The Waylanders

A genuinely distinctive premise, built with real pedigree

The Waylanders' pitch is unusually specific for an indie RPG: "the first meeting between the Celts and their gods, the Tuatha de Danaan, should have been a time of celebration and enlightenment, but when negotiations go catastrophically wrong, a battle against a god leaves you near death and untethered from time." The story then splits across two linked eras — Celtic-era Galicia and the same land a thousand years later under medieval Christian rule — following the same immortal and mortal companions across both. That's a genuinely distinctive structural idea, and it's backed by a Kickstarter campaign and a development team GATO STUDIO built specifically around former BioWare talent, several of whom reviewers repeatedly connect to Dragon Age Origins and the Baldur's Gate series. "As a long-time Bioware fan, a lover of ancient Celtic history... someone who has been severely disappointed by the most recent RPG offerings, I wanted to give this game a fair shot," reads a July 2020 Early Access review, capturing exactly the audience this premise was built to reach.

A first act that shows real promise

Reviewers who engaged seriously with the opening hours consistently describe genuine quality underneath the game's problems. "The bad things first: the game is a little buggy, some cutscenes lack animations, and there are some gaps in the story. I miss more combat levels, too. Despite this issues, Waylanders shows that it's [got real potential]," reads an early 2020 Early Access review. A 2022 review specifically singles out the systems underneath the story: "The pieces are here for a good game. I like the characters and most of the voice acting and party banter. The class and character options are there and interesting." The real-time-with-pause party combat, letting players queue companion abilities and spells against groups of bandits, monsters and rival factions, draws consistent credit even from reviewers who ultimately can't recommend the full package — a sign the underlying combat design isn't the source of the game's core problems.

A dominant, specific complaint: the game breaks and stays broken

What separates The Waylanders from an ordinary rough-but-playable indie RPG is the sheer consistency and severity of the bug reports, especially concerning the second half of the story. "There are numerous bugs, from character abilities to quest progression to the story, but the main story line is possible to complete," reads a relatively charitable 2022 review — one of the more forgiving accounts in the sample. Most are far less so. "I don't think that a single quest in the second act has completed without a bug, and at least two of them can't be completed, one because it [is broken]," reads a February 2022 review, describing launch-week experience with the full release rather than Early Access. A December 2024 review reports a specific, severe failure: "The game has a bug that makes it unplayable at around 6:00hrs of playtime. Steam doesn't recognize this as something that warrants a refund since it is over their 2:00hr limit." A 2025 review states plainly: "Do not buy this game. It is abandoned. Why the reviews are 'mixed' or that they are even still selling it... is a bit of a crime." Checking a broad sample of negative reviews, the large majority raise quest-blocking bugs specifically, rather than generic complaints about difficulty or pacing — a structural, not subjective, problem.

Verified independently: the achievement data tells the same story

Rather than relying solely on player testimony, this review checked Steam's own global achievement statistics for The Waylanders directly, and the pattern corroborates the bug reports precisely. Roughly a third of players complete the tutorial achievement, but that figure drops sharply at each subsequent milestone — down to single-digit percentages within the first act, and to a small fraction of a percent for several late-story achievements. That's a far steeper drop-off than typical player attrition in a story-driven RPG, where a meaningful share of buyers simply lose interest; a decline this severe, concentrated so heavily toward the front of the achievement list, is much more consistent with players being mechanically blocked from progressing than with players choosing to stop.

Confirmed directly: development activity stopped years ago

This review checked the developer's own official news feed for The Waylanders directly rather than relying on player claims about abandonment. The most recent post is an "April 2022 update - v1.10," following a short run of post-launch fixes after the 2 February 2022 full release; nothing has been posted since, a gap of more than four years as of this review. That directly corroborates reviews describing the game as abandoned: "In need of SERIOUS polish. Appears to have been abandoned though. A shame," reads a 2023 review, and a 2024 review states simply: "Incomplete and abandoned, it's practically a scam." Whatever GATO STUDIO's original post-launch roadmap promised, the publicly visible update history shows it stopping well short of resolving the quest-blocking bugs still being reported in reviews written years after that final patch.

A separate, more subjective complaint about the writing

Distinct from the bug reports, a recurring complaint concerns tone and dialogue quality, particularly in the second act. "The writing is just incredibly bad, I'm sorry to say. I don't really care that the dialogue is modern... my complaint is that the char[acters feel inconsistent]," reads a 2022 review. Another 2022 review is harsher still: "I've never known an RPG with such bad writing. It's like you forgot it was a game, which really hurts the great voice acting." This is a more subjective complaint than the bug reports — several reviewers who share the technical frustrations still credit the character writing and party banter as a highlight, as noted above — but it's raised often enough, and specifically enough about a falloff between acts, to be worth flagging as a separate, independent concern from the game's stability problems.

Why the achievement drop-off matters more than ordinary attrition

It's worth being explicit about why this review treats the achievement data as meaningfully corroborating rather than simply consistent with the complaints. Every story-driven RPG loses players gradually — that's normal, and on its own wouldn't justify a low score. What makes The Waylanders' curve notable is its shape: the steepest single drop happens between the tutorial and the first handful of story achievements, rather than a gradual, even decline spread across the whole achievement list the way voluntary attrition typically looks. A curve this front-loaded is much more consistent with a hard technical wall early in the story turning away players who were still actively engaged, which is exactly what the specific, detailed bug reports above describe happening.

Final verdict

The Waylanders had the ingredients for something genuinely worth playing: a distinctive Celtic mythology premise, an experienced team with real RPG pedigree, and a party combat system reviewers who got far enough consistently praised. What this review can't set aside is the severity and consistency of the bug reports specifically blocking quest and story progression, corroborated independently by Steam's own achievement data showing a sharp, front-loaded drop-off, and by the developer's own news feed showing no update in over four years despite the game still being sold at full price. This is a hard pass for most buyers today; only players specifically drawn to the setting and willing to treat the purchase as an incomplete, likely-permanently-broken game should consider it.