Overall rating (release version early access): 5.0/10

I played the demo of We who are about to die for exactly 7h and was really looking forward to the game. There are hardly any interesting and well-made fighting and fencing simulations, which are also set in ancient Rome and thematically deal with gladiator fights. Therefore, this title seemed to finally close a gaping hole in the gaming market that had existed for far too long. So the anticipation was definitely high on my side.
After playing the full version for more than 14h with the start of EA, my euphoria has completely turned into the opposite and I am honestly deeply disappointed. We who are about to die fulfills far too few of my personal hopes for the game and also makes glaring mistakes in far too many areas, which noticeably dampen the game's fun and long-term motivation.

First, in fairness, I'd like to talk about the game's strengths. For the fact that We who are about to die was developed by just one person, it looks incredibly pretty and coherent. Models and textures are detailed and varied, the day and night changes add their own atmosphere to the arenas, the mood of the spectators comes across well and motivates the player during the fights. The severing of body parts, the intimate impact of weapons and the sound of it are massive and feel weighty. The really pretty overall concept continues in the menus as well. The individual elements of the UI are coherently arranged and the color scheme is very appropriately matched in terms of the information to be displayed. Some retractable menus provide a better overview, popping up windows for example when comparing the gladiator's equipment help with the right choice of weapons and armor parts. However, a display of the current popularity factor is missing, so you have to constantly look through your currently selected equipment and calculate.
Graphically, We who are about to die presents itself from its best side and makes an all-around high-quality impression.

Let's then move on to the game's weaknesses. It’s touted as a rouguelite and advertised with a cross-character progression system. If I may comment honestly, this would be a clear exaggeration at best, but more of a dirty scam at worst. During a run, a certain percentage amount of gold is saved up for the next character, but after the death of the current gladiator, this is only applied to the new character suggested by the game first and foremost. However, if you would like to play another class or are not satisfied with the suggestion for other reasons, the accumulated gold is forfeited. In addition, you can buy two starting improvements for the next gladiator in your current career, but these are quite expensive and therefore can only be financed in the endgame. So if you regularly die quite early, you won't get that far in the first place. The same goes for fulfilled story endings of the individual classes, which unlock permanent bonuses. Progress beyond that simply doesn't exist, which is incredibly disappointing. Games like A Legionary's Life, for example, do this a thousand times better.

In addition, it has some game breaking bugs that can doom a previously successful run to failure in seconds. For example, blocking with a 1H or 2H weapon often gets stuck in an upward pose, which cannot be fixed even by clicking the RMB button again. Furthermore, the own character always entangles himself. The weapon arm gets stuck between the legs, behind the head, against the shield, and so on. This seems like a very common problem, especially in fights with multiple enemies in small arenas which is the normal case for the early game. On top to that, the AI doesn’t have the same problems with equipment and stamina like the own gladiator. Even after only some fights, the enemies start to have better weapons, better shields and better armor across the board.

Regarding weapons, spears feel to be a lot worse than 1H weapons, both single-fielded and combined with a shield, because it seems to be super hard to held off an opponent at distance. Closing this gap towards the enemy on the other hand is way easier and neglects the advantages of spears and most of the polearms. 2H swords feel quite better in this regard since their blades do more damage in this situations. Apart from that, all weapons have the same attack patterns and differ not a lot from each other making them not very interesting to try out. There is reason why some weapons were far superior to others in real life and why real gladiator combat had strict rule sets and pairing of particular fighters...
Slashes vertically from the right side feel a lot more powerful than the same slashes from the other side. Multiple attacks from one side tend to have the problem that the mouse creeps slowly to the right side of the desk and readjusting it leads to the cursor on the left side of the monitor. With time, that’s getting better but is still a minor issue of the combat concept.

Regarding blocking, the mouse cursor indicating active blocking (shield indicator) is very hard to see in arenas during night time. It’s easy to lose track of it and misplace the shield or weapon and then getting hit by the opponent. Also, the cursor does not show up again after getting attacked by the opponent when successfully blocking his strike, but leading sometimes to lose the active blocking. Blocking in arenas with differences in heigth lead to false indication where the shield or weapon is pointing. Blocking only stops an attack dead in its spot which would be a stopping parry. Deflecting parry is not possible, atleast not actively, which would be great especially for swords and bucklers to open up the opponent’s defense.

Regarding stamina, it’s THE limiting factor for the success of the own character in battle. Everything builds up around this stat and a low stamina value for a new character feels almost as such a big disadvantage that can not be compensated for a long time during the early game. Stamina is very quickly consumed even when landing only hits which leads to unnecessary long phases of running away and retreating from the enemy. I personally love the stamina consumption concept of Hellish Quart, where you can combine quite some attacks and chain them together, but overextending the attacks without getting hits against your opponent will lead to exhaustion and makes you very vunerable. Apart from that, stamina is coupled with health. Losing health leads to a decrease in stamina which combined with the points from above makes it exceptional hard to have a comeback in difficult fights. The loss of health therefore is not the problem but the loss of stamina. Fights are decided due to low stamina and not due to low health per se. I would prefer a gameplay mechanic which leads to a better risk-reward-ratio like loosing more health when getting hit, but a lot less stamina loss as consequence.

Regarding battle modes, Many vs 1 is a complete chaos. Everybody is standing around the single gladiator and it is way more dangerous for oneself to attack him than stay outside and let the others do the majority of the work. 1 vs Many suffers from the same chaos but the other way round. Only the 1 vs 1 fights feel tactical and challenging in terms of movement and positioning. All other battle modes lack the tactical aspects of duelling situations.

I will certainly give the game more chances in the future, continue to play it and will gladly revise my review positively after successful patches, which improve the game in crucial areas, and correct my final rating upwards. At the moment, however, I unfortunately have to keep in mind that We who are about to die is my personal and therefore subjectively biggest disappointment among the new releases I played in 2022. If you are really looking for a motivating and fun fencing simulator that focuses on authentic fighting with swords, sabers and rapiers, you are definitely better off with Hellish Quart.