Hyper Light Breaker

Stick with it. It will get better

A great next gen coop take on the original. I just wish it was better optimized for the Steam Deck.

I've held off on writing this until I felt I could give it a recommend. Recently it's hit a point where I feel I can do so, but not without reservation. Game play wise, combat is fun, and progression from learning the weapons and its systems was satisfying, though there doesn't feel like there is a long term carrot unless you're self motivated. Difficulty fluctuates wildly. The early hours were incredibly frustrating, the new tutorial is nice, but doesn't prepare you for the volume of mobs you'll encounter at times. Then eventually, once you have a full kit, you wish it was harder. I do think the current state where we no longer have the radiation zones to pressure you off map, combined with starting in the "easy" biome, is a soft enough ramp on, a major concern I had before. I think the biggest issue right now is that lack of long term carrot. Before the recent changes, which forces your gear to be consumed in turn for materials at the end of a successful run, I found that carrot coming in the for of the loot grind to try to find my ideal set per character. I admit the game loop as a whole is in a *much* better place now than it was then. But I must also admit that missing that carrot has shortened its replay-ability for me significantly. I think an option to retain your gear at the cost of retaining your world tier + a step boost to monster and boss scaling by world tier for subsequent clears, would create a ramping difficulty curve to keep combat interesting while also providing a loot hunting carrot to the end game to keep looting interesting. Full disclosure, I've been following the studio since Hyper Light Drifter released and I really want this game to succeed. The game was a bit of a mess when it first released but and it's improved to a point that I'm comfortable with recommending people dive in at a 30$ price point. That said, I really hope it finds that end game carrot to keep me coming back to this whenever I have 15-30 minutes to burn. Keep up the good work Heart Machine.