Heroes of Hammerwatch II

Game is straight fire. It's like if Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, Castle Crashers, and Diablo 2 had a fun little baby. Easily worth $20.

While the gameplay is enjoyable and I've enjoyed my time playing, I do have several major gripes about the game that I don't think patches can correct.

- Buildcraft is basically nonexistent. You want to pick up every trinket every run for the most part. Even if the trinket doesn't benefit you, there are several other trinkets that scale your character per trinket owned making getting every item every time mandatory.
- Class specializations boil down to (mostly) the same things and there isn't much variety in playstyle, and some of the more interesting specializations are numerically bad and fall off, forcing you into a handful of specs if you like to play in the higher NG+ levels.
- Trinkets cannot be stacked, so there are no "builds" really. You just take what you get and most runs you will end up with 90% of every trinket in the game by the end of each run, making it extremely shallow and rather repetitive after clearing the first several NG+. You can't make a character focused on critical hit and really scale high because you get a static amount of +crit per run and that does not go up beyond upgrading your gear. You cannot stack regen to crazy amount for the same reason, and so on. Really makes the game rather stale compared to other roguelike/roguelites that DO allow for stacking of upgrades.
- Class power levels are all over the place with melee being mostly non-functional past NG+6. Spell based specializations are by far superior and mostly the only viable specs beyond the early levels. Weapon power builds hit a brick wall, and without extreme investment into item upgrades in the very late game you're better off sticking to a casting specialization that will scale better and be more survivable in general.
- The trinket attunement system at the artificer using stars (shared with abilities) is really bad, as well as the means to collect blueprints to upgrade them after it unlocks. This system could be entirely replaced with item stacking and the stars could be spent elsewhere and the game would be greatly improved as a result.
- Building upgrades cap off very early with basically no meaningful progression of your town after NG+1 when you'll probably have most building maxed or close to it. The church donation system is so granular that you can donate 10 million gold and get like 2% player power after 200 runs. Really abysmal.
- Gear is extremely one dimensional and does not improve as your character scales up beyond spending metal ingots and gold to improve items you've already been wearing for dozens of levels. Because there are so few prefixes and suffixes in the game, itemization comes to a halt after you find good pieces for each slot then you just upgrade them forever. Not having epic or higher quality items really hurts the game as well because you never feel like you find a good item after a certain point. While it is in the game code to be added later, the game suffers now for not having them in.
- Blueprints and upgrades not sharing between characters does feel rather bad, even if that's really the only progression offered to alt characters at all. I am not sure how to fix this without tons of content to improve replayability.
- Replayability suffers a lot from the static maps (minor slight variations between runs) and each subsequent run becomes less enjoyable. The same enemies and the same rooms and the same bosses every run becomes repetitive immediately and does not improve.

These are some of the major gripes I have but there are more.

As party game with a few friends I could recommend, but I struggle to get any of them to join me after a run or two because of just how repetitive and samey the game feels after the first few hurdles of progression are passed then the game completely plateaus.

As an ARPG/Rogue-lite, I feel like it falls short compared to other games currently out and even the previous game in this series, so I feel like it's a downgrade. That with the certainty that this game will likely be abandoned within a year or so when their next title drops is also not incredibly reassuring that any of these major design issues will be fixed at all, so I suppose I can just enjoy it for what it is. That's why, for me, I cannot recommend the game in good conscious.

Suddenly lost all my progress, my character disappeared. There is no support whatsoever for this game.

This game has all of the bones for something great, but really boils down to mindless grinding through enemies that die instantly until you get to a point where you die instantly, then repeat, getting slightly further every time. I found the boss fights to be extremely fun but only around 10 minutes of my play time was fighting the bosses. The rest was grinding to get to the bosses.

There is little to no build variety, you runs will be marginally different by one or two slight tweaks and thats it unless you change classes, but it's just not fun doing the same combo of abilities without any real variety for hours to level a class. Upgrades to your weapons and armor are few and far between, I 1 maybe 2 items per equip slot to upgrade in my time playing, and they dont feel significantly different than not being upgraded at all.

Many roguelikes also highly reward skill, but here skill is rewarded very rarely. There is a dash but it does not appear to have I-frames. There are dodgeable projectiles but often times there will be so many projectiles or such a dense fog of damaging AOE that you can't dodge it due to the very slow movement speed and very slow regen of dodges.

Super fun, relatively simple, roguelite aRPG. Are there things I'd want to see change? Sure, I'm not a huge fan of the stat system they landed on. However, at time of review I feel I've MORE than gotten my money's worth. Absolutely recommend.

I can see why people like this game, but it just isnt for me. The runs take way too long to feel like you're making any meaningful progress. It sits somewhere between a roguelike and Diablo but is missing a lot of the things that make me like each of those types of games. After a couple hours, I decided to refund it because it seemed like I'd need to play it like a job to feel like I was making headway.

This game is so easily overlooked. Well don't let this one pass you by, it may not be beautiful but it sure is nostalgic, with a pretty dynamic level-up system.

Very fun Roguelike to play with friends. Has a variety of classes, abilities, and builds to try out, as well as quite a bit of content to unlock. The combat mechanics are satisfying, without being unnecessarily complex. The art style and music are both very good.

Two negatives:
1) This does not feel like it's meant to be played solo, you can, but it doesn't feel nearly as enjoyable.
2) There is not enough variation to the maps considering you're normally using the torches to skip a bunch of the levels, so it feels a bit repetitive after a while.

Still, even at full price, for 20$ I got 40 hours of game play out of it which is a really good deal, I'd recommend to anyone who has friends willing to play and who likes the genre.

progression is very slow.
for me its too grindy and somewhat boring.
if you like a slow burn it might be for you.

If you like the first game you will probably like this.
If you like doing "the same thing" over and over again with some random factors while pushing your skills as the game gets harder and harder you will probably like this.

I don't really know why but I love this game. The sense of progression is awesome even if it is in small increments. Eagerly awaiting more content like the first game had. More zones etc to spice it up. More bonuses and stuff to collect.

Fun game, seems more like a better/optimized version of Heroes of Hammerwatch than a different game but still decent.

As a coop game, I like the feature to resurrect friends/decrease everyone's HP as a penalty because it keeps everyone engaged but incentivizes not dying even if there is a level/skill differential between players.

Unfortunately, post game content seems to be lacking; after NG+1 there doesn't seem like there's much of a goal beyond "beat the game again but if you get caught, the enemies do even more damage than before and can take you from 100% to 0% hp". You can grind trinket attunements, skill and weapon skills, and upgrading/enchanting slightly better and better equipment, but past a certain point it becomes less and less interesting to play the same slightly altered maps over and over again for little gain. This is a common issue with a lot of roguelike/roguelite games, so YMMV. Hasn't stopped me from putting in 100+ hours.

I do wish there was another 'campaign' or different routes aside from the level skips already in the game, but I suppose we'll see. Hoping for more in general, as this is a fairly new game.

I see a lot of comments about the game crashing...mine didn't crash once and it's a good sequel kind of a fast forward Diablo rogue-lite. Give it a try it's pretty cool

good game but constant crashing. Three crashes in two hours

Just like Hammerwatch 2 my dreams of enjoying a quality sequel have been dashed and torn by a second entry that is worse than the prior. Why do i need to restart my game every single run to stop the AI from bugging out and refusing to attack me??? WHY is it so simple to completely wipe your entire save in a single click? How is it that you made dungeons this repetitious with more assets variety than the first hammerwatch and hero's games????????

I really hope this game can be turned around into something on the same level of fun as the first game but with how Hammerwatch II was treated im not going to have much hope. I hate to be so negative but damn man. Can indie devs not pick up bad habits from big companies please.

I had a lot of fun playing this game. 244 hours played. Recent update wiped all my progress and I would have to start over completely.

Great addictive game. I'm not a huge rogue-like fan by any means, but there's just something about this one that really has me hooked. I think if you loved Vampire Survivors, you will definitely like this.

This game is competent, fun, and addictive. An average run could take over an hour, but it's worth it. You get a steady progression and keep unlocking new stuff and upgrading your character. It should be even better in co-op, given you have friends to play with.

Feels like the game is in Early Access still.

I've finished every class through NG and one class through NG+. My entire town is fully upgraded. My goal through my entire time playing was to experience what the game feels like once it 'comes online' like a lot of Roguelites do. This one never does.

The balance isn't very well done, packs of trash enemies are more challenging than the bosses. A few enemies have special mechanics but are so tightly packed in with other enemies and indistinguishable you end up treating everything the same rather than playing around them. This becomes a real issue in ONE biome that has enemies that silence, disarm, and mana drain. These mechanics don't really exist on any other floor, and rather than feeling like you're playing creatively you end up feeling like you're suffering. The final boss of the entire run is also one of the easiest, and is easily the least anti-climactic of all, like the developers felt like they just had to wrap it up, though I will give it credit where it is due, this is one of the few enemies that feels like it has actual mechanics that you can play around. Many trinkets don't seem to have any form of real scaling, so while they may have value in early levels of New Game, they don't feel particularly impactful later.

There are two (of seven) materials in the game that seem to have no purpose, red dust and some sort of gold ore. Red dust can be gathered, but has no function, and gold ore doesn't even seem to exist in any form (just appears in the materials menu), further pointing to the fact that the devs cut their vision short and just pushed out the game before it was really done.

Some progression items feel too rare, unnecessarily creating a grind that feels tedious rather than meaningful or fun. This includes blueprints to upgrade your trinkets, and epic quality trinket drops which are part of set bonuses to unlock cool effects. Throughout my entire series of runs I've encountered epic quality trinkets a handful of times, literally. I've encountered perhaps a little over a dozen blueprints, out of around 60 available.

In culmination, if this game had an Early Access tag I'd feel like I knew what I was getting into and would chalk it up to the game not being finished yet, but that isn't the case here. In the end, you could argue I got my money's worth for the $20 price tag, but I really came away from this game feeling more disappointed with a game that has good bones but has failed to be fleshed out, rather than feeling satisfied and happy with a quality gaming experience, and for that reason I don't recommend it in its current state.

It was a decent rogue-lite but a little grindy. HUGE CAVEAT: I do not recommend because I had a random crash to desktop and I lost 100% of my progress. 100 hours down the drain, and I won't be playing any more with such a devastating bug. Play at your own risk.

really fun. similar to cult of lamb with building a town stuff. Really pretty for a pixelated game. I do recommend.

Nice game, 30 hours so far, leveled 3 classes to around 20. Really like how you can switch between classes without having to rebuild your city.

Gets Very Very Very Repetitive. Save games corrupt easily wiping days or weeks of game play, alot of scuffed mechanics, exploiters that join public lobbies that are immortal and drop gear and gold, resources and other stuff.

was fun at first then just went meh progression is a light switch in difficulty u go from easy to medium to hard to WTF. alot of class's still need alot of rework as they are almost unplayable beyond ng+5 with out luck

If it is on special for $10-12 AUD bucks i say get it might give u some entertainment for a while but i wouldn't pay full price

I discovered this pixel roguelike by chance while perusing the Steam store. I tried the demo and enjoyed it enough that I bought the game. I’ve now completed NG0 as a wizard and have the option of continuing with NG+. However, to be honest – the game is very repetitious by the later levels. Technically the levels are procedurally generated, but they’re very similar every run, and the gameplay doesn’t change much either. There are several other classes that I could try, but again, I would be playing through the same levels over and over. I had fun with the game, but I don’t know when I’ll come back to play it again. I do recommend the game to people who like pixel rouglikes, but you may want to wait for a discount depending on how much you like grinding/repetition.

Great roguelike arpg with multiplayer support for up to 4 people.

Choose a class and start out your adventure - anything you earn towards your town is there even if you switch to a new character, making it easier to have several characters to play with.

The game mechanics are fun and engaging. There are several awesome upgrades and trinkets during your run, that makes each run unique and fun.

Every so often you advance the game, shortcuts will open up that brings you closer to reaching the endboss and onto the endgame!

It's fun at first, but quickly becomes repetitive because it's too difficult, so you keep doing the same content over and over. There are also some torture mechanics in play that are annoying. Idle mana regen, for example, is excruciating if you're out of potions. Respec has a cost and it's steep, even at a low level. Death penalty is also too much. These are all mistakes that were weeded out of RPGs a long time ago, imo. So if the goal is to emulate first gen MMORPGs, mission accomplished, but I personally don't want to return to those times.

First game was great with a lot more content. Feel like they leveraged their reputation to deliver a shorter game at a higher price point.

Great game. It took me 270 hours to casually get all the achievements. If you get a teammate with a high NG character to carry you in early levels 1 to 30 or beyond you can probably blast through the game and its achievements in about a 100+ hours.

If you are having trouble with getting past the higher NGs I would suggest looking up "CerealOnBread" on youtube. His guilds helped me finish Warlock and Paladin. The game was updated well he was making these which made strength builds more relevant so some may be a bit outdated.

As much as I loved Heroes of Hammerwatch 1, this game sadly disappoints on several levels. The game isn't all bad, but I sadly can't recommend it.

My main gripes with the game boil down to a few reasons:

Cons

1. No ability to "Downscale" your character.

In the first game, they added an option to downscale your game so that everyone who joined would be essentially put on the same level and stats. This was an amazing mechanic, as the game was very easy to beat for the first 15 NGs, resulting in a large gap between players and essentially making it so that you would either be getting carried or carrying others when you joined random players or friends who started playing later/earlier than you did. This mechanic allowed players to actually play the game together without there being a huge power imbalance.

While it wasn't perfect and could have been improved, it was a welcome addition and filled that role of allowing others to play with each other without carrying/being carried. In HoH2, instead of them improving it's functionality to be more "all encompassing" it's instead completely omitted from the game. Now you're essentially all but guaranteed to be joining others who are substantially farther ahead or behind you in terms of character progression, resulting in either getting carried or carrying others, both of which aren't nearly as fun as playing with someone on a similar level as you.

2. Church "Donations". The issue I have with this recent addition to the game is 2 main reasons.

First, this benefit to weapon damage/spell damage/damage reduction/health regeneration is not based off the host of the lobby. Meaning, every player will have their own individual level of progress to this donation stat, resulting in players who've cheated, played with cheaters and benefited from ill-gotten gains, or simply just played a ton, will have a huge donation stat bonus which will make that player significantly stronger than anyone else they may play with.

Second, this stat has no limit or cap based on your current NG difficultly progression. Meaning, if you play a ton, play with cheaters/get carried, or cheat yourself, you can improve this stat to a point where you simply just can't die and do infinite damage. This, obviously, trivializes the game. And it's a major issues because even if their donation stats are legit, it results in a significant power imbalance between players that can't be controlled in anyway. It's just a badly implemented mechanic in it's current state that ruins multiplayer.

3. Missing mechanics from the first game and obviously missing tiers of gear/trinkets/classes.

While people might say "HoH 1 was out for years, so it's of course going to have more mechanics and improvements" is just plain stupid. This game is a sequel and should have benefited from all the improvements and implemented mechanics that HoH 1 acquired through the years, and it should of had them ON RELEASE. Now, I strongly believe they will add these mechanics and missing tiers of gear/trinkets/classes...eventually, it's just sad it's so glaringly obviously missing.

Pros

1. Improved graphics

I've seen that this is somewhat contested by players who played HoH1, but I believe by far the majority will agree it's an improvement and it will certainly draw newer players into the series.

2. Greater variety in character skills

Yes, there is still a lot of balancing needed for some of the character's subclasses, but overall it's a huge improvement for replayability...if they can get all the subclasses in a similar state of competitiveness. Which I am confident will happen.

3. Equipment

This further adds to the ability for players to enhance their playstyle. While the game is missing tiers of gear (Epic and Legendary are currently missing), I am certain they will add them and it will further enhance a player's playstyle and allow from some unique setups.

Summary

I want this game to be good, I want this game to be a complete improvement over HoH1...but that just isn't the case at this moment. Despite the improvements they've added to HoH2, all of the missing mechanics and obviously missing tiers of trinkets/equipment/classes make me not recommend this game currently. In particularly, the glaring progression issues with character levels, titles, and donation stats not being able to be controlled in anyway in a multiplayer setting is really upsetting and results in this game being something you will be primarily playing solo. If you do decide to venture into multiplayer, you will either be getting carried or doing the carrying yourself, which gets very boring very fast.

It's fun until NG+

Then it becomes the most soul sucking boring game in existence.
You're punished for existence, tank is no longer playable, and everything takes 1000 years to kill.

What a pure disrespect of my limited free time.

Game is fun and entertaining for all of 5 hours, but once you max the town (which doesn't take long) there is almost no reason to continue playing. The game just uses lame basic multipliers to create an infinite amount of lazy difficulty settings that dont change the gameplay loop in the slightest. Catch it on discount

Basically pixelated Diablo 2 to me. Ton of fun to play with friends or solo. The only thing I'm hoping for is more weapon combos and choices to come out.

Very good rogue-lite game! Each class plays mostly differently (although there are definite overlaps, simply because of the mechanics of the game). The progression system is building up your town, so you can choose where to put your resources. You aren't locked to one character or one path. The levels are linear, though, so some people may have issues with that. My favorite character is the Rogue, least favorite was Warlock.

Pro's: 6 characters with different abilities, a town to build up to progress, easy inventory management. Great tooltips!

Cons: While the characters have different core abilities, they play very similar. Progression can be slow, sometimes if you have a bad run, you won't get enough resources to progress anything other than level.

Pro or Con depending on preference: Linear levels (the maps are randomly generated but there aren't alternative paths, just shortcuts). The artifacts are few and far between, I still have yet to complete a set in a single run.

Possible bug: Sometimes abilities won't cast. You have to not be using any attack and must have the attack animation complete before you can use your abilities. This can really hamper the "flow" especially if you are trying to chain groups together.

The base game is good except for one game breaking issue. If you save multiple profiles (cloud or locally), if you try to switch to a different profile by clicking the Home button, it will erase all characters across all saves... It's the equivalent to saving in Skyrim, then when you try to load into another save file, it wipes all your progress across all saves. It's like they didn't even test this save functionality. You can use this as a cautionary tale to not click the Home icon, and especially don't buy this game if you need to cloud save across multiple machines.

This game is *not bad*. However, I feel like I'm doing the same things all over again, especially at the beginning. Forest I, Forest II, weird temple, etc. It's just the same thing with trees scattered differently and town upgrades. I expected more of the gameplay loop, as I found this one pretty boring past three hours.

A worthy sequel, one I hope they support the way they supported its predecessor, with multiple free updates and some cool paid DLC adding tons of new stuff. As a player of both games, this one is an overall improvement that will surpass it if properly updated and supported.

This game is fun. so far i've enjoyed my experience. the pacing feels like every other dungeon crawler i've played which is good its not too fast or slow. the classes feel balanced i messed with them all before picking one I liked the best. can't wait for more content I hope we get larger updates soon.

Played this game with a friend and she lost all of her progress after about 8 hrs of play. We both saved, both quit in town, and her character was gone when we hopped back on the next day and we are unable to find an explanation.

Considering what we encountered, the lack of tool-tips, the lack of explanation of game play systems (Nothing tells you what it does or what it is, how to unlock, ETC), as well as there being many alternatives in this genre, I find it hard to recommend. Shame.

tl;dr - if you played the first game, I would recommend waiting to see if this one gets better. If you're new to this series, just play the first game; it's really good and this one doesn't measure up.

Unfortunately, this game doesn't do enough to set itself apart from the first, with several added disadvantages due to being a new game:

*Not as much content. The first game has two decently priced DLC that add two more entire, full length dungeons as well as a bunch of new features (arena, statues, mercenaries that are like a permadeath hardmode, etc)

*Scaling is quite bad in a lot of places because the game isn't polished with the new mechanics in mind, so the further you get, the worse things feel.

*Some of the design choices that do make it very different from the first game are infuriating, namely Shadow Curse. It applies a permanent defense debuff for each stack, and there are a LOT of enemies that apply it, including every boss except the first. It makes melee/tanky classes absolute hell to play, and no matter how strong you are, you're always playing kind of scared because stacking enough curse will doom your run eventually. Also, weapon damage is just plainly inferior to skill damage on all accounts, which is very sad because of the new weapon system.

*Special mention for the last area of the main dungeon: honestly, fuck that place. Long, thin hallways packed with cloning bullet hell enemies that are nearly immune to one type of elemental damage with invisible traps that hit like a truck and saddle you with loads of curse at the same time? This is the worst designed area in BOTH games. Can I clear it? Sure, quite consistently. Is it an absolutely horrendous experience every single time? Without a doubt. It needs to be overhauled. This place sucks. I dread it in every run. It's an awful level. It feels like Crackshell didn't even bother TRYING to play it even once, it's that blatantly bad.

So to conclude: just play Heroes of Hammerwatch 1 if you're new to this series. It's better than this game. At least for now.

I loved the first few hours, but the lack of dynamic changes really makes grinding a chore.

I've played Vamp Survivor, Hades and more which have got the balance down really well.

It needs more campaigns, something to change the map monotony, or it'll stay a grinder and not build on some pretty decent game bones.

I'm nearing 50 hours and I have enjoyed playing each character on the first playthrough. The spells are cool, the classes feel distinct (especially after level 10), and the rougelite aspects, such as trinket attuning, give some nice "power up" feeling to the game.

However the game quickly stagnates after the first playthrough. Enemies get much stronger, with the increases to player power (with the exception of a class or two) lagging far behind. In addition, the town building feature ends quite abruptly and then that's it, your resources are then meant to alter runs (make them a little easier). You could make the point that the developers are trying to work this out (as seen in the frequent patches made to the game), but then what did I buy? Many who have reviewed the game already are critical of the "bare-bones" feeling. As if this is an early access product as opposed to a completed game and I have to agree.

This is an okay game in its current state with the potential to be absolutely fantastic. For now, I would recommend wish-listing and monitoring its progress in the coming months.

Very VERY fun Roguelike which is being well supported by its devs (no idea what happened with Hammerwatch 2 and its lack of support). Game play is fun with lots to upgrade, unlock, and explore. A rare example of a game where I actively wanted to try NG+

One word of caution! The save profile is not cloud enabled by default, go into your save profile, make a copy, and make that copy cloud enabled! A friend lost 30 hours of gameplay because this wasn't made clear!

Unfinished product with no real end-game loop.
Should be marked as "Early access", this is not a full game (check the patches history, and decide for yourself).
HoH1 was a much, much better game overall.

I enjoyed it, you can tell the devs had passion but there isnt enough meat on the bones. I spent so long trying to find epic gear only to discover that there is only 3 tiers of gear. Every round feels the same with the small pool of trinkets.

Huge amount of promise, maybe it will be fixed in time.

KEEP AN EYE ON THIS GAME.
Game as good bones, needs some meat.

The main game play loop is doing runs and pushing ng+'s, it is a fun one. However, the current lack of end game or progression is keeping it back.

You can easily get your money's worth in playing right now. Crackshell has been continually updating, they did have to decrease support in order to focus on their game. (Hammerwatch 2, thats why it's review bombed right now.) Later down the line this game could truly be a great find!

Initially super fun.
After you've done NG it's just a really unrewarding grind.
You just go through the same exact halls over and over and over again killing the same 3 enemies over and over and over again.
The "builds" you get each run consists of either more damage, more sustain or more resources. None of which feels like it really does anything. Nothing is build defining, it's just so same-y every single run.
Only difference in builds is "Your damage is now ICE instead of FIRE! WOW!" pretty much.

I haven't done the alt-grind yet, because the only fun variety is the subclasses - And it takes WAY too long to reach level 10 to even try out or explore the subclasses on each character. Just another unrewarding chore.

My biggest problems with the game;
-No variety, all runs feel the same. Only exception is the odd run getting only absolute garbage items and it's a bigger chore than usual to get through the levels.
-Too many same-y enemies for the amount of HP they have, it's a chore to slug through the levels when you're level capped. There's no reward AT ALL killing enemies, and there's a metric f*ckton of them everywhere.
-Way too expensive meta upgrades (Camp upgrades)
-A lot of character-specific meta upgrades feels like they should had been shared across characters, I don't want to redo my grind 8 times or however many classes there are for basic upgrades. At least not when it's so expensive. Lower cost and it would feel completely alright.

My impression of the game after having played HoH1 as well; Lazy cashcow with bloated grinding.

On the plus side, it controls really well and it has very fun gameplay if it wasn't for the extreme grind and lack of variety. Would've been a pretty good game if the fun factor was QA'd properly. If it was also expanded upon and wasn't so tiny it could've become a great game even.

All maps feel the same—the only difference between runs is the layout. Itemization is uninspired, merely adding stats without meaningful impact. Unlocking everything separately for each character feels like an artificial time sink. Right now, the game lacks engagement; at the very least, there should be more variety between runs, since that's the entire gameplay loop.

I’ll return in a year to see if things have improved.

Borring gameplay loop. need way more varaity in maps, and the gameplay itself is just press buttons without any thought. Builds are bacically impossible to control, and you just get random stuff and have to llive with it.
Secrets are nice, and bossfights needs some balancing but is nice in general

Love this game as much as I loved the first game. Definite quality of life improvements, graphics update, new permanent gear system, some reworked classes. All comes together to a nice package that you can enjoy by yourself or with friends.

Ehhhhhh? Eh? I dunno. It's just kind of repetitive. It doesn't encapsulate the best parts of an ARPG or a roguelite. It's almost purely built around grinding

It actually almost feels like an ARPG mixed with an idler more than anything. It's very much just about running over and over again, incremental improvements, until finally you stat check through the bosses and stuff. There is SOME skill involved (mostly kiting. Actually almost entirely kiting), but your choices have a minimal impact on anything that happens in a fight.

The "roguelite" stuff is my biggest disappointment. The in-run trinkets and "skill orbs" BARELY have an impact. They're functionally just varieties of stat boosts (+dmg or +sustain or +tanky) and so it's really just about picking the strongest one presented. In most cases it has next to no impact on how you actually play the character. You have class specializations which do have an impact but you pick that in town, and it just adds 1 active skill and 1 passive to your already existing class abilities, so it's not always much of a shift.

The shortcuts you can unlock are also not really great, because you end up with less resources that way, and resources are ultimately all that matter. So if you want to progress, you are just blasting through low tier enemies for 20-40 minutes per run then continuing on to the harder stuff and then finally to the level where there are mobs that might insta kill you. Being able to save anywhere in a run (in single player) is fantastic but the runs themselves are just uninteresting after you've seen in through a few times.

In less than 14 hours (sat with it open for a few hours once while I had to go do something) I upgraded enough to get through the final boss. I could try to do that with other characters (and might) but you end up just rerunning the same content again and again and again and again. It's just less than the sum of its' parts.

I actually really like the idea of the town building as the progress element, but the rest of the game kinda falls flat from that. I think they need to really dial up the roguelite bits so the runs are more dynamic. That's ultimately what's missing from the game - variety.

It's not bad. But it's not good. I'd recommend a buncha other ARPGs if you want that or a buncha other roguelites if you want that. This doesn't fulfill either well enough for me to recommend it.

It's good. Doesn't feel as good as the first one, but it's mostly because how good your character is is now based on luck of the draw skill upgrades instead of a skill tree. Also projectiles are a nightmare, they're fast, they track, and depending on how much stuff is on your screen they smack. Some minor bugs and gripes are annoying. Very stylish compared to the first though. Bring back the Sun/Moon Temple? Or something cool with the Pirate Cove? Idk. Also Release the Priest.