Heroes Of Hammerwatch 2 Review – Roguelike perfection

thesixthaxis.com:

Sometimes a game just meshes so well with you that you feel as though the developers reached into your head just to get the idea for it. The first Heroes of Hammerwatch was one of those for me, and not just me either, but a group of my friends. The lovely graphical style, the music, the exceptional gameplay loop, the meta-progression, and perhaps most importantly the ability to play with as many players as you wanted, are still sublime. Well, Heroes of Hammerwatch 2 is now out, and it’s basically all of that again, but with a new take on some classes, some new skills and systems here and there, and more awesome bosses to get beaten by.

Heroes of Hammerwatch 2 is a roguelite action RPG, think original Diablo with more dying, that has you trying to fight off an evil cult. To do this, you have to venture out of the town you save and fight a bunch of stuff. You’re going to die a lot, but that’s very much the point. The overarching progression in Heroes of Hammerwatch 2 comes in a lot of forms.

Building up your town is a surefire way to unlock new upgrades for characters, new buffs to choose at the beginning of your run, and even ways to alter the dungeons you’ll be delving into. You can then keep levelling your character up to get new skills, upgrade their stats, and find equipment as well. Equipment is permanent, but in each run, you’ll also find trinkets to serve as passive boosts during just that run. So, you’ll always be more powerful by the end of a run, but whether that’s powerful enough to beat the game depends on how you started things.

Along with all of that, you unlock in-game achievements as you play the game that grant stat boosts, or extra points to spend on skills, and so on. Each class also grants a special buff that gets better the higher the level is, which means you’re encouraged to play every class, and each time you make a new character, they feel a lot stronger. It just all ties together really well, and makes for an incredibly engaging gameplay loop.

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