Wayfinder Closed Beta Hands-On Gameplay Impressions – In this Wayfinder Closed Beta Hands-On Impressions, I’m going to break down the F2P Action MMO’s gameplay mechanics, and whether they’re engaging enough to warrant your attention in the next few months or not. If you’d like to know what Wayfinder has to offer in terms of its characters and classes, combat, and other features, as well as how it compares to the other MMOs, then this article is for you!

Wayfinder Closed Beta Impressions – NEW MMORPG

Wayfinder Closed Beta – What Is Wayfinder?

Wayfinder is set in Evenor where your job is to go on a series of adventures with fellow Wayfinders to curb the corruption spreading in your world. With the help of the Gloom Dagger, you can travel to mysterious places to participate in Expeditions and Hunts in order to face off against a multitude of creatures, including challenging bosses. And in doing so, you’ll be able to boost your character’s overall performance, allowing you to gain access to more difficult encounters.

Wayfinder is currently being developed by Airship Syndicate, the same creators of the more recent Turn-based RPG known as Ruined King and the Action-Adventure title, Darksiders: Genesis. In fact, you’ll notice how similar the cell-shaded art style is among these 3 games. Wayfinder is a third-person action game that features bright and colorful eye-catching visuals, whereas Darksiders: Genesis is an isometric title, both of which feature fast-paced hack-n-slash combat.

Unlike its 2 predecessors, Wayfinder is free-to-play. Partnering up with Airship Syndicate is no other than Digital Extremes, who is known for Warframe. Although there’s no glimpse of what the shop in Wayfinder is like in Closed Beta, I’m optimistic that a similar monetization scheme will apply here, giving players the option to acquire in-game currency through playing rather than outright buying them. More news will be released on this matter in May 2023 when Early Access comes out.

Wayfinder Closed Beta – Classes

At the start of the Wayfinder Closed Beta, there were three characters or classes to choose from – you have Wingrave, Silo, and Niss. A 4th character who goes by the name of Senja, was also released for free at a later date, meaning, players didn’t have to craft her. Out of all of these though, I mainly played as Wingrave, the support or Paladin who has multiple abilities to heal allies. More often than not, these would deal significant damage while restoring the health of your character and nearby allies. In order to acquire Silo and Niss, you had to pay a considerable amount of gold and acquire multiple memories, which were obtained from farming boss fights.

This in itself wasn’t that grindy if you were lucky with RNG. At the time of writing this gameplay impressions article, however, I still didn’t manage to obtain all the required memories to gain access to Silo and Niss. But I did witness how distinctly they perform in encounters. Additionally, unlike in Warframe and according to the developers, you can instantly acquire them without the need to wait for a considerable amount of time.

Every character represents a certain class. Whereas Wingrave excels in protecting allies by conjuring shields and taunting enemies while dealing enough damage at point-blank range, Silo makes use of multiple types of bombs to burn them and inflict damage over time. He’s also adept at ranged combat thanks to his trusty firearm.

On the other hand, Niss is your typical sneaky rogue who moves in the blink of an eye to reposition herself better, thereby zipping from one location to the next. Remember though that you’re not limited to the weapons you start with. You’ll eventually unlock ‘Mastery’, which lets you gain access to 3 more weapon types using Memory Fragments. But the corresponding Mastery Perks were not yet available in the Closed Beta.

Wayfinder Closed Beta – Character Progression

Character progression in Wayfinder is the game’s main strength because of how user-friendly and nuanced it is. You have the Loadout, which features your character’s current level, your weapon of choice, relics, and consumables. Except for consumables, every basic piece of equipment has corresponding affinities. For instance, tempering your weapon or swapping relics will increase your stats, which in effect increases your overall Power Rating, similar to the system in Destiny 2. This rating then determines whether or not you’re fully equipped to take on harder activities in the game.

Additionally, there are Echoes, which you can fuse in order to further boost your performance in combat. These mod augmentations are randomly obtained from Expeditions and Hunts and provide you with the freedom to increase specific stats or trigger certain effects. For example, the Broodmother S’ilreth Echo raises your max health while significantly reducing the damage your break damage or shield soaks in. So maximizing your Echo capacity is a must to enhance your Power Rating as effectively as possible.

Furthermore, you can invest in character and weapon affinities directly as long as you have enough gold and materials to do so. It’s worth noting that you’ll get passive perks from character affinities as long as you level them up high enough, allowing you to further customize your build. What’s more, is that the abilities you unlock can be upgraded for free the higher your level becomes but it remains to be seen whether or not they can be respected.

In the Wayfinder Closed Beta, the actual character leveling phase isn’t laborious due to the decent pace and short activities. In fact, it’s fair when you compare it to other MMOs where you’d usually take more than a week to max out your characters. My only gripes here are the persistent lags and disconnection issues in tough dungeons, hindering the ability to acquire rare loot to craft high-end weapons and unlock other characters. As such, the time I end up spending has been notably lengthened.

Last but not least, I do hope to see an in-depth customization option in the future where we’ll be able to change our character’s appearance by choosing the colors of every component we decide to wear. Right now, it’s only possible to swap from one clothing piece to the next.

Wayfinder Closed Beta – Combat

Combat-wise, Wayfinder retains the fun factor that’s familiar in Darksiders: Genesis. It’s fast-paced as expected in an action game, responsive in terms of the characters’ fluid ability animations, and challenging at the same time. What makes encounters thrilling are the difficulty modes and imbuements you’re able to incorporate. You can think of imbuements as modifiers that amplify the performance of your enemies, thereby changing how combat feels. This becomes really helpful when you’re testing out different abilities and weapons to improve your build.

Furthermore, and similar to Destiny 2’s Strikes, there is a matchmaking option in-game so you can simply hop on and start the adventure right away with other players. But what happened frequently was I would get disconnected in the middle of the combat encounter so the experience wasn’t as good as I expected it to be.

Next, you need to be mindful of your stamina reserves because every move considerably consumes it. Stamina management is a tricky aspect of the game, especially when you’re fighting a difficult boss since this can mean life or death. I do wish that there will be more combos available besides the abilities themselves because these are limited to only two types in the Closed Beta, namely, light and heavy attacks.

Depending on the activity, death is handled differently. Expeditions or instanced-based dungeons will still allow you to respawn in the nearest waypoint but the number of reward energies corresponding to loot received decreases every time. For Hunts or boss fights, if you aren’t revived by your teammates, you’ll simply have to wait there. You won’t be able to spectate the match at all so you’ll need to decide whether to stay and hope that your allies will beat the enemy or abandon the encounter altogether.

Exploration and Other Activities

Exploration in the Wayfinder Closed Beta is bare since there are a lot of open spaces without much going on unlike in Destiny 2 where a number of random events would pop up, giving you the choice to participate or not. Although the locations are beautiful, they ended up looking and feeling similar due to the lack of activities and NPCs or creatures that would roam the world. It doesn’t help that the quests aren’t as interesting either since they often point you to a farther location, and then immediately right after, bring you back to where you initially came from.

Only two main towns are available, specifically Skylight and Highlands, so I’m not certain if the others will be more interactive than what I’ve experienced now. Plus, I’ve been experiencing constant stutters simply by running around despite enabling DX11 and capping the framerate at 60 fps.

Additionally, the map orientation needs to be improved. The default is Style 1, which is static so the circular map located on the upper right-hand corner of the screen doesn’t move even if you’re already charting another course. If you pick Style 2, which is supposedly dynamic, the circular map moves accordingly, but so will your main map view. So you end up reading inverted words on the screen.

As mentioned previously, only 2 activities are available in the Closed Beta, namely Expeditions and Hunts. Particularly, the Expeditions don’t seem to be randomly generated. Instead, each one of them has a select number of map layouts that rotate every time you begin a new adventure so although there’s a decent amount of loot in the end, the journey becomes strenuous due to the repetitive gameplay.

According to Airship Syndicates December post, players can also expect “Endless Challenges” but no further details have been revealed about it. Hopefully, this corresponds to raid-like levels of difficulty that would take hours of coordination and practice to add exciting encounters to the game. Furthermore, although Apartments aren’t available yet, I’m looking forward to the implementation. Will it resemble the detailed customization Housing System of Elder Scrolls Online? What other features will this one have? These are just some of the questions I’m hoping to get answers to in the coming months!

Final Thoughts

Wayfinder is shaping up to be a decent F2P MMO largely because of its character progression, class diversity, and exciting combat encounters. However, it still needs to undergo several improvements before becoming ready for its full launch in the Fall of this year. Despite these issues, I’m eager to see how much more the game has to offer this May. If you’re considering jumping into an all-new action-packed MMO from the same makers of Darksiders: Genesis, then you should consider signing up for Early Access soon!

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Be sure to check out our Wayfinder Wiki for everything Wayfinder! What are your thoughts on this Wayfinder Closed Beta Gameplay Hands-On Impressions? What aspects of the F2P MMO do you find interesting or should be improved upon? Let us know in the comments below! Be sure to drop by our Twitch Channel if you have questions about the game. For more reviews and previews, check out Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Review – Better Than Nioh? and Like A Dragon: Ishin Overview.