Games worth discovering

Wildmender answers the question: What if Stardew Valley was set in a haunted desert?

4K View2023-10-04

Wildmender

6.8

ActionRPGAdventure

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SHOULD I PLAY WILDMENDER?

If you like cozy farming games, you should play this one. Wildmender is a game about restoring a desert back to life using magic and plants. This relaxing experience that can be enjoyed alone or with friends in the game’s co-op mode. Wildmender can feel a little boring at times thanks to some grindy elements, but it’s still a great alternative if you’re looking for a slightly different take on life-sims like Stardew Valley.

TIME PLAYED

I played Wildmender for four hours and completed over a dozen quests in that time. I’ve planted around fifty different fruit trees, shrubs, and flowers and have more than doubled the size of my oasis. However, I’ve only explored about a fourth of the game’s open-world map, so there’s still lots left to do and discover.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT WILDMENDER?

• Cultivating the perfect oasis. My favorite part of Wildmender was transforming the desert around me into a thriving oasis. I loved seeing plants grow and water streams branch out over time in this lifeless desert. It’s a very wholesome, calming experience.

• Figuring out the best way to grow plants. Plants have different requirements in order to survive in Wildmender. For example, some fruit trees or shrubs had to be placed near water to stay alive longer, while others had to be planted far away from competing plants to grow quicker. Experimenting to discover the best placement for my plants felt very rewarding.

• Exploring a vast desert. The open world in Wildmender is huge. While that means traversing it can be time-consuming, I still enjoyed uncovering mysteries and finding hidden loot. It was also exciting when I found plants or seeds that I had never come across before.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT WILDMENDER?

• It takes time to open up. I love planting stuff, but I still struggled to stay engaged with Wildmender for the first few hours. The quests failed to offer up much of a challenge, and plodding across that massive desert to collect resources became a drag after a while. The tedious elements almost turned me off of the game entirely, but I’m glad I stuck it out for when the main story gets more interesting. Just be ready for a bit of a grind to hit that point.

• Fighting wraiths. Wildmender’s desert is inhabited by ghostly wraiths that I had to fight while exploring. The problem is that they’re really easy to kill and very boring to battle. Wraiths attack slowly and predictably, making them extremely easy to counter with a reflective shield or a dodge. I barely even got damaged during my time with the game; hopefully there are more challenging foes out there in the desert waiting, but I haven’t encountered them yet.

💬 Are you going to play Wildmender or will you probably skip it? Tell me down in the comments!