Wild Buster: Heroes of Titan is the upcoming Action MMORPG from Insel Games, the publishers of Guardians of Ember, but from a different developer - Nuriworks. The best way to think of it? Wild Buster is basically the lovechild of Borderlands and Diablo, though Borderlands already was Diablo +Shooters... you get my drift. Over the top action, cartoony gorey violence, and lots of weapons in a Mad Max-esque dystopian future. But does it play well? That’s what I wanted to find out.
Graphically, Wild Buster isn’t going to win any awards, but it’s not bad either. They art style is comic book-esque, with a lower poly count to make sure Wild Buster can run on a wide range of machines. Even boosted to “Beautiful” and 8X AA with all settings on max, it just looked OK. The animations are good though, and the effects of the guns and spells are pretty glorious. In short, it gets the job done.
Like a lot of Action MMORPGs (or MMOARPG as Insel calls it), the main hubs are the “MMO” aspect where people gather to get quests, trade, group up and so forth. There aren’t any shared open world zones that I have seen yet, but I’ve only been able to level up to 10 or so. It’s more like GW1 than Marvel Heroes or even Guardians of Ember.
There are two factions, the Guardians and the Abandon - basically the anarchist movement and a more government driven group. They can play together, and it seems join guilds together, but later on there are (optional) open PVP zones and 5v5 and 10v10 PVP modes as well. There are over 20 dungeons, 500+ quests, and a full story campaign to play too. So there seems to be a good mix of content for both sides. There’s even an account wide leveling system that gives perks across all 12+ characters. New characters are one of the many ways Insel hopes to add to the game post-early access.
For the first 10 levels or so, if you’ve played any Action RPG, you’ll feel at home here. While I’d appreciate an MXM-styled WASD control option, the click to move works well, and the combat feels far smoother and more impactful than Insel’s Guardians of Ember. That’s crucial to this kind of game - combat needs to feel good, mouse targeting needs to work well, and both are true here.
Early Access is right around the corner, and Wild Buster feels pretty good to be honest. Each character has a decent amount of skills to level up and pick and choose for your loadout. They also each feel pretty unique. Melee, ranged assassins, flame-wielders, tanks, DPS, healers. It’s all here. There will be Early Access packages available when the game launches this month, but it’s unclear if it’ll move to a F2P model after (the team still hasn’t decided). Check out the video above, and stay tuned for our full review of Early Access after it’s live.
