Genuinely think this is one of the best fps Roguelites I've ever played and has quickly become one of my favourites, right up there beside the almighty Roboquest. To start off with my favourite part of the entire game, the hero design. This game has some of the best hero designs of any game I have ever seen, not just for Roguelites/likes. Everything is based on eastern folklore, with all the characters representing an animal. They are all incredibly unique, look incredible and are just so damn cool.
I admit, complex abilities do not equal interesting or show good character design, but they have it down perfectly. Whereas some characters are very complicated, once you do a few runs you should be able to figure out every hero eventually.
The progression system is one of the best that I’ve every experienced. If you haven't played the game, you have a skill tree that holds both universal upgrades that apply to all heroes as well as 5 unique upgrades for each hero. The skill tree runs alongside the ascension system which is a pool of 18 perks unique to all heros, perks upgrade one of 3 attributes to a hero and are obtained throughout the run, perks can have 3 levels or just one which can be increased by picking the perk more than once when you get an unlock during a run, you can't max out everything out so learning the perks and creating synergies is essential to the higher difficulties. The ascensions help make every run feel different as well as allowing you to build a hero in a completely different way every run. Of course with some ascension being stronger than others, you are bound to fall into patterns, but the game gives so many options allowing you to build whatever you want. I truly believe every single hero is incredible and strong, they all have unique playstyles and can be built in many different ways. If it wasn’t for how much I loved the designs of the heroes in this game I definitely wouldn’t have pushed to 100%.
If the hero design was my number 1 favourite thing about the game, the gunplay and abilities are my number 2. Like the heroes, I genuinely believe every single gun in this game is strong and I actually can not share a single gun that I dislike. The gunplay just feels so damn satisfying, I’d say it’s as good as Roboquest, which I’m comparing it to again because I love Roboquest with all my existence.
I do have some criticisms as the game is not perfect. The major issue would be the translations. If you have ever tried to translate something into or from Chinese to English, then get ready for ever single item in the game to be at least 3 lines long. You can download and apply translation packs made by other users for custom descriptions of items, abilities and weapons. However most of the ones I found only covered the base games content. Bare in mind there are 4 DLCs all with 2 characters, more weapons and a unique progression mechanic. There is also the movement, I would not say the movement is bad, however it is very obvious that they went for the most basic movement system. You can jump and dash, that is it, not even a sprint. I wouldn’t say this is something that will ruin the experience, however until you get abilities, perks or items that add to your movement it does just feel like you are a walker the entire time. I also feel like the movement is used to make the game more difficult, as if you could run around at 3x the speed of the enemies it would be unbelievably easy, and the reason they have to keep the speed down to make it more difficult is due to the enemies being fairly simple. The game is still challenging, you take A LOT of damage in the later difficulties and like with every roguelike/lite there are items, abilities and perks that help with survivability.
I’ve waffled a lot so I’ll make a brief overview:
Hero design = 10/10
Gunplay = 10/10
Abilities = 9/10
Skill tree progression = 7/10
Perks / hero building = 10/10
Overall difficulty / challenge = 7/10
Additional game modes = 6/10
Enemy design = 7/10
Boss design = 9/10
Achievement hunt experience = 8/10
Overall 9/10, for me it’s nearly perfect, if you like FPS roguelites/likes this is literally Roboquest if is was Chinese and also a hero shooter, glory to Xi Jinping or whatever
