I think the game definitely has some great potential, the developers have been quick to respond to feedback and they have even reworked systems in a very short time since the release.

BUT I think the game has some big flaws in it's gameplay loop that makes me have to give this a negative review which I am fully ok with changing down the line.

So here is some of thoughts on the overall game.


What I REALLY enjoy:

-Combat feels amazing. The hits feel like they carry weight, the dash strike combat feels alot like a 3d Hades. You can dash cancel almost any attack and you can even parry while aiming and shooting your guns. My only minor gripe is how the heavy attacks kinda lock you into a animation with heavy end-lag, but I have come to just accept that as a risk and reward factor and using it when you know you will not get hit.

-Art. I really love the look and feel of the game. The character designs are great and there is just something really beautiful about the artstyle they are going for. Really love all the small UI looks matching the UI Hyper Light Drifter used. Almost in a sense feels nostalgic to play this.


Things I liked:

-Rising tension as you explore. I really like that you have a sense of "get out before it gets too dangerous kind vibes. Before I got good loot and little to no meta progression, it always scared me to stay around to the middle mark of the difficulty bar, since I knew there was an assassin looming on the horizon. Though I wish when you reached max difficulty it would spawn Assassins more frequently, seeing as them only spawning on the middle mark kinda ruins the scaryness when you get past that assassin. Overall I like the feature but could need improvements.

-Prisms and Loot. I enjoy the way you have to gather the Prisms (was that the name?) to be able to unlock the bosses. It pushes you to certain locations on the map and makes you explore more than if you could just rush straight to the boss even on runs where you are cracked on loot. Also some of the prism enemies can be real toughies (the range guy is absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in early game lol). I also do find it nice that we can cache weapons and gadgets to sell in the base after an extraction, since it gives me more reason to go loot even when I have a cracked build as it gives me more resources to further enhance my builds.


Things I didn't like:

-Perks. The perks in this game are very limited in what they offer and some are just mandatory to keep if you find them. As an example, if you find the perk that gives you health back on crits (actual health, not red health) you pretty much just have to keep it, since it might be THE best perk in the game. It kinda removes a whole point of buildcrafting when there is no real drawbacks to such a perk. Usually a perk like that would have a heavy drawback like "crits heal you, but you have 60% of your total max HP". Which makes you actually think about not taking it since you will be squishy BUT you can recover HP. Too many perks basically have no drawbacks essentially.

-Lack of tutorial. It took me... literally, 11 hours of gameplay, before I noticed you can dash on walls vertically. There is so many non-explained features. Even with game intuition from playing other games some stuff I couldn't figure out certain things. I went into one of the menues in the game and saw that "Red glowing enemy means you have to parry it, since it goes through your dash invincibility". Every gaming bone in my body told me "ah red glowy enemey, I need to dodge that un-parryable attack" since that is how it has been done in every recent souls-like. Even just a tiny popup when you fail to parry such an attack would have helped. You cannot expect every player to go into the menues to learn something like that especially when this feature exists in other games and it works the opposite way here. Basic tutorial popups is MASSIVELY needed.


What I REALLY disliked:

-Not able to cache perks. This one really pissed me off. There is so much build craft potential with the game and having characters with different like classes and ♥♥♥♥. But since you cannot cache perks, you just get 1 good build once and then you just do that, forever. You are completely discouraged to swap any perks out if you have good ones already since you cannot stash them away and they will just be lost to the world when you extract. This is an extraction game so we should be able to stash away perks for future runs or to gear other characters for their unique class builds. But this also leads me into my other big dislike.

-This is not a Rogue game. If you get one god build. This game is just an action combat extraction game. If you clear a run you don't lose any durability, so if you have a god build going, that's it, that's your game for the rest of your playthroughs. That 1 same build over and over leveling up your meta progression. There needs to be a hard delete on your items after completing a run or some form of durability loss. This would go great with the above as if you could stash away perks and such. You could make sure you have perks and weapons for your next run, while taking your god build to ensure a clear of your current run, but losing it in the process. A roguelike/lite is all about RESETTING. If the game doesnt reset you then it's not a rogue game. This is what eventually made me want to review this game negatively because the game loop is just over for me right now. I have a 3 crystal gadgets, with them giving me 45% extra armor, I have insanely good perks making me steamroll any boss or mob in the wild, I heal on crits and I have 2 medkits for the few times I take more damage than what my crits can heal. I just go loop and loop and loop, clearing with ease. But at that point what is the roguelike aspect? I just go in with same build same character nothing really resets other than vendors, world and what bosses I meet. Idk, I really feel this a giant flaw in the design rn and its the core thing keeping me from recommending the game or trying to get any friends along for the ride (and yeah I have only played solo).


To end on I wanna say, thanks alot to the devs of the game for the quick patches and responding to the community. I am a big fan of the Hyper Light universe and really want to see this game thrive. While there are aspects of the game I really dislike I think you have something really special cooking here and I hope you keep staying in the kitchen until this comes out as a 5 star gourmet meal.

Mashing together "open-world" exploration, rogue-like game design with extraction based systems leaves this game with none of these key design elements working well. There are far too many annoyances and frustrations in the fundamental gameplay loop that leaves me feeling empty and devoid of any accomplishment and feeling bitter when I lose a run and all my good gear, knowing the RNG gods may not be on my side next run. Compared with something like RoR2 and Hades, where each run delivers a unique way to modify your playstyle; feeling the excitement of starting a new run just to see what crazy experimentation I can make with my build. Whereas here in HLB this doesn't really exist because of how items work.

The game really wants you to play it in a very particular way, here in HLB items aside from weapon types don't give you much more than slight stat increases and don't push you to handle enemy encounters any differently. You aren't really building an interesting and engaging run based around wholly different combat systems that synergise in cool and unexpected ways, but are asked to spend an hour trying to find the best loot on the map seed without dying, to give yourself the best chance to beat the bosses, only 2 of which are in the game so far, the third (before the final) is a placeholder fight with the previous boss but with a slew of bugs and glitches that make it incredibly difficult to beat, even with a full set of rare gear.

The exploration aspect gets stale really quickly, I know that Heart Machine have worked really hard to have this procedural generated map every run, but I don't think this adds anything to the gameplay when these worlds aren't filled with much to do, and the things they are filled with are the same in every run. There's no real sense of exploration here (even though that's supposedly the aim and selling point for these maps). There's some nice design and art that's gone into this, some interesting building structures, but the open world setting is more like a big field of undulating geometry, with some hazards dotted between destinations. I would have much preferred a handcrafted world more akin to Hyper Light drifter but built for this rogulike/extraction experience. I know I can't stop comparing this game to other Rogue-like gems but I think the team missed why some of those games work so incredibly well, Hades for example (I have around 100 hours on) rewards you for winning or losing a run in different ways that feed back into the story, even though the run levels are basically the same each run, the game through mastering every element of game, level, enemy and sound design make repeat journeys as enjoyable as the last.

Don't get me wrong, there are certainly things I like about this, when you do have great gear, killing the regular enemies does feel pretty satisfying and I like the overall design and aesthetic of the game but I can't help but wonder why there needs to be a hub world at all, couldn't this just be all inside the main map, perhaps with safety zones where characters are, maybe having these two areas feel more connected physically could bridge the void of the narrative a bit. The combat feel pretty good (aside from the parry mechanic which is useless) and some balancing of enemies. I wish the team the best of luck with this one (as someone who has been anticipating this for long time) and look forward to see where they take it when it releases but in it's current state I don't think the fundamental gameplay elements are really working all that well together in the way I think they should.

There needs to be some semblance of difficulty progression. If there already is, then I don't want to know what the higher level challenges demand of you. There's making a "challenging" game, and then there's sadism.

Sadism is creating a combat system that would be novel for a souls-like (fighting three enemies max simultaneously), but with a dozen mobs swarming you like it's a Dynasty Warriors game.

Sadism is making every hit a crushing blow to your chances of survival, but not providing even a single heal from the beginning (which was the original plan, fortunately it was changed in a patch, you get EXACTLY a single heal).

Sadism is spawning enemies in the overworld so densely that you are always taking aggro from something, and cannot stop to check your map or have a moment to appreciate the visuals, which will consequently go underappreciated.

Sadism is creating an environment with all of this, and then when your player HAS legitimately overcome the insanity which is your basic, moment-to-moment gameplay, you don't even heal them fully to fight the five waves of mobs you drop on them every time they extract.

The patch most recent to my review is promising. I'm happy the devs are listening, which is the #1 reason why I even bothered to write this.

Let me preface by saying that I only really bought this game because I love Hyper Light Drifter, just as I bought Solar Ash for the same reason before that. HLD is a game design hallmark, where beautiful visual, amazing sound design and music blend with hard-but-fair gameplay seamlessly, and it tells a better story than SA without uttering a single word. Sure, there were (and still are) some bugs, but it doesn't take away from the experience. I was hyped when I heard that Heart Machine wasn't a one-hit wonder after all, when Solar Ash Kingdom (later renamed) was announced, but still wary, as I simply didn't think it's possible to deliver the same somber and beautiful experience that HLD was. And it wasn't. SA turned out to be the first stepping stone on shounenization of Heart Machine works, with ceaseless yapping, mediocre story with a twist that was seen coming after you beat the tutorial boss, barebones exploration, ininspiring ambient music, and lackluster visuals. While gameplay itself was fairly fun when it worked, especially on highest difficulty (traditionally only accessible and probably beatable only after completing the game once), this was not an experience that made me want to come back to it after completing everything once, unlike HLD, that I keep replaying from time to time, just to see those glorious sights and listen to beautiful music made by his synthetic highness Disasterpeace. Needless to say I was skeptical when Hyper Light Breaker was announced to be the opposite of what HLD stood for - a 3D randomly generated roguelite that explicitly states the way to play it is in co-op, as opposed to 2D Zelda-like tailored action solo game, but still decided to buy it full price because a) I LOVE HLD, and felt it ok to pay this money for the good times I had with it and b) I believed (and still kinda do) that majority of reviewers not recommending the game after 2 hrs of gameplay with difficulty complaints simply needed to git gud. HLD wasn't an easy game off the bat, and transition to 3D made your experience with it irrelevant for HLB. Now that I have played this game for 7ish hours (some of them were in offline mode thus it doesn't show) I can confidently say that it actually is the case, or rather it would be, if not for simply awful technical state of the game at the time of writing this (game ver. v0.51c.108329). I can also say that this game should have been called something else. This is NOT Hyper Light experience. Familiar sounds, NPCs, surroundings, HUD design are there, sure. I can see how devs are struggling to make gameplay loop feel like HLD in 3D, with player character having a whole array of gear that you need to learn to use effectively in order to beat otherwise kind of unfair odds, sure. But this simply isn't what HLD fantasy was about, thus I feel like putting Hyper Light in the title is misleading. If I were to draw an analogy, HLD is sort of like Sekiro, where you get a whole bunch of stuff that can make your journey easier, but also you spawn in the world already equipped with everything you need to beat whatever the game throws at you, without sacrificing (or maybe actually enhancing) fun. You simply need to git gud at either of them. Now HLB on the other hand feels more like mainline Souls game with fog gate, item and enemy randomizer, except you have limited inventory slots, and every death takes away a piece of your equipment, also you get 1 estus flask (after begging devs for it, and they give it to you in exchange for wasting an extremely precious resource on an upgrade slot you probably acquired prior to that, turning it into the least impactful upgrade ever), also this flask doesn't refill when you die unless you die enough to reset the world. And honestly, it may sound bad, but you CAN, you actually CAN git gud, you CAN turn fights into unfun dashfest, chipping away at enemies with your toothpick, you CAN save up enough for some upgrades and equipment after tucking your tail and extracting several times... But then the technical difficulties strike. Your progress isn't saved during your time in the Overgrowth, and I kid you not, it is only when I started to learn the game enough to dispatch small groups of enemies without losing health, it started crashing. If you crash while in Overgrowth, it counts as a death, so it takes away Rez and durability when you reload the game. This was the straw that turned those thumbs down for me. Not to mention the fact that random midboss spawns (like Acolyte or Engineer) are insanely overtuned, will chase you everywhere, and are the only enemies that are allowed to step on extraction platform. Also, yeah, parry system is weird, and it feels like it's weird because enemy hitboxes are weird, but parrying is basically the only way to "reliably" restore health in early game. I can see the potential for Solar Ash Breaker (please rename btw, there's no way first character you play, the most generic shonen protag (based on description) with a frickin tail, is meant to be a playable character in HLUniverse game), but there's simply too many balancing and technical issues that make it just unfun at the time of this rantview. I will change it according to changes made to the game, but right now, TL:DR is -
if you come looking for Hyper Light experience and don't want anything else, leave. Disasterpeace is gone, Hyper Light Soul went with him. Game is hard, but not unbeatable, devs are going "you FEEL like Drif... Breaker!" route, so no more sword+basic gun Judgement kills though, unless parrying gets tuned. Bugs galore, enemies stuck in walls, enemies running away and never coming back, crashes, poor performance on any setting except Low, extreme hardware drain in any case. If you want to support the devs however, and don't mind playing alpha state games, there is actually a somewhat playable game waiting for you, so don't feel apprehended to buy it, Early Access is still better than Patreon. Once the issues are fixed and stuff is balanced, it will surely become a decent game, and there is yet faint hope that it will become a Hyper Light game as well.
P.S. All of this is based only on solo experience

3060 and a ryzen 9 7950x
depending on where the camera is, my fps is either 130 or 40. worst optimization in a game ive played. when games are poorly optimized they usually have dlss as a crutch, none here.

genuinely unplayable

What a joke. I keep asking myself how is it even possible that this game has got almost 2500 reviews in just 10 days? And how on earth do people rate it positively?

It's a $29.99 game but it feels no better than a $2.99 mobile game.

There’s no introduction. You just show up at the empty base, and the shopkeepers don't speak at all. There are 5 shops each selling different things with the same mechanism, so why make 5 instead of just 1? Just to make the base look less empty? In addition, every time you refresh a store, it asks for double the resources, and the quantity remains after you return from another battle. What a surprise.

The world map is dry. Just as empty as your base, with boring landscape and a few random colorful trees thrown in for variety. You can walk around for 2 minutes and see everything, but then you still have to travel forever just to gather prisms so you can fight a boss. 
The combats are outrageously difficult. It’s not like the enemies make smart moves, instead, you’re bombarded by wave after wave of enemies with high health and damage. To make it even worse, you’ll encounter extremely strong enemies marked with a skull icon when you're 10 minutes into the game. There’s no time to collect resources during battles, and zero tolerance for mistakes. I also encountered that ridiculous OST glitch, a relaxing tune playing while I desperately fighting off 5 enemies targeting me at the same time.

If you decide to quit the map, you still have to fight through waves of enemies. 

I consider myself pretty good at video games, I beat Hollow Knight much faster than most players, so after about half an hour I managed to win a boss fight. But honestly, I don’t even know why I bothered. Maybe I just wanted to see how bad this game could really get. The battle is not fun, just a reaction-speed test with little reward afterward. That second boss is impossible. 

At this point, I can only imagine the people giving this game positive reviews are either relatives, friends, or trolls. Seriously, stay far away from this one. Save your $29.99 and spend it on something worth it.

My curator page

Hyper Light Breaker is good game overall with potential to grow. I've completed the game multiple times already. Let's get started with the bad about the game:
-there's no tutorial for a lot of the mechanics. There are important mechanics that the game doesn't teach you about, such as dashing up walls, world danger, and specific resources and how to obtain them.

-parrying feels absolutely useless unless you're fighting a boss. The game throws swarms of enemies at you making it really difficult to parry unless you're extremely skilled.

-melee combat is unsatisfying with heavy weapons. Heavy weapons make you feel really open and vulnerable, they don't feel very powerful and impactful like a heavy weapon should.

-target locking is a nightmare. Target locking mechanic is so bad it needs a rework. Whenever you perform a special attack while target locked it doesn't aim it at the target, but rather whichever keyboard direction input you're facing. The target lock does weird 360s, it doesn't lock on the nearest target, and you can't swap targets without having to retoggle it versus dark souls where you can swap targets at any time.

-the difficulty meter spikes to quickly. The game is an open world rogue lite, it wants you to explore but at the same it doesn't. The difficulty meter spikes extremely quickly, spawning consecutive hordes of enemies, giving you little breathing time to explore and loot. I feel like it should be slower since it's open world and not risk of rain.

- The story doesn't feel existing right now, but that's to be expected since it's early access. I feel like there should of been a prologue like hyper light drifter had, yet that may change over time.

- Horrid optimization. I get severe frame drops the more I play. This game needs better optimization.

-The Price is too high for what the game has to offer. $30 is an unreasonable early access price. I would say the game is worth $20 it needs more time cook.

-Solo is extremely difficult. Multiplayer is very much recommended as it allows you to divide the hordes of enemies up making it more bearable.

For the good about the game

-for me, personally, the gameplay loop is satisfying. It's an extraction based rogue lite you get to keep all of your loot and even store extra. You die, your equipment loses durability and eventually it is lost.

-melee combat is satisfying and impactful with every other weapon besides heavy.

-gun play is very satisfying and impactful. I like how you can't rely on the gun all the time and you have to use melee combat.

-making builds is fun, yet there is room for more variety. The holobytes are what really determine your build. They can allow you to dish out a lot of damage, to allowing you to tank attacks, or have more range support.

-fun with friens

-beautiful world design however there needs to be more added to the world. Such as weather and biome hazards. The world also needs dungeons. There are mini dungeons but I feel like big dungeons would be impactful. Hell, it would be awesome in order to make it to a boss fight you have to go through a dungeon.

The game has potential and I liked what I've played so far. Overall I'll give it a 7/10 for right now. It's an early access title so I expect improvements. So please devs if you read this, don't abandon this game

As an early access game, Heart Machine has proven they're dedicated to fixing any issues with the game, both in game design and bug-wise. They've been extremely fast and attentive, and for that, I enthusiastically recommend this game and eagerly await future updates.

Hyper Light Breaker has immense potential. I feel like most of the negative reviews forget that this is an early access game. The game play loop is solid, the combat is interesting, and the open world rogue-lite concept is fantastic. It also feels a bit like an extraction game which adds in a fun risk/reward element. Anyone who complains about the difficulty does not understand the need to upgrade your character over time and get stronger before fighting a boss.

There are some definite balance tweaks needed, but overall I would definitely recommend this game, and I look forward to seeing how it improves over time.

It's got a very unforgiving difficulty curve but it's worth sticking it out! I was hugely discouraged after the first few hours but after spending enough time to get to know enemy patterns, build strategies and the nuances of the gameplay loop I was able to clear a full cycle solo. Yes, it is very very hard, but it's not impossible.