After spending hours on the Loopomancer, something happened. Roguelikes are everywhere, so playing new ones is a kind of metaloop in itself. You may feel like you’re playing a remixed version of the same concept over and over again with different titles and gimmicks. Whisk, rinse and repeat. To stand out, the game needs to be very creative or distinguish itself by quality and sophistication. Following in the footsteps of other 2D action platformers such as Rogue Legacy and Dead Cells, Loopmancer chose the latter with great success. None of the mechanics are groundbreaking, and the cyberpunk story is cool, but full of clichés. But after riding this loop for nearly 20 hours, what lacks originality is to nail the most important element of the genre, outstanding gameplay, and make each run fresh and meaningful. Obviously, it’s more than just making up for it.
You play as Xiang Zixu, a common tough guy detective in the techno futurist dragon city, who was killed during the investigation of the missing person. Immediately after his death, he woke up in bed the same morning on the same day and gave him the same dispatch to investigate the same missing person. This is a proven time-loop formula and is a good premise for rogue lights. The Samurai clan isn’t very personal, but it’s fun to hear the detective agency handlers rush to explain that they know everything that’s about to happen.
With further progress, he can stitch together interesting details of who is pulling the strings and why. There are several branch paths along the way, and following them in a series of runs leads to the publication of different stories and seven different endings. The answer always seems to be pulled straight out of Philip K. Dick’s knockoff, but it’s fun to see it unfold.
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Cyberpunk settings can be used very effectively when creating interesting environments. One minute, avoiding oncoming cars and defeating Henchman across a dirty city street, then with a cyber ninja who feels like a modern recreation of elevator action, looking for the right lift to climb an office building. I’m fighting. Tang dynasty hotels in particular stand out for their diverse designs. You need to grab and navigate hooks or elevators in one section and take part in large multi-layered combat where the action is only visible in the hundreds of crimson back silhouettes. banner.
Each level is divided into subsections with a cohesive theme and remixes each run in a small but meaningful way. The open path will be blocked and a new route will be available. Enemy types will be reshuffled and power-ups will change location. A single visit to a dilapidated slum known as a ditch can smash giant spiders with a battle ax while standing on tiptoe between trip wires. Then you die, come back again, and shoot and kill giant mutants while trying not to fall into the electrified water. Enough to keep the Loopmancer fresh for a while.
Combat is fast and aggressive. Melee weapons such as swords and hammers mix with ranged attacks such as shotguns and lasers to deal damage, and defensive evasion and parry add liquidity to the exchange. You can deploy technical items such as turrets and mines, and special attacks in the form of skill chips can end skirmishes instantly, but they come with a cooldown timer. There are many types of enemies, and their design has a great influence on the best way to approach them. Your melee weapon may do the quick job of a member of a typical street gang, but a professional martial artist just behind him shrugs and counters your attacks. Emptying your best attacks on giant mutants may sound like a good idea … until you flock to toxic spiders. All you can do when surrounded by invisible ninjas is to start shooting and hope to hit something. Ideally, it’s not the barrel of an explosive that didn’t notice standing.
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The best way to survive depends on the weapons and tools you have, and the type and number of enemies that come to you. As a result, fierce combat becomes a complex dance that mixes attack and rapid monoshrink avoidance, while making quick decisions about when to use limited ammunition and technical items. It’s refreshing and keeps the experience fresh throughout.
With nearly 50 melee weapons, dozens of guns, technical skills, and abilities, the range of various freely available tools is very similar to Dead Cells weapons. I encountered battles that used swords, stick canes, fists, big fish, golf clubs, frying pans, etc. as their main weapons. All of these have their own characteristics and animations that make them feasible. Which one you choose is rarely black and white. Bringing a grenade launcher into combat with explosive damage may be appealing, but its poison-spitting SMGs have far more ammo. Sure, grenades that clear the crowd can help you reach your boss, but those deployable automated turrets will be a big help when the time for that big battle comes.
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Speaking of big battles, the diversity of bosses is another strength of Loopmancer. Most levels feature challenging battles with unique enemies, with memorizing patterns and windows for learning attacks. Early bosses like the well-named Big Guy can easily be defeated with timely avoidance and strikes, while other bosses like AI-powered hackers unfold and fight like puzzles. You really benefit from careful selection of the right tools before. The boss battle with a man in a mecha suit ended many of my early runs, but then I remembered his attack patterns and wrathed justice with the weapons I could get. When I was happy to unleash it, the encounter turned into a speed run. I felt the fight was tough and fair, and when I first defeated the last boss (not spoiled), I could feel my chest pounding and my forehead starting to drip with sweat.
Weapons and abilities are mostly scattered throughout the level and can be unlocked and upgraded using e-Coins. This currency pops out of defeated enemies, broken pots and crates in the true video game tradition. When you die you lose all your equipment and have to start anew with a random assortment, but unlocking and upgrading is permanent and these new weapons may be selected at the beginning of the next loop. .. After struggling to defeat them early on, I’m most happy to smash the early level bosses with the biggest end-game rocket launcher.
What’s more, Zixu has its own permanent upgrade tree where you can improve your health, unlock new combat movements, and buy new cosmetic outfits. Alternatively, you can dump the upgrade cores to terminals scattered throughout the level to increase recovery capability. This allows you to make another decision. Do you focus on the next upgrade or this to power up for future runs?
Optional challenges will appear on the screen throughout the level, prompting you to kill a certain number of enemies or eliminate them in a specified way. It’s completely optional, but their rewards are well worth your time. Sure, you may have already sliced these goons a dozen times already, but take them out with an explosive barrel or traffic them to some additional cash on the side. Can you throw it in? Maybe you will win a souvenir that you can see back in your apartment for some additional world building. This is an additional layer of conspiracy, but if you’re too far away from something that fits your device and playstyle, it can, of course, lead to unnecessary death.
This risk and reward calculation is a constant part of the Loopmancer (and good Rogue Light) progression. An important example is the exits defined for each group of levels, but many also reward exploration (assuming you don’t die in the process).You are can Go through the elevator to your boss, but if you take a chandelier or a brave train to a hidden platform, you may find a buff bot. These are boosts that can improve your health, increase the damage you do, and above all, speed up how fast you can use your abilities while running. Some are hidden, while others are immediately visible but surrounded by enemies. Of course, your chances of replenishing your health are limited, so every hit you receive will substantially affect your chances of survival. At the crossroads between going to the next section and chasing a buffbot in a dangerous place, I found myself torn many times. These are the moments that make such games shine outside of combat, and Loopmancer doesn’t lack them.
