From the developers of Call of Cthulhu, Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood is a third-person action RPG based on the tabletop role-playing games. Check our Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood review!

Become a werewolf, known as Garou, in the atmosphere of their shamanistic and tribal world. Garou are Werewolf warriors opposed to urban civilization and supernatural corruption, all heading towards inevitable apocalypse. Werewolf: The Apocalypse is set in the World of Darkness, a gritty version of our own time where society declines and humans fall victim to supernatural horrors.

 

Three forces are responsible for the Earth’s balance: the Wyld, the force of creation; the Weaver, which makes order out of chaos: and the Wyrm, who’s supposed to bring balance between the two others. Unfortunately, the Wyrm has become an evil force and uses humankind to further bring chaos and destruction to Earth. The Garous – the werewolves – are the protectors of nature and are doing everything they can to stop the Endron Corporation from destroying it.

One day, while Cahal (the main protagonist) is out to rescue his wife on a mission and witnesses her die right in front of his eyes, Rage consumed him to a point where he hurt his pack leader and killed one of his own. He then left the pack out of fear for his people, even leaving his daughter behind. Five years later, as he was working on a mission close by, he heard about an attack from Endron on his pack and decides to come back and help them take down the corporation.

Depending on the situation, Cahal can have three different forms. In wolf form, you can run faster and can also use this form to sneak into small places like air vents. Beware, though, as enemies will react if they see a wolf. The human form is mostly used for talking with people and interacting with technology, such as computer terminals. While on missions, you can also shoot a crossbow by pressing the L2 button to aim and the R2 button to shoot. You can also take down enemies – most of the time silently – with the Square button. When taking enemies out, you will get a boost to your Rage, which will make your Crinos form more powerful based on how much Rage you have.

 

Speaking of the Crinos, this is the last form you can take, which is the werewolf form. The intense combat and blood occur with this form. In this form, you can perform light attacks with the Square button, heavy attacks with the Triangle button, and jump attacks with the X button. You can also dodge with the Circle button and the left joystick. At any time, you can also switch between your Agile stance, which favors faster movements and Rage regeneration, and your Heavy stance, which is more about resistance and stronger attacks, with the R2 button.

Visually, I was a bit disappointed with the way the game looks. It looks good but does not match what you’d expect to see from a game that releases at the end of a console generation and the beginning of a new one. Dialogues are presented with some weird arm animations for the characters, moving them around in an incoherent way, lips were badly synced, and I could even see heads “reset” their facial emotion during dialogue.

I’m a bit torn on my impressions of this game. Starting with the good, I really enjoyed the story about the werewolves being the protectors of Gaia, trying to bring an evil corporation led by human beings down. It might not be worthy of Hollywood, but it still was pretty enjoyable. The different forms Cahal can take are also pretty cool. The werewolf form is obviously the one that gets the most attention, with a complete skill tree dedicated to making it even more dangerous, but there’s also something to get out of each form to make them interesting. The Penumbra vision, which you can toggle when in human form, allows you to peer into the spirit world to see spirits to collect and enemies moving around to be able to get through without alerting the guards.

 

On the other hand, there’s obviously the visuals, which are clearly not what I was expecting. But the most annoying part was how repetitive the missions felt. Move around without alerting enemies, deactivate cameras, open doors, and move on. If you’re caught, kill everything and move on to the next area and repeat. And then your next mission will be in a different place, but it will be exactly the same thing to do1 After trying both the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5 versions, I was disappointed that nothing takes advantage of the PS5’s DualSense controller.

As for the trophies, the vast majority of the trophies should unlock naturally while playing the game, except maybe for the one that asks that you gather all spirits from the spirit world, which will require you to pay close attention to each area you visit with the Penumbra vision so that you can complete the requirements as you progress through each section.

 

If you put aside the repetitiveness of the game and the visuals that are not on par with what we see being released these days, there’s still some fun to be had with Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood as you take on the role of a werewolf and wrecks havoc all around you.

Disclaimer
This Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by Nacon.