Loop Hero Review

For all its automated systems, Loop Hero can be incredibly stressful. Battles play out without any input from you, navigation loops over a predetermined path, and resources are collected for you, but that doesn't mean you can take your eyes off the battlefield for even a second. This captivating mix of familiar genres demands constant attention, testing your ability to think well into the future when making your moves. It's a riveting balance of risk and reward wrapped in a deviously challenging roguelite that will tempt you into pushing forward for just one more round.

Loop Hero is a distinct mish-mash of multiple genre ideas, none of which influence gameplay enough to easily classify the overall gameplay experience. Loop Hero is primarily a run-based role-playing game in which you indirectly control a hero through procedurally generated loops. Instead of controlling the hero's movements, you mainly control what they encounter by placing objects on the loop that create the world--things like cemeteries that can spawn skeletons, villages that can heal you, or swamps that generate nasty mosquitos. These are provided by cards that you draw from a limited deck which you can edit between runs, letting you curate each one to a degree. And while your hero automatically navigates in circles and resolves fights with enemies without any inputs, you also manage their inventory carefully to deal with the increasing challenges that each new round trip brings.

Instead of controlling the hero's movements in Loop Hero, you control what they encounter on the loop.
Instead of controlling the hero's movements in Loop Hero, you control what they encounter on the loop.

Ultimately, Loop Hero challenges you to balance risk and reward by keenly considering all the options your current cards give you to make your next loop challenging, but not deadly. Each run is an opportunity to gather resources you use to expand your camp in the hub world, unlocking new cards, classes, and abilities to use on subsequent runs. Enemies drop specific resources that you'll need to further progress outside of each expedition, giving you incentives to place multiple groves for wild, mutated dogs or dimly lit houses that can spawn bloodthirsty vampires on tiles around them. With each new addition to the loop, you're also extending the time it takes to make a trip around it, which directly affects spawn rates of enemies that are tied to a persistent day-night cycle. While a tile might seem harmless when it's only adding one enemy to the loop every day, it can become dangerous when the route is stuffed to the point where an entire group might be waiting the next time you make it around again.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

source https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/loop-hero-review/1900-6417656/?ftag=CAD-01-10abi2f

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Godfall Review

Godfall makes a good first impression. Even if you're playing on a moderately powerful PC, as I did, it's clear from the opening moments that developer Counterplay Games has endeavored to show off advancements in visual fidelity, no doubt in light of new hardware such as the PlayStation 5. From the way sparks fly to the myriad particles that coat every inch of its action and the reflectiveness of its gaudy gold and marble halls, Godfall wants you to know that next gen is here. Beyond the visual spectacle, however, lies a game that's immediately familiar and over-reliant on an amalgamation of loot-driven games from the past eight years or so. Godfall's mixture of loot progression and third-person melee combat has been described by Counterplay Games as a new type of genre: the looter-slasher. The name holds up insofar as you loot and slash things, but there's nothing about Godfall that feels intrinsically new. Diablo, Monster Hunter, and Warframe make up a portion o...
Read more

Days Gone Review - Farewell, Oregon

Image
Editor's Note: In May 2021, Sony ported Days Gone to PC. In addition to compiling two years' worth of updates since the 2019 game's initial launch, the Windows version offers opportunities for enhanced graphics and performance with more powerful gaming PCs. Mike Epstein delivers his impressions on the game's technical improvements and how they may change your experience playing the PC version of Days Gone. GameSpot's original review for Days Gone is below in full and the assessment for the PC version is integrated at the end. This review contains minor spoilers about mission structure and overall story direction. There are no spoilers for major narrative moments. Around 10 hours into Days Gone , you're thrown into a hunting tutorial apropos of nothing. The over-the-top libertarian character takes you out with a rifle and shows you how to track a deer, although you've already had a tracking tutorial. You're then tasked with getting more meat for you an...
Read more

Nioh 2 Review - Get Good And Die Trying

Nioh 2 is not to be trifled with. Building on the original's tough-as-nails reputation, Team Ninja's second samurai action-RPG brings back the original's penchant for punishing and highly nuanced combat. The sequel hones the original's distinctive take on the Souls-like without completely reinventing itself. The result is a long, tough slog that will push even the most challenge-hungry players to their breaking points as they fight for every inch of ground and become master samurai. Despite the title, Nioh 2 is a prequel, revealing the secret history of a decades-long period of war in medieval Japan. As the silent, customizable hero Hide, you fight to uncover the secret nature of "spirit stones," which grant supernatural power, and defeat hordes of Yokai across the country. The plot, which you mostly hear through cutscenes and exposition between missions, has an interesting historical bent, but it is really just glue to hold the levels together. Historically...
Read more