Hyper Light Breaker, the latest game from developer Heart Machine, is ambitious, albeit flawed. The newest chapter in the Hyper Light series takes place way before the breakout indie success Hyper Light Drifter, not sharing much more with the original than naming convention. It entirely earns its Early Access tag and then some, but there is not much content in its initial offering. The thing is, actually getting to and seeing that content is another story, with the experience being brutally tricky to the point where it’s not fun to play.
Plus, the title is heavily skewed for co-op, leaving solo players to fend for themselves, often unsuccessfully, in the Overgrowth. Something is captivating here, with the world design offering moments of interest, and when combat clicks, it is fun, but the road ahead is still long.
Story Not Found
Hyper Light Breaker doesn’t have much in the way of narrative. You play as Breakers, tasked with entering the constantly changing Overgrowth to defeat the Crowns that rule over it, with the ultimate goal of taking down the Abyss King. There isn’t any real narrative or story lead-in, as the player is dropped in without much direction or hook to keep going. There’s no introductory cutscene to help players acclimate to the world or the story it wants to tell, instead leaving much of the legwork to the player. The story isn’t the main focus here, but the most significant issues stem from the gameplay.
Players start with one Breaker, with more being unlocked as you get farther in Hyper Light Breaker. Each Breaker has a unique Syscom, a robot companion that augments different stats and buffs. You start with a loadout comprised of a sword and pistol and get tossed into the Overgrowth. The roguelike nature kicks in here, with the Overgrowth changing and shifting whenever you die for a certain amount of time. As you load in, the map shows you where your targets in the Crowns await, alongside different points of interest. Whether they’re weapons, resources, or the Shards you need to collect to face off with the Crowns, they litter the map as potential destinations.
Various weapons, including blades, claws, heavy swords, pistols, shotguns, and more, can be found and equipped to deal more damage. The melee weapons all carry special attacks on cooldown in between uses. The standard sword, for example, makes a considerable attack that sends an X-like projectile out, potentially burning enemies in the process. Special abilities called amps and holobytes can also be found, as well as various active and passive abilities that can change your loadout considerably. The combat can be fun, as each weapon does feel different and can carry different effects, and finding the right synergy between your loadout can be rewarding.
Not A Trip For The Weary
The first significant issue is that Hyper Light Breaker constantly kicks your teeth in, not in a soulslike fashion. Enemies seemingly don’t have an aggro system, meaning you get swarmed relentlessly from all sides. Even small enemies can hit hard, meaning some runs lasted less than two minutes. I spawned, went to a nearby objective, and got destroyed instantly. There isn’t an ebb and flow to the combat, as even if you try and run, these enemies hunt you relentlessly. The bigger, tankier enemies are bullet sponges if you can survive long enough to get to them. The gameplay loop just isn’t fun, as more often than not, you can’t even get to the weapons or abilities they guard to begin to improve. On top of all that, the longer you manage to survive, the more the Overgrowth throws at you. Whether it’s random enemy spawns, environmental hazards, or other things designed to kill you immediately, Hyper Light Breaker actively pushes you against making any progress. The time for these events to trigger isn’t long, either.
Even collecting Shards, which are needed to fight the Crown bosses, can be cumbersome. You’ll see yellow diamonds on your map, indicating a Shard at that location. Some have arrows beside them, indicating a higher or lower elevation. Travelling to that spot can lead to enemies and a fight, where taking down the mini-boss offers a Shard. Sometimes you get there and…nothing.
The map shows a Shard at a lower elevation, but you’re standing nowhere with nothing around you. Looking around the immediate area, you may find a door or elevator that leads to lower levels, but it’s not always immediately nearby or easily found. If you manage to see it, that would be great. You found the access point and need a key. Where a key? Somewhere. Hyper Light Breaker doesn’t tell you where to look or how to find them; they’re not shown on the map – nothing. Even figuring this out, I found more information on unofficial guides online than the game, which helped me understand what it wanted me to do. One thing in player exploration is letting the player figure things out, but an example should be set ahead, or at the very least, some information should be given.
Death Is A Constant in Hyper Light Breaker
In most roguelikes, like Hades or Dead Cells, death is used as a tool for learning. You begin to understand the flow of combat, which weapons or abilities you like, and how to proceed – the problem with Hyper Light Breaker is you don’t live long enough to do any of that. It seems you want to go in, complete a task or two, then extract using one of the extract points on the map, saving your loot, healing, and going back into your saved progress.
The problem is that these extract points are few and far between, making them long runs through enemy-infested areas as you pray they don’t follow you far. Even when you get there, you need to fight through waves of enemies to extract. If you were unlucky enough to have any enemies follow you there, they pepper you with shots from outside. It all feels like artificial difficulty, designed to keep you unequipped and under-levelled to pad out the small amount of present content.
It’s ultimately a frustrating experience, especially as the loot you collect is subject to a degradation system. Common loot can degrade as soon as you die, while rarer loot may take a couple of cycles. When you die, you’re sent back to the hub, where you can spend the currency you collect on weapons or open up new facilities to use. These bought items also degrade, as they don’t become permanent staples of your load out. If you die enough, you must pay a certain amount of currency to reset the Overgrowth, and it all begins again.
No Healing Here
Most frustratingly, however, is the lack of a single medkit when you start. Hyper Light Breaker‘s difficulty may be slightly more manageable if you could heal during critical fights, but not so here. You can find tiny amounts of healing plants scattered around the Overgrowth, along with Shrines that can help refill a medkit…but you don’t have any. How do you get one, you might ask? After dying enough times to trigger a reset, the game fills a meter depending on…your progress. It isn’t ever made clear, but depending on how far you get in the Overgrowth, how much currency you have, and how many tasks you completed, you may fill the bar enough to get a Golden Ration, which can be used to purchase a medkit slot. You still have to go out and collect enough to use one. These Golden Rations are hard to come by and are used not just for upgrading your character but also for improving relationships with vendors, leading to discounts and new items for sale. Hyper Light Breaker barely tells you any of this, so if you didn’t happen to go through the upgrade chart, you won’t even know where to look.
That’s the thing with Hyper Light Breaker— it doesn’t feel like it wants you to make any progress. The game can be fun when you scratch and claw your way to some form of progress. Finding a cool weapon or ability and then crushing enemies with them is satisfying. Riding your hoverboard around the map can be beautiful, especially as the art style is unique and vibrant, and in the seldom calm moments where you can explore or exist in it, it does feel like a place I want to explore. Combat can be fun, especially in co-op, which this game feels geared towards. At least then, you have a buddy to help share the pain and constant onslaught of enemies.
On top of all this, there isn’t much to do in Hyper Light Breaker at the time of writing. The map markers are all fights with various forms of loot; there are only a few bosses, and there isn’t much reason to explore off the beaten path. There’s plenty more content to come as it’s still in Early Access, but what’s there isn’t much.
Verdict
Hyper Light Breaker is hard to recommend in its current form. To their credit, Heart Machine is actively listening and wants to work with the community to bring the game to an enjoyable place. Buried deep, deep, deep, in the Overgrowth is a fun and exciting game, but getting to those moments isn’t worth the onslaught and pain. At this point, it’s better to let Heart Machine work, improve, and hop in. There is something to find for the few players who brave the Overgrowth, but that journey won’t be worth it for most.
[The publisher provided a copy of the game for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: Steam Deck
Hyper Light Breaker Review
Summary
Hyper Light Breaker fails to capture what makes previous Heart Machine games so fun, with a high entry barrier, ridiculous difficulty, and a frustrating gameplay loop.
Liked
Pretty art design
When it works, it can be fun
Didn’t Like
Frustrating systems
Unfairly difficult
Lack of content
