I have been following Hyper Light Breaker for a while and was able to play it at Pax West which made me even more excited for its eventual release. Early Access for Hyper Light Breaker is finally here and I was able to do an almost full two-hour session of it on our Youtube channel!
Things feel a bit different now than when I originally played it at Pax West 2024, but the core concept is still there. Hyper Light Breaker is an open-world roguelite experience that changes after every four deaths or when you beat the bosses of the world. It gives you gear and resources on the map you can find, and also lets you defeat enemies that give you blood you can spend on upgrades and new weapons back at your hub. You also need blood to open the chests around the world too. You need to make sure you are constantly in battle to get blood.
There are a variety of weapons you can find and my personal favorite to use when I could find a good quality set of them was the claws. They are fast paced and help with dodges with how quick combos end. Enemies spawn all over the place and if you wait enough in the open world, bigger and stronger enemies will show up. If you wait even longer, you have the chance of a bounty hunter showing up who are ridiculously strong. It is recommended to leave them alone or just run to extraction before they can hurt you. Unless you are confident in your skills and equipment. Be weary about trying to do too much though. If you die your equipment has a durability meter that if it reaches zero, will collapse and be destroyed. The worst thing about this system is there is no way to repair it with any of the resources you have at your disposal. I personally think it is good to include a durability system for a roguelite like this as it gives consequences in death, but I do think a way to repair durability would be good. You might be paranoid about bringing your best gear in case the durability meter reaches one and you don’t want to take a chance.
The stores in the hub refresh after every two runs in Hyper Light Breaker. This counts you extracting successfully or dying. You will then see three new weapons, and three new sets of gear in the shops. You can buy melee weapons on one shop, ranged weapons at another and passive gear on the third shop.
Balance
Hyper Light Breaker has a weird sense of balance. You have to make plans on small tasks you can perform, especially in the beginning when you are running with just the basic gear. You have to hope the items are good that get generated at chests and gear areas of the world. If they aren’t you have to hope the items or weapons get good eventually at your hub. If not, you have to essentially just farm blood and ditch two times in order to reset the shop. If you get overwhelmed by enemies, there is no way to really control them or their aggro unless you get a certain item you can use like the golem or the droid bot. Hoping for RNG isn’t always the best route as sometimes that could mean for a frustrating run that will mess up your total experience.
When I played at Pax West, I had almost insane luck with what was at the shop the first two runs. I got a solid weapon, armor and the golem item that carried me through the first boss no problem. I then got an even better roll on the next run attempt that let me go to even the second boss and beat him. The first few runs I played at home, I had the exact opposite getting armor and just a bunch of white and blue gear that was barely better than the starting gear. Touching down on the world, I got a decent weapon that eventually got destroyed after dying twice. One to a bounty Hunter that showed up much earlier than expected and the second time to a prism mini-boss.
Hyper Light Breaker also shows tutorials at the beginning of the game and then when you reach the overgrowth you are on your own with just the basic graphic that shows the loop. You have to experiment in the controls, the dashes, the weapons you like and even how to deal with the icons on the map.
Overall, I think there is a lot of potential in Hyper Light Breaker. The Hyper Light Breaker gameplay loop makes sense enough with collecting prisms to unlock gates to destroy the bosses. However, right now, the feeling is more RNG heavy and less skill oriented. It isn’t a satisfying balance at the current state of early access. Luckily the game developers are looking actively on steam reviews and making notes on adjustments. I imagine the experience will be much different once 1.0 launches and those of us in early access will have to deal with the growing pains.
Hyper Light Breaker is available in Early Access on PC.
