life changes that would improve the overall experience and, in the case of the cards, make me more willing to try out new spells.

Waven is shaping up to be an enjoyable RPG, with plenty of tactics at your disposal across the different classes, archetypes, companions and gear. It also looks fantastic, with many beautiful miniature islands to visit, each bursting with combat variety. It definitely streamlines the RPG experience in terms of meeting characters and adventuring, which might not be to everyone's taste. But for anyone interested in playing an in-depth RPG you can enjoy in short bursts, it's worth checking out.

As a final note, here at Pocket Gamer, we deal in mobile rather than PC, which is what the Waven demo is available on. From that perspective, I can't speak to how well it plays on a phone directly, but it boasts a clean interface that I believe will translate well to a touchscreen device.