Witchspire Review - Losing Control of My Broomstick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kzjA9e5jxA

This story begins on a Monday. Or maybe it was a thousand years ago. Time is a stranger in the land of Witchspire, and it’s my job to tell you all about it.

I didn’t think much when Witchspire came my way. An open-world game full of things to find, stuff to craft, brooms to fly, and critter souls to harvest and force into indentured servitude. A big point of the game is to live and frolic with your other little witch friends. I did not do this. For I do not have friends. Also, this was pre-Early Access, so I didn’t know anyone else who had the game anyway. Also, crippling social anxiety. What I’m trying to say is: a good open-world game, bruja-based or not, needs plenty of stuff to do, skills to sharpen, places to explore, lore to uncover, and unaware enemies to demolish according to your whims. Does this game check the boxes? Well, let’s back up.

You start out by naming your server, or world. We’re taking a trip to Trickytopia, where we have no amenities, parking, or reasons to stay whatsoever. From there, you’re deciding whether you’re gonna be a rightside-up triangle, or an upside-down triangle. Personally, I decided to go with the upside-down triangle, since that speaks my truth. You can choose between two different voices, and I went with the one that happens to be Matthew Mercer. I was taken aback by the sheer, overwhelming number of faces to choose from: that number being three, with one being a full mask. I jumped into an ice-cold shower and breathed into a paper bag for half an hour, then chose the face mask.

There are half a dozen classes to choose from, which sent me spiraling into an episode of extreme solipsism. They’re color-coded and come with lore-based descriptions, but frankly, I didn’t fully understand the ramifications of each one. They tell you what weapon you start with, but as a n00b, I didn’t know whether a spellblade or a wand would fit me more. So I went with what I know and chose blue.

I prefer to watch and play things without the subtitles, which is a weird flex in this day and age. Apparently, my build of the game couldn’t fathom this because when I went to turn the subtitles off, they didn’t go away. That was one of a few bugs that I encountered, but the others may have been fixed by a recent update; more on that later. At least, I think I turned them off, because the game is not super controller-friendly. Menu selection is really subtle, and I regularly had to jump back and forth to make sure my stupid lying eyes weren’t deceiving me when I tried to select…anything.

You know, for a game that lets you masquerade as a godless wielder of the dark arts, this game sure has a disarming aesthetic. It has an innocent look of a Disney Channel original movie. But…well, there is no “but” because Witchspire is pretty lighthearted all around. I wouldn’t compare the art design to Fortnite, but it is whimsical and wants to put you in a good mood. If that doesn’t, the soundtrack will. If you’ve kept up with my reviews, you may have gleaned that I put a lot of stock in good soundtracks, and Witchspire is my favorite so far. It’s melodic and inspiring; and I think it harkens back to the swelling and sincere scores of yesteryear that fell out of fashion along the way. If you need some background music for your next D&D campaign, look here.

But we’re here to explore the land, pillage resources, and ravage the wildlife, so let’s get to it. You get to pick an animal companion during the tutorial, but it’s far from the only one you get to have. There are a bunch of different kinds to collect, and they do different stuff to help with base building and crafting. I’ll say, these guys are cute and any comparison to Pokemon is slander and will not be tolerated. They’re not Pokemon—they’re familiars. Anyway, I picked up this dragon chimpokomon and set out to make this unsuspecting sea of tranquility my bitch—

You’re gonna slowly scavenge just enough to make tools that’ll make resource gathering less of a chore, so that you can build things that’ll let you gather different resources so you can build more things. I’ve seen this musical before. If you’re into that, you’ll have no problem singing along.

I ran into the same problem I did during character creation: lack of context. So, the game tells you what resources you need to build something, but not where to look for them, or even what they’re called sometimes. Is it worth it to track down this fire-looking resource? Or is it super rare and not worth my time right now? Sometimes it was as easy as completely blowing away a couple of sheep-familiars; other times I roamed for hours. I’d find something I needed way across the map from my sanctuary, run back, find out I needed another thing, then run back. Hours turned into days. Days turned into months. Months turned into an empty maw. I wasn’t a man out of time, because time became meaningless. Eventually, after three ages, my wife pleaded with me, “please, Tricky Tom, come back to us. Little Tom Junior cries at night to just see your face but once more.” To which I responded, “BEGONE, foul vision! Don’t you see I must cross this island ONCE MORE, INTO THE BREACH, ONCE MORE?!”

So there’s a lot of running around and it’s easy to get turned around. Oh, you have a map. But, far as I can tell from pushing every single button at my fingertips, you can’t pull it up directly. I had to go to either the Settings or Luminaries menu, then tab over. And I couldn’t drop pins on the map. Which is weird, because you do have a compass, so marked waypoints should lend themselves naturally to that. Your hearth (which is the seed around which you build a sanctuary) is typically marked on your map and compass, so that’s nice. Thank god. I spent hours on this byzantine temple to my debauchery. Though, an update wiped everything out. Pour one out for me, lads.

Combat is fun enough, if a bit simple. If you’ve played any Assassin’s Creed since 2017, you basically have it down. Mash that attack button, melee or ranged weapon in hand, throw in a magic-based special, command your chimpokomon to bring the pain. Dodge relentlessly. You can switch weapons and familiars on the fly, so you can have fun with it. Hey, I found a vendor, but I couldn’t sell anything. That’s, like, not a thing.

You eventually get a flying broomstick of your own. It’s more like a speeder until you unlock real flight by activating the spire of the region. So you’ll have flight in one big part of the map, but then fall back down to the ground and need to activate another tower to keep flying in another part. Keep that in mind before you go crazy, thinking you can go Top Gun Maverick all over the place.

The story is a thing. It’s certainly… there. It has some of the hallmarks of a typical fantasy: confusing proper nouns, a chosen one, all that jazz. But again—I felt like I was lacking context; it’s delivered in bits and bobs: journal entries, audio “visions,” and you talking to yourself—repeatedly. I never felt much sense of urgency and took a long time to even find a solid understanding of my place in the universe. Funnily enough, the fate of the world unfolds at a meandering pace. Which makes sense, right? Because it doesn’t want to get in the way of your base building and grinding.

Because you will be grinding. That’s going to be a thing. Accept it now. Playing with friends will make the proceedings more fun, so go out and make a few. What could help is a journal of some kind early on; something to help orient yourself and catch you back up to speed when you jump back in. Something like that would be very helpful for someone like me—not lacking in attention, but burdened with a dozen things fighting for it. It’s not bad, and I can tell the writers felt inspired—it’s just that a journal or codex would be very welcome.

Wrapping this up: this is an early access game, which means content will only continue to be added and edges will continue to be sanded down. This is good news. Don’t get me wrong—for all my facetiousness, this isn’t a bad game and it’s not a bad way to spend your time—especially if you’re into wizarding worlds, but not Harry Potter. Witchspire is ambitious, but know that everything it wants to do—from crafting, to familiar collecting, to base building, to exploration, to combat, to storytelling—is markedly MMO. If you’re cool with that, great. If that's not quite your tempo, then wait and maybe watch a playthrough before throwing any money down.

One question I have going forward: how intrusive will updates be? I only ask because my base was wiped out from one and I had to restart from scratch, and I lost all my stored resources. Also, my voice was changed from male to female, and—as far as I could tell—since there was no way to return to character creation, I was stuck with it. Is this experience a blip, or will future updates be sort of bumpy?

Because of all that, Witchspire earns a Table Lamp from me: not bad, not great, but I can see how it’ll get better. One big caveat, though: if you’re super into witchcraft and you buy into the game’s setting with no takebacks, and you have three other friends who feel the same, then it’s going to be more like a Bronze or even Silver lamp for you.

MEDIOCRE