Clock Drive Games’ Warlander is one of the few worthwhile games to conjure any sort anticipation for given that it’s one of the only upcoming games that is at least trying to do something new. I mean, technically it’s basically just Jedi Knight as a new IP, but it sure beats all the other lazily recycled ideas coming out of the AAA business. But I digress, since I could rant on that nonsense all day long.

This article is actually about some brand new gameplay that has been revealed for Warlander. The five minutes of gameplay come from one of the newest demo builds of the third-person, hack-and-slash adventure title, and it was uploaded courtesy of Click4Gameplay.

The demo features a small taste of the narrative, as well as throws players into a dungeon where they learn the basics of combat, which includes using the left and right mouse button to execute left and right attacks, as well as using the scroll button for a heavy attack.

You can block attacks to reduce damage, or if you have some quick reflexes you can counter incoming attacks by attacking at the same time with the same attack direction as the enemy. The safer option during an encounter is using a roll-dodge to get out of the way and avoid becoming lightsaber shish-kabob .

In addition to the basic melee and parrying, you can also utilize special abilities to grapple or fire projectiles.

One of the neat features of the combat in the game is that you can kill enemies easily by decapitating them, but only if their head isn’t armored. If they are armored, you’ll need to either weaken the armor or use your special abilities to destroy their armor instantly.

What’s really cool is that the game features directional aiming, so you’ll have to manually target the different body parts of the enemies. This is key because it means you can’t sleepwalk through the combat like in other hack-and-slash games. You’ll actually have to put in the time and effort to take down your foes efficiently, even weak enemies.

As mentioned in the video, you can upgrade your combat skills and special abilities by collecting the body parts of enemies and using them at the skill-tree to improve your combat proficiency that ranges from damage dealt to aiming precision.

The video rounds out noting that the cinematics in the game are actually well made and the voice-acting is better than expected. Based on the limited amount of the voice acting depicted in the demo, I would tend to agree that the voice-acting is actually of much higher quality than I was anticipating.

There are still some kinks to work out and quality control to maintain, but overall it looks like the game is on the right path.

Warlander shows a lot of promise so far and it could end up being a real sleeper hit when it drops in early 2020. For more information on the hack-and-slash, action-RPG be sure to check out the Steam page, where you can wishlist or follow the game leading up to release.

(Thanks for the news tip Quickshooter)