Azurebreak Heroes Reviews

Very fun rougelite with a lot of depth to builds and unending variations on how to play the game. An ansolute steal at this price point.

Really nice little roguelite game with great visuals and music. Gameplay revolvs around the six different, five of which need to be unlocked, characters each with different active and passive skills. In the typical roguelike/roguelite fashion you are put into a randomly generated version of the gameworld and slowly unlock more and more upgrades which you can use to make all kinds of different item- and character synergies.

[h2]Beautiful, charming, simplistic rogue-lite that is fun to play and very affordable[/h2] I am always on the lookout for up and coming indie developers that are trying to make a splash and got to say after having a chance to play Azurebreak Hero's on both PC & Switch that this developer is going places. [b]Now that's not to say this game is perfect or even suited for everyone.[/b] Fans of rogue-lites from games like Undermined, Hades or even Gunfire Reborn will find themselves right at home with the premise that dedication pays off--not necessarily skills aka 'grind to win'. It's my least favorite way to play rogue-'anything' if I am going to be honest but [b]that doesn't make it a bad game, it's just not going to be everyone's cup of tea.[/b] [b]But it does do some things better than some of the big popular rogue-lites out there.[/b] For starters--the price. It's near criminal how little it cost and the hours it can provide you in terms of entertainment if you like these kind of games. Secondly is the HUGE amount of build varieties this game offers. There's a LOT of ways to build your characters to your liking. Each character has it's own 20 or so skills that you can using crystals--unlock (in any order you see fit so long as you can pony up) These skills change each of the 5 playable characters drastically in terms of gameplay. Then there's 3 tiers of unlocks that can be used by any of the 5 characters that range from specialty skills to artifacts that again--just further diversify builds whether it's blocking causes you to heal health or just to be able to summon familiars. There's a staggering amount of build freedom in this game that begs for experimentation to find the most powerful combinations you can. Though as I hinted, a lot of this comes at the cost of grinding. Unlocks, new skills, abilities are all behind grind walls so before you can even begin mixing and matching things around to create your ultimate builds you have do do a fair amount of killing and dying first which for games like this ie. Hades, this is expected--it just drives me nuts which is why am not a big fan of this formula. I also like that this game is very polished. Both the PC & Switch versions played great and never came across any bugs. You can tell a good amount of attention to detail into not just ensuring the game was going to be a polished, bug free experience but also into the little things from keybindings or interacting with NPC's leaving the experience sleek. Admittedly there's some issues I found like it feels weird fighting enemies above or below you as your in-game avatar only faces left or right. I would of wished we could be able to face up or down as well. And there's the elephant in my room--the lack of stat tracking. Which for me personally, is a real letdown. Would of been nice to see what your best runs were and what your loadout/builds were for them (similar to Nova Drift or Rift Wizard). Really, if only one thing ever gets added to this game, I hope it's stat tracking. Only thing that just felt missing to me. [h2]What I liked[/h2] [list] [*]-Beautiful hand-crafted pixel artwork [*]-Numerous unlocks (characters, character skills, account wide skills) [*]-Punchy combat [*]-Massive variety of builds [*]-Steady, rewarding progression [*]-Original soundtrack [*]-Lots of cute demons to kill [*]-Relatively bug-free [*]-Extremely polished [*]-Built in game-pad support [*]-Entry price $7 [/list] [h2]What I disliked[/h2] [list] [*]-Steam functionality is somewhat lacking (can't take screenshots with F12) [*]-No stat tracking--when you die you find yourself back at the main menu :( [*]-Personal Preference: A bit grindy for my taste [*]-Personal Preference: Would of liked more achievements or in-game challenges to try to complete. [*]-Attacking enemies above or below you feels weird since your avatar only looks right or left [/list] [b]Overall you can't go wrong with this purchase. The music is original, the artwork simple, cute and charming. And the gameplay is fun, progressive and rewarding. The price for admission is a steal and this dev deserves your patronage. [/b]