Hyper Light Breaker, Heart Machine’s long-awaited open-world RPG mixed with roguelite progression and soulslike combat should appeal to fans of Risk of Rain and/or Elden Ring. It’s currently available in Early Access on Steam.
Prior to this writing, I was starting to lose momentum after a few games left me questioning why I bother spending my time this way, but I’m glad to say that even in its relatively unpolished state, Hyper Light Breaker offers an experience that is both challenging and rewarding in equal measure — it also doesn’t hurt that it’s total eye candy, rendered in gorgeous cel-shaded 3D that manages to capture the essence of its acclaimed neon-coated 2D predecessor, Hyper Light Drifter.
The player starts with a pre-assigned character known as Vermillion — an especially lithe and dashing Breaker affixed with a curious blue monkey tail — and given a brief tutorial to learn the basics of movement (jump, dash, strafe) as well as combat (melee attacks, ranged attacks, parrying) before finally embarking on their quest to defeat the Abyss King.
Their first stop is the Cursed Outpost, which serves as the hub area for players to invite or join other players to form Breaker teams. They can also purchase, sell or upgrade weapons, gear and enhancements as well as interact with NPCs like Pherus Bit, captain of the Breakers, who can decode lore fragments, expand player abilities and perform other tasks between runs, here called “cycles.”
A cycle consists of gathering prisms (floating geometric power sources that function like keys, found by defeating enemies or unlocking chests) to gain access to each of the three Crowns (minibosses of which there are currently only two, so one of them will always be a duplicate). It will then (theoretically) culminate in a battle with the Abyss King.
The player will start a new cycle with four “rezs” (lives) and a slough of rewards including (but not limited to) currency, loot and skill points if they successfully complete a run and return via telepad to the Cursed Outpost in one piece. Conversely, there are severe penalties for losing all of their rezs before completing the cycle. At the time of writing, the boss arena for the Abyss King remains inaccessible, which makes the payoff for finishing a cycle underwhelming. However, for me, open world games should always be more about the journey and less about the destination — and what an awesome journey it is, especially with some companions there to help.
I played solo at first to get my sea legs, as I’d heard the learning curve is a bit steep in the beginning — and that was no exaggeration. I only lasted about 10 minutes before getting ravaged by a pack of cyborg dogs and, in classic soulslike fashion, everything faded to black before a red text appeared, informing me that I was indeed “DEAD.”
Determined to redeem myself, I jumped right back in but still had a hard time getting even a single prism before derezzing, so I joined a Breaker team and learned a lot from watching other players, and even more so when I started playing with friends who could explain what they were doing.
Among other things, I quickly gathered that many gameplay nuances were not included in the tutorial but could be gleaned from entries in the codex that players can choose to read — things such as dashing upwards in addition to double jumping to get to points that would otherwise be impossible to reach. Before long, I found that there were so many ways that I could navigate the world, express myself through combat and tweak my loadouts, which made the whole experience more dynamic than I initially realized.
Like any roguelike worth its salt, the gameplay loop may be technically repetitive, but it also manages to feel fresh every time, with each run offering different enemies (or at least enemies that deal different kinds of damage) varied loot drops, lore fragments, and such, and no cycle is exactly like the last.
Thanks to recent patches, Hyper Light Breaker continues to evolve as the devs gather more feedback and other information from players, mostly for the better.
The addition of executions makes combat feel even more satisfying, and the recent addition of a character called Ravonna offers both aesthetic appeal and well as default weapons and stats that are better suited for a more aggressive play style than the others.
However, not every tweak seemed like a step in the right direction, such as the decision to add fall damage and drowning damage. Also strange is the new inability to use a hoverboard (the character’s means of travel) whenever enemies are nearby. These additions were both unnecessary and unwelcome — rather than adding appreciable challenge, these things just feel petty.
As stated earlier, Hyper Light Breaker is still in Early Access, so there’s plenty of time for further tweaking. There are a few changes that I hope they make in future patches throughout the spring. Besides more content and nudges, I did notice several glitches and bugs that will likely be addressed before the game hits 1.0 — things like enemy AI freezing, or enemies falling beneath the level or getting stuck in mid-air.
Beyond these obvious fixes, I’m curious to see how the market area in the Cursed Outpost will expand, what the placeholder NPCs will allow the player to do or any other changes that the devs may have in store. And of course, the biggest question remains — when will we finally be able to go toe-to-toe with the Abyss King himself?
Until then, I’ll probably focus on other games I’ve been meaning to play (or start reviewing) but if the legacy of Hyper Light Drifter is any indication, my guess is that Hyper Light Breaker won’t disappoint either.
Buy Hyper Light Breaker — PC
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