Wrath's greatest flaw is that it's merely fine, and also arguably overlong. My first clear on Hard clocked in at just over 20hrs, with each episode being equivalent in temporal length to other game's entire runtimes.
I still enjoyed my time overall, and even preferred Episode 2 to 1. Which I think is the reverse of most people's preference. The environs do look great but the small enemy roster that's shared across almost the full game, coupled with some really unsatisfying primary fire for the pistol and shotgun, put a damper on my enjoyment. The shotgun primary isn't as big of a deal since you actually want to use the secondary in most cases, but it still feels weightless during those otherwise tense moments were a sudden close quarters encounter needs to resolved with gibs asap. There's significant feedback from the enemies getting staggered or gibbed yes, but it doesn't feel like I'm actually firing projectiles. The pistol is a much bigger issue, there is basically NO feedback for its primary, which I frequently relied on for the Not-Scrags and picking off stragglers from advantageous medium range vantage points. I had to turn on the crosshairs because it was often too difficult to discern if anything was even happening. I think all FPS devs should do some playtesting with the HUD disabled in order to figure out what needs to be changed in order to improve diegetic feedback.

If Wrath had found a way to implement a bit more encounter variety across the later episodes, I feel it would have turned into the longform FPS epic it deserved to become. Standout levels like Shadow Pantheon are definitely an acquired taste, but have served to ingrain Wrath into my memory as an interesting and grueling exploratory dungeon crawl of an FPS.

Worth checking out by dedicated FPS fans with tempered expectations.

Reviewed on Mar 31, 2024


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