Wielders of the Essence Review + Steam Deck Performance

Wielders of the Essence was provided by Lavapotion for review. Thank you!

There have been a lot of games that take on Vampire Survivors, trying to expand its addictive gameplay loop in new ways. Some of them fall flat, while others genuinely make the experience better. Megabonk was one of my favorites, combining Survivors gameplay with Risk of Rain 2 elements that made it so addictive. It’s something I’ve wanted to see more of, but I haven’t found many games that capture the same excitement I felt with Megabonk. However, that may have just changed with Wielders of the Essence.

I have played many similar games in this genre, including Warhammer Survivors (which I just reviewed), but there’s something about Wielders of the Essence that hooked me in deeper than I expected. It has all the elements of a solid survivors game: intriguing pickups from Megabonk and new mechanics that can change the strategy with each run.

It starts off similarly to every other game in the genre. We run around the map, attack enemies, pick up their experience drops, and level up. When we level up, we can choose new upgrades to make ourselves stronger, and as we run around the map, we can find points of interest that can give us more upgrades, gear, or even permanent stat buffs.

However, that’s where the similarities end. There are so many changes to the mechanics that make it stand out and feel unique.

Instead of focusing on getting new weapons, each upgrade gives us a new skill that improves our stats. Whether it’s Attack Speed, Damage, Area, Range, Crit Chance, or Pickup Range, each can be acquired and improved up to three times. It’s interesting to focus more on that, since most games will usually give us more weapons with their own attacks.

Wielders of the Essence has an answer, and it comes from its magic system. As we keep playing through levels, we get orbs in three different categories, which unlock spells from each. The more orbs we collect, the faster the corresponding spells will recharge. These spells can be deadly, with elemental alternate attacks that could freeze enemies, make meteors fall out of the sky, or even have huge orbs circle around you until they explode.

Not only are these game-changing, but almost all of them will benefit from the skill updates we get from leveling up. They are affected directly by our stats, so if our damage percentage goes up, so will theirs. Even the recharge speed can influence how deadly they are. One of my favorites is the floating orbs, and if we have a high recharge speed, we can easily bring out around 10-13 of them to circle us. Using this on a boss can be deadly, since they keep dealing damage until they explode and deal massive damage.

While we can get more orbs through leveling up or finding specific points of interest on the map, we can also get them by recruiting troops. These little followers come with us and deal damage, helping us take down more enemies. They can be extremely useful, especially earlier in the game, and they will usually give two orbs each to improve our recharge rate.

And this leads us to the next big mechanic: synergies. Certain skills, spells, and troops can synergize with each other to become stronger. There can be a good chunk of synergies in each run, with every skill and troop being able to synergize multiple times. It all comes down to the upgrades you choose, but depending on how your build plays out, they can be monumentally helpful.

It all comes together really nicely, and I don’t have many complaints about the general gameplay. It’s fun, engaging, and feels different enough to keep me satisfied and intrigued. Even the upgrade system that intertwines with base building kept me motivated to go back in for a few more runs.

However, I felt like I saw almost everything new pretty quickly. I unlocked all 5 maps and got every extra character in under 5 hours. The game is marketed as something you can complete really quickly, which is definitely true, but I enjoyed it so much that I wish there was more to it. Even after the 20-hour mark in Warhammer Survivors, I still felt I had so much to do. With Wielders of the Essence, I started to feel there wasn’t much else for me after 5 hours. I really like what developer Lavapotion created here, but it makes me wish there was more to do.

I also felt a lack of variety with my character, or at least a lack of incentive to try other characters. The default character worked fine for me, and I started relying more on spells and troops than on my own attacks. Because of that, I never felt motivated to try other characters, even if they do change up attacks. It doesn’t change how much fun I was having during gameplay, but it highlights the lack of longevity I wish it had.

Wielders of the Essence – Steam Deck Performance

Thankfully, Wielders of the Essence is a pretty great experience on the Steam Deck. Without changing a thing, it can run at 90 FPS, but I did notice a few stutters here and there and high battery drain when there was a lot happening on the screen. Bringing the framerate down to 60 fixed almost all of that, and we can stick under 15W battery drain most of the time. So, we get both the smoothness and better battery life all by just bringing down the framerate to 60 FPS.

There aren’t any graphical settings to change, other than turning VSync on and off, so there isn’t much more we need to do. Because of how well it plays, I would still consider it a great experience out of the box.

Conclusion

Wielders of the Essence is a great experience, held back by its lack of longevity. The excellent gameplay mechanics mix the usual Survivors elements with the new to create a fantastic loop that kept me going back for more. I love how the upgrades, troops, and spells all synergize with each other, with some nice progression and light base building thrown in. It just makes me wish there was more to do, since I felt like I had already seen everything after the 5-hour mark.

However, there’s no doubt that this is a great experience to take on the go, and will definitely be a welcome addition to my portable library. It’s fantastic on the Steam Deck through and through.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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