Hyper Light Breaker Has a Lot of Potential But Gets in Its Own Way – For Now [Review]

I think a lot of us were shocked to hear that the sequel to Hyper Light Drifter, an immensely authored game full of intent, would be an open-world roguelike with procedural generation. However, while Hyper Light Breaker does have issues, it doesn’t feel as though intent is one of them.

Hyper Light Breaker plops you into a world that will exist for four cycles, where each cycle is one life for your chosen Breaker. Breakers are characters in this game and act a bit like classes, though the three available at this point all feel fairly similar, even with the SyCom abilities acting as subclasses of sorts. Each character can run, dash, jump, use melee attacks, shoot using rails, and more. You can also sail around on a hoverboard, which happens to allow you to cross the water as well.

Your character feels good to control with weapons having plenty of weight, parries making sense, and the general movement feeling great. If this were a game where you explored the beautiful landscape and came across single enemies, combat would probably feel amazing. However, it doesn’t because you’ll nearly always end up against massive groups who’ll chase you to the end of time.

Related: How to Change Sensitivity in Hyper Light Breaker

This high-speed movement style clashes completely with the boss battle you end up in because nearly all of them require precise parry timing to actually be able to counterattack. Not to mention that each boss loves to summon in help regularly, which means that your one-on-one battle to the death turns into an “Oops, I got ganked by a random dog and died.” If you’re reading this and thinking that this sounds frustrating, you’d be right; it really is.

Of course, any good roguelike understands that death and the slow trawl toward more skill and better stats is one that’s worth doing. I’m no stranger to the genre and am in fact regularly in the roguelike mines filling up my bag with death, pain, and better loot. One of the most important aspects of any roguelike is how quickly you can get back into a run, though, and Hyper Light Breaker fails this particular test quite spectacularly. It takes a handful of minutes from your death to get into the next run, and it’s agonizing.

I like some of the meta-progression; you can get a couple of new vendors in, restock as needed, tweak your loadout, and slowly upgrade your stats and gear, but it’s a snail’s pace. Essentially, Hyper Light Breaker just feels inefficient and slow, and that might be one of the worst things a roguelike can be.

It’s not all bad by any means; the combat has a lot of shine to it when it works, and the different weapons and build options all offer some nice changes. However, the reliance on ranged weapons in a game that makes them feel incredibly limited is perplexing. It just isn’t where it needs to be right now. I have faith that Hyper Light Breaker will evolve into a game that’s a huge amount of fun to play with friends, but for now, it’s one that just doesn’t mesh properly.

Hyper Light Breaker is available now.