Lynked: Banner of the Spark

Do be aware: Lynked: Banner of the Spark, contains a second EULA, which is distinct from and radically differs from the one presented on Steam, under which the developer grants themselves broad and invasive authority to scan the entirety of your computer (even going so far as to scan connected mobile devices) for software they do not approve of, in the name of "cheat prevention." This is invasive, and was not disclosed.

A fairly shallow adhd feeling action game, with a bit of every other genre sprikled about. Honestly not bad with friends id say, but the real life locked resources and other tedious timesinks to gain any progress killls momentum. Oh and that second EULA hiding in game to dodge steam protections is gross. Completely and totally gross.

What a W game man. It's like Hades and Animal Crossing mixed together. I don't understand the thumbs down reviews at all. Just had a blast playing this for 4.7 hours straight! Definitely recommend to the players that love Rogue type/building/town management/crafting and resource gathering/fishing. YES SIR!

This game showed some potential early on but it never came to fruition, and the addition of incredibly invasive "anti-cheat" measures in a EULA hidden from Steam puts it over the edge. Do not buy or play this game.

I bought this game thinking it would be a fun time playing a Hades/Animal Crossing game. Plus the aesthetic is great. However, when I started playing it and spent more time than I care to admit just fishing in the beginning, I discovered after doing my first mission that the weapon I had unlocked was not available. And when I returned to base, it wasn't there to be purchased anymore either. But then I unlocked it again for purchase, but I had to get two more of the rare fish I had already used. I also saw that one of the fish I needed for another weapon that I had one of had also disappeared. And after another mission I also saw that the upgrades I made using the Soulsparks had reset, but the Soulsparks I had used were still gone too. There is a good game here, but with issues like these stunting my progression of the game, I can't in good faith recommend it. And from what I read online, the devs have moved onto other games so I don't know if the issues I was having will ever be fixed.

it's good for the first one or two chapters, seemed promising. the animation and graphics are great, although a bit expensive on resources. i was going for the achievements, but it became annoyingly repetitive very early, after that it was a stretch to try and complete, I gave up on chapter 7. that's too sad because the bosses are pretty fun, but hidden under massive grind of same rooms over and over it tried and failed in being everything at once, a rougelite, farming, building, and none of the systems seems polished enough. a lot of small combat bugs and overall inconsistent experience if you're looking for cute 5-10 hours of game, go for it, otherwise I wouldn't recommend

It's dreadfully shallow and boring. You have so much time sinks put in into building meaningless decorations and outfits, but you can barely upgrade your weapons and every upgrade is super expensive. The "rogue"-lite nature doesn't do anything. You will never change your weapon after the first chest, because why would you, you already can put the best mods into every weapon every stage - not like they matter AT ALL. There are no run-defining alterations in the entire game. Then you have barely any enemy vareity and it gets so spammy with exploding bots, AoE attacks, projecticles etc, that you basically have to do hit-and-run the entire time. Skills are barely present and dreadfully weak (hey a 50 HP heal on a 5 minute Cool Down with 800 HP or something. lol). Hands down, it's just not very enjoyable and I'm calling it quits.

I recommend this game, but with a big caveat that I'll get into in a bit. The gameplay loop of Lynked is mostly solid. You have a basic city building, resource gathering, and farming system which works like a hub area that you return to in between missions. It has some similarities to roguelike games. The townspeople offer you quests. Some of those quests are to improve or increase the number of people and buildings in the town and this gives you access to upgrades and varieties of your weapons and gadgets for use in combat. The second type of quest is to complete missions in a combat zone area where you proceed between different floors or regions of the zone. If you complete the mission, you keep whatever upgrade materials you acquired during the mission. You lose many of those resources if you die. The city building part is pretty well developed. You gather townspeople from different combat missions and then they return to town and offer items for sale to improve some aspect of the game. They also provide different tiles and decorative items you can place in the town like streets, benches, structures, lighting, and your own personal house you can decorate in various ways. It seems a bit like animal crossing or a much simpler version of decorative games like planet coaster and the like. The combat in the game isn't overly difficult or complex but dodging and hitboxes are a little slippery. It's like dark souls if the dodging mechanics weren't precise or a platformer where jumping was a little loose. It's not ideal, but it's workable. That is, until you get to the combat missions themselves. There are two kinds of combat missions: main story missions that progress the plot and side missions that progress the decorative or social parts of the city building. Unfortunately there isn't much difference in how the missions play out. If I had to use one word to describe the missions it would be "repetitive." You start a mission by selecting the weapon you would like to use, activating the special abilities you want to use, and selecting a free upgrade for some aspect of your combat. You unlock more options as the game progresses. This seems fine on first glance, but aside from the initial setup of weapon type and gadget behavior, every upgrade is entirely random. Some of the upgrades are really helpful to overcome limitations in the combat system. Others are not. What do I mean? Combat is fast-paced and reactionary with very specific moves by a limited selection of enemies. This would be great if there were exceptional dodge and aim mechanics. There aren't. Dodge doesn't cancel your attack animations. This isn't a problem in most games once you learn the attack patterns of enemies and when you find an opening. What it lacks here is a smooth adjustment from attack animation to dodging. Once the attack animation is finished there is a significant gap before a dodge can occur. Given the fast-pacing of the combat it seems counter intuitive to leave gaps between actions. This becomes more noticeable as you start fighting stronger and more numerous enemies. It might have been helpful to introduce invulnerability frames shortly before and after the dodge animation occurs. You seem to take no damage in the split second of the dodge but after, you are immediately vulnerable. Getting stunlocked is frustratingly common. I'm sure your mileage will vary if you "git gud." All of this pales in comparison to the real downside of the combat. It's boring. There are a significant number of weapon types to choose from which is great. There aren't a lot of enemy types and there aren't a lot of weapons that are fast enough to allow effective dodging as well as proper aiming of attacks. So, by default, fast-firing ranged weapons become the preference. The rapid fire blaster seems to be the best weapon I've used. Not because it does a lot of damage or even because it is very good. What it does allow is the shortest time between attack animation and dodging and it has the ability to fire a charged shot for when the enemy is moving slowly or charging up their own attacks. The versatility of the weapon is great and the standoff distance is ideal. But, unless you are required to use a specific weapon type, you'll always choose the weapon that feels the best for your playstyle. The biggest limitation for using the other weapons is how much damage an enemy does with basic attacks. It's common for a single attack from a larger enemy to do 1/3 or 1/4 of your max health pool. The slower the weapon you are using the more likely you are to take a hit. Healing is rare and ineffective. There's a special ability you can get that restores about 5% of your health when activated and has a long cooldown. Given the fast pace of the combat itself, most battles are over quickly and then you are stuck trying to heal or search for healing items in between sections of fights. If you want to actually get through the level as quickly as possible without downtime, you have to select the weapon that provides the most mobility and damage without relying on healing. One of the upgrades available for every weapon is a 25/50/75/100% chance to restore 5 health when you kill an enemy. You will probably have 400-1000 hp by the mid to late game so this is a trivial amount of healing. But, if you take a hit you can recover the lost HP after killing several enemies. This randomly generated weapon upgrade is so helpful for survival that if you don't get it as an option early on, longer missions become exceptionally more skill intensive and difficult. Most of the limitations of the combat system would be ironed out by making this an always available passive effect rather than a randomly rolled upgrade. In some maps, especially with lots of resources, it's not as necessary. In other maps, especially the ones without chests (which drop health items), the bullet hell requires a lot more attention and skill. I'm not sure what might be the correct solution but if a single random upgrade turns an otherwise difficult mission into a faceroll something needs to change. Either tighten up the dodge and aim mechanics, make healing more efficient overall, or balance all the weapons and upgrades so they each have the potential to be good as well. These would amount to seemingly small changes in the game but I think they would make this one of the better action roguelikes on the market. The lack of diversity in missions is also a limitation, but I think tightening up the combat system would offset the perceived downside. For one, you'd be going through the missions experiencing more action rather than the downtime you have currently. Give the game a shot. It is fun and there is a lot of decorating you can do in the city building portion that I really enjoyed.

I love everything about this game, but the gameplay just doesn't keep me coming back. The art is amazing, I listen to the music outside of the game, the characters are fun and have great personality, I love the building of your town and roaming around doing quests for your little guys. But then you go into a mission using the same weapon you've used every mission before. You get drops that really dont change anything other than you might get a better element on your weapon. Most upgrades you're going to pick in-mission are minor boosts. And upgrading your weapon outside of the mission requires you to do so many missions for the resources that you're burned out before you're even there. I love picking up the game, but every time I actually start one of the missions it just doesn't feel satisfying. The combat is fun, the enemies are interesting and have some personal skills, but after 4 missions you get the feeling you've basically seen it all. And after a few more missions that feeling does not go away. That's when you realize that the most important thing about games is novelty. I honestly gave it a good go and tried to pick it up again after dropping it a few times, but I really have to push myself through it. This is the perfect example of a game that does everything right, except for the core gameplay.

I would love to recommend this game, and I'm really loving it, but sadly it has too many game breaking bugs. Too often it has happened that I couldn't complete a mission because of bugs. For example a boss becoming invincible, finishing a mission but it not registering it has completed, and enemies getting stuck outside the mission area making me unable to kill them, thus me being unable to progress further. Also sometimes quest progress just resets for some reason.