One thing about Hyper Light Breaker simply is not working for me. Having performed about half-hour of the sport at Summer season Sport Fest, I left my time with the sport probably not desirous to play extra of it. And for a roguelike, that looks like a reasonably large drawback. Granted, the snippet of the sport I obtained to play is not reflective of the entire expertise, but when you are going to promote me on a roguelike, you want to present me what a part of the cycle is designed to incentivize me to maintain enjoying.
2024 is trying to be a terrific 12 months for roguelike’s launching in early entry already with the likes of Hades II and The Rogue Prince of Persia offering loads to play. Your entire time I was enjoying Hyper Light Breaker, I stored considering of these video games;Hades II with its unimaginable story and characters that encourage me to maintain enjoying and uncover the subsequent chapter, and The Rogue Prince of Persia and its narrative bread crumbs that make me really feel like a time looping detective. I did not get that from my time with Hyper Light Breaker. I did not get a lot of any story nor any indication of how the roguelike system would inform that sport’s narrative. Which isn’t to say that that factor will not be there in the primary sport, however I did not see it in what I performed.
And with out that hook, Hyper Light Breaker simply feels tremendous. It’s a well-known loop in case you’ve performed a roguelike earlier than. You begin in a hub the place you should purchase higher gear and weapons, after which bounce right into a world that comes with sufficient comparable landmarks to familiarize your self to the world’s structure run to run however randomizes the precise placement of enemies, gadgets, and managers. Your objective within the sport is to search out particular enemies on this planet who drop keys to the arenas of the 5 bosses you must defeat. The order by which you need to struggle these bosses is as much as you.
The primary characteristic of Hyper Light Breaker is that you just technically haven’t got to finish this goal in a single run, like most roguelikes. Not solely do you may have a number of lives per run, however you may extract from the realm and return to the hub with the intention to spend collected foreign money on new gadgets and weapons earlier than diving again in. Extracting and redeploying appears to be an essential a part of the loop. Selecting to take action initially looks like a dangerous endeavor–a beam of pink mild seems on the map and you must attain it whereas evading a strong enemy that is chasing after you–but in apply it is surprisingly straightforward to flee. The bounty hunters aren’t very sensible and your hoverboard and glider makes it a breeze to get round. All these advantages within the participant’s favor stack up, incentivizing you to maintain extracting.
The sport additionally felt unbalanced in some ways. Although I loved the moment-to-moment of the sport’s combat–relying on slick counters and pulling off well-timed pictures and sword slashes to cleave my manner by means of teams of enemies is an effective time in most motion games–some of the upgrades you may randomly discover appear grossly overpowered. Essentially the most noticeable instance was one which summoned an enormous AI-controlled companion–I introduced it with me into one of many boss encounters and it tanked all the pieces the boss threw at it whereas pulling its aggression. So not solely may I safely conceal behind my summon, the boss straight up ignored me as I stored capturing it. The entire ordeal felt low-cost and I did not be ok with that victory. I hadn’t strategically overcome the menace, I had as an alternative stumbled right into a method to probably cheese my manner by means of the remainder of the sport.
Now, for all I know, that summon may have been ineffective in opposition to the opposite 4 bosses–I solely noticed and fought the one earlier than my preview was over. And since Hyper Light Breaker is launching in early entry, there’s a chance for the devs to steadiness the sport additional forward of its full launch.
Plus, there are large components of the sport I did not get to see. I did not get to check out the sport’s three-player co-op or discover the map past the preliminary space. And, like I stated on the high, I know there’s some kind of story in Hyper Light Breaker however these parts had been absent from my preview, leaving me questioning why my character was doing something that they had been doing.
I really feel like my large takeaway from my time with Hyper Light Breaker is that I want to provide it one other likelihood. This primary impression wasn’t very good–between a scarcity of narrative incentive to have interaction within the sport’s roguelike gameplay loop, and parts of the gameplay feeling manner too straightforward, I wasn’t blown away by the expertise. But video games launch in early entry for this very cause, and it is attainable that almost all of my issues will not be within the sport when I play it once more.
Hyper Light Breaker is scheduled to launch in early entry on PC later this 12 months.