Hyper Light Breaker is an exciting new roguelike that has just entered Early Access. A fresh addition to the Hyper Light franchise, this game offers thrilling combat, an engaging universe, and some fun ideas. However, balancing and performance issues mar the Early Access launch, and some systems might require significant rework before the game is ready for its full release.
Hyper Light Breaker belongs to what I call the “roguelike extraction” genre. Similar titles include Risk of Rain or the title I recently reviewed, Warden’s Will. In this genre, players load into a procedurally generated map with randomized loot spawns protected by enemy mobs. Like its peers, Hyper Light Breaker tasks players with completing three key objectives on each map before escaping and moving on to the next stage.
In Hyper Light Breaker, this setup takes the form of entering the Overgrowth, a realm ruled by the tyrannical Abyss King and his loyal Crown enforcers. To confront the Abyss King, players must first defeat three Crowns in challenging boss battles. Upon death, players return to a hub city where resources gathered during runs can be traded for weapons and permanent upgrades to aid in future attempts.
Hyper Light Breaker stands out from traditional roguelikes in how it handles death. When you die during a run in the Overgrowth, you don’t immediately lose all your collected weapons and perks or reset the map. Instead, the map only resets once you’ve run out of lives. Each death sends you back to the hub, giving you another shot at the same map. Similarly, powerups and gear have their own durability, losing one charge per death until they’re completely depleted and removed from your loadout.
The combat in Hyper Light Breaker is pretty fun, if held back by some specific design issues we’ll touch on starting in the next paragraph. Weapons are divided into melee and ranged, with ranged weapons acting more like a special ability almost, with limited charges you collect through melee kills. The melee weapons especially stand out for their variety and fun feel, feeling really unique to use and satisfying to smack your enemies with. Weapons are also separated from characters, allowing for build variety, so you can play your favorite character without sacrificing the weapon you like to play with the most.
Finally, I have to compliment Hyper Light Breaker for its cool setting and interesting characters, which stand out from other games. You have to imagine that the game has some characters and lore that appeal to audiences, considering that Hyper Light Breaker is the prequel to another game in the franchise, and that said franchise now also includes a tabletop game. That, unfortunately, is the last compliment I have for the game because, in its current Early Access state, Hyper Light Breaker is riddled with issues that hold the title back.
The most glaring of these issues has to be how brutally difficult the game can be. Nobody expects to be able to make a lot of progress on a roguelike game on their first, second, third, or even tenth run, with permanent boosts serving as a way to ease the difficulty curve over time after many tries. Hyper Light Breaker, unfortunately, is not only shockingly hard to play at early levels but also severely gatekeeping your ability to progress using those permanent upgrades.
Hyper Light Breaker’s combat system features dodging and parries. In most combat situations, however, you’ll only really make use of the dodge, as the game tends to swarm you with enemies right out of the gate. It becomes a serious problem, where players, who die in four or five hits from enemies, can find themselves backed into a corner before they can gain meaningful progress in a level. The sheer amount of enemies would be less of a problem if not for the abundance of debuffs, knockbacks, and stuns they use. You’ll quickly learn not to be surprised watching yourself get zeroed at full health thanks to a series of enemy attacks that essentially stunlock you in place until you die.
What’s worse, however, is that the game makes it near impossible for an early player to make any progress during their runs. This is due in part to a lack of tutorials explaining the importance or location of certain currencies, but also that said currencies, as well as weapons and pickups, most of which won’t make too meaningful of an impact on their own, are all heavily guarded by mobs and, often, minibosses that are simply too difficult for you to defeat.
What’s worse is that any upgrade made through the hub world cannot be done with the default currency you collect from kills, meaning most of your runs will end with you bringing home nothing of use. For this type of game to work, you have to return from each run with something that can theoretically make you even a little bit stronger. This simply is not the case with Hyper Light Breaker, and while the main (and often only) currency you collect can be used in conjunction with other currencies to buy weapons and upgrades, it’s never enough and can lead to death being utterly pointless, or worse, since, after four deaths, you have to pay to reactivate the portal using that currency. The fee is hefty, too. I found myself wondering what would happen if I simply ran out of this currency, but I didn’t make a point of trying to find out.
In its current state, Hyper Light Breaker’s combat is simply too difficult, and progression is severely gatekept by a game design that makes the permanent buffs typical of the roguelike genre inaccessible. Paired with some frame drops and optimization issues, it’s safe for me to say that while Hyper Light Breaker is promising, it has some work to do before it’s ready to launch.
Pros:
- Interesting combat that feels good when it works
- An exciting formula and unique world and characters
Cons:
- Severe difficulty, made worse by inaccessible means towards progression
- Frame drops and optimization issues in the current Early Access build
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