Battle Shapers

Very underrated roguelike shooter, highly recommend!

I really wanted to like Battle Shapers. I really did. I love Megaman, and this game feels, from all of it's promo material, very megaman-coded. Instead, it's a very generic, samey rogue-shooter with mechanics that barely change between runs. The guns on offer are the standard fare. The upgrades and powerups tend to be very "Statistical" rather than actually changing anything meaningful in your run. "Shots have a chance to reflect off surfaces." "Reflected shots do more damage" "Critical hits give you 2% more damage for 5 seconds, stacking up to 5 times." and so on. There's nothing that really shifts your entire playstyle or encourages you to adapt. You instead are rewarded more for just grabbing something stable and good, like the shotgun, slapping a few good mods on it, and running with that every run. There's only 4 stages, and 4 bosses, with no differences between the bosses between runs, meaning you're effectively able to see everything the game has to offer in about 2-3 hours. I just can't suggest something so short and bland, even for it's price or on sale. There's WAY better rogue-shooters with better gear and mechanics out there for similar prices. Roboquest and DeadZone: Rogue spring to mind.

Battle Shapers is a difficult one to provide a general recommendation for, on the basis that I feel a large portion of this game's design is unintentionally antagonistic to casual players. If, you’re well-versed in FPS roguelites and are looking for something fast-paced and challenging, then I would recommend it, and you’re likely to get 15-20 hours of solid, fun runs. I’ve had a lot of fun and the game was 100% worth it for me - despite what my list below might suggest - but this review is more tailored for those sitting on the fence. If you’re not accustomed to FPS# like this, then it will likely come down to where you sit on the “how much difficulty is enough” scale. [h2] General Overview [/h2] Many reviewers are comparing this to RoboQuest - which is my favourite FPS roguelite - and, to be blunt, this game feels like the dev saw RoboQuest and said: “What if we do that, but different”. The gunplay is similar, the art style for story sections is similar, and the general “feel” when playing is similar, but it doesn’t quite hit the same mark. The game is very repetitive, more so than in roguelites, due to the same map structures, limited-feeling builds, a limited pool of bosses, and the way runs are structured. Start a run → clear a tonne of similar floors/rooms -> beat all 3 bosses → fight final boss. The second video on the store page showcases the gameplay well enough. It really is as it looks - snappy, fast-paced, cognitively demanding, and with a fairly detailed meta-progression system to keep adding new things. So what about this is antagonistic? [h2] The Antagonistic Elements [/h2] The game gets progressively harder, both in the meta sense of making runs more challenging, but also mid-run. If you want to finish the game, this is non-negotiable: you have to keep increasing the difficulty, and it will get harder as the run progresses. On top of this, several factors contribute to that feeling of an inflated challenge beyond sheer skill. Give the below a read and consider whether these would bother you enough to drop the game. If not, I recommend you pick it up. [list] [*] I’ve done 7 runs, and in those runs, I’ve won 4 times and am currently at the final difficulty. In these runs, I haven’t had a reroll. I was given one, but the first tier of difficulty took it away from me, as it was the most logical choice to pick. This happens with other unlocks. Just paid to have reduced trap damage? Nice! Now, how about you get dealt an extra 25% anyway so you can progress. Want more rerolls? Well, buy the machine for 500, then pay more for more rerolls on top of that instead of unlocking things. [*] Continuing on the difficulty element, each difficulty increase requires more of these selected. Unlike, say, Hades, where you fine-tune enemy buffs or your limitations, or even RoboQuest, where each difficulty focuses on increased enemy challenge, here, it’s almost all comes down to making yourself weaker. Sometimes, as already noted, by decreasing things you’ve actively paid meta-progression currency for. So, not only are runs getting harder, but difficulty in mid-runs gets harder (boss locations receive more dangerous buffs), and you’re also getting weaker. [*] My quickest winning run was my most recent at 1:21:45. Longest at 1:38:52. On average, runs are an hour an half. Which [i] feels [/i] too long. Run fatigue sets in real quick at the 1-hour mark when enemies get more spongy, rooms start to blend into one another, and the knowledge that one slip of focus could mean you’ve thrown the run and that time investment. You can leave midway through, but progress only saves at the start of a floor. [*] You get four main cores, which you can think of as classes. The first, I would consider the worst by far, but the others you only unlock after beating the respective boss. then, to upgrade the core and have more build/room choices, you have to continue beating the bosses. Ultimately, this boils down to a slow introduction of arguably the more fun elements to combat, as it takes 2-3 runs to really get the progression started, BUT also means if you’re not someone consistently completing runs, your ability to actually experience this core component of the game takes even longer. [*] Later in runs and higher difficulties, more and more enemies become corrupt, essentially having a shield or element-specific shield. On the one hand, it's cool; it requires you to think about what weapons you’re choosing to get through these more effectively, or just use Kinetic, which bypasses the damage reduction slightly. On the other hand, if you don’t have either, things are a slog. Toward the end of runs, enemies can become so spongy that regardless of what you have, they take ages to kill. [/list] There are also some in-run random things that can also cause frustration. For example, when bosses interrupt mid-room to make it more challenging, your map vanishes, and enemy health bars vanish for seemingly no reason. Additionally, you can’t click and hold to continuously shoot some guns, even if they don’t have a charge? Or if you go to apply a mod to a gun only to find out it won’t work on the gun you want, which you couldn’t know beforehand, you have to scrap it instead of being able to choose another reward. Small stuff, but in the realm of a roguelite, which can get repetitive quickly, the small stuff soon adds up. [h2] Tips if You Decide to Give It a Try [/h2] Nothing really to spoil that hasn’t been shown by the devs. Some random tips I think could come in handy if you want a more streamlined start/time: [list] [*] [b] DO NOT BUY META PROGRESSION ITEMS IF YOU PLAN TO QUIT: [/b] When you finish a run, the obvious thing to do is spend your currency, then quit, right? Well, when you buy skills and weapons, one will drop, so you can immediately use it on a run. If you do this and quit out, they vanish and aren’t there when you next start. [*][b] Ignore the home base teleporter: [/b] You unlock this early, and it lets you skip the introductory rooms. It saves like… a minute or two, and you miss out on 2-3 rewards. Not worth doing. [*] [b] Wind → Strike → Volt: [/b] Will make sense if you play. By far the easiest route for all runs. [*] [b] Don’t buy everything [/b]: Anything you buy gets added to the loot pool. Goes without saying that if there’s something you absolutely wouldn’t want to use (I despise charge-based weapons), just don’t buy it. [/list] And, of course, have fun if you do play!

Battle Shapers if a Fun FPS Action Roguelike. The story isn't deep, but the game mechanics are. It's Not a perfect game, but it's a Fun game that I jump into whenever I want to relax. Worth the price. Once you get past the first couple of hours and attempts, the game mechanics grow and grow. Lots of well developed mechanics. Everything isn't given to you right from the start. You gain new abilities and the progression is paced out really well where nothing gets stale or boring. There are a seemingly endless variety of abilities, upgradeable weapons, and tools to unlock. The possibilities and combinations are well designed. The gunplay and movements are fast, fluid, and fun. At first I didn't know if I would like the art style. But I find it fresh and light. Possible endless replay ability. I picked this up on sale $10, it was definitely worth the price I paid. Very Playable on the Steam Deck at lower setting. Supports controllers just fine. But just like most FPS games, I found it best played with a keyboard and mouse.

Every action in this game takes a little more time than you'd expect, enemy spawn reload, shop showing the items. It's not "blazing fast" there are tac shooters with faster and more interesting movement than this. The optimization is pretty bad, movement feels sluggish, weapons don't really have a kick to them, as it all just sounds like space lasers.

Lovely visuals, unfortunately I rather play binding of isaac than this game. Why Isaac? Because this game has same feature clear room with enemies, get "reward" move to next room, and that is it. Critical shots deal +3 dmg. LOL

This game feels weird to me. It is beautiful, and runs incredibly. It's a fast pace fps roguelite, and genuinely feels good. However, there are some problems. The roguelite part of the game isn't roguelite *enough* for each run. There's 4 maps in each run, with each one having semi-random rooms and loot, but there's not enough variance each time you return to provide a significantly different experience. So the first run or two feel really good. Up until you beat the final boss. At which point you realize you're doing the same thing over and over again. You can add modifiers to make the run harder, but that's it. Once you find something that works, you really can just keep doing that thing in each run. The roguelite upgrades are mostly stat upgrades and unlocks, which just doesn't work for the map structure as I said earlier. With the smaller variance in how each run plays out, you really need to be unlocking new traits and abilities. And while technically there is a function for that in the 4 Cores you can equip, those traits and abilities are locked as random loot throughout the run, and the game will provide upgrade options that you just can't make use of without certain other upgrades that you just don't have. Most upgrades either work with a buff/debuff or apply a buff/debuff, but the game will give you the former before you have the chance to get the latter, making that upgrade useless until you can get an upgrade later in the run that actually applies the effect needed. All in all, the runs feel too similar to one another, so even though the combat feels great, it just doesn't make up for the flawed structure of the game. But there is one aspect of the combat that I do want to rag on a little. All weapons have an element assigned to them. Fire, vibro, plasma, or kinetic which is the "no element" basically. Each weapon will be the same element every time you find it, they're predestined like that. The 3 elements inflict a special debuff that corresponds with their element, which is pretty neat, and the elements can interact with each other in fun ways. However, there are random modifiers in the maps that make enemies have a chance to be corrupted, meaning you need to damage them with the according element OR kinetic damage to actually be able to beat them. This modifier sounds fun at first, but it ultimately negates the desire to pick up any elemental weapons. Especially when most kinetic weapons will deal a lot more damage than the elemental weapons? The Devs seem to have made the kinetic weapons stronger since they can't inflict their special debuff, which makes sense. But when kinetic weapons can damage all corrupted enemies and on average do more damage, which lets you negate a modifer in a map while dealing with the ever increasing elite enemies more efficiently, there's just little reason to pick up an elemental weapon. Why would you when in the later parts of a run a majority of enemies won't take damage from it? Each individual aspect of this part of combat works fine on its own, but put all together its just too flawed.

Fun af

Its not a bad game, its just not as good as like 3 other games exactly like it I can think of off the top of my head