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.