I never once got a piece of gear so cool that it made me change the plan I had going in and build around it. There are six to eight for each of the three classes, and that severely hurts replayability, even when you look at the special abilities a class gets on levelling up, because you can't rely on any one stat to show up in the constantly-moving treadmill of random gear.
“That, and the only thing about loot is stats, stats, and more stats. Does your Warrior want to buff his automatic health regen or his vampirism to gain health with every strike? What stats will your Necromancer sacrifice for the ability to summon an additional skeleton into their posse of the dead? You’re often swapping out one sword or magic ring for a shiny new one, but this is where Loop Hero leans too hard into randomness: If you don’t get the weapon drop you need for a couple of loops you're just out of luck as your damage doesn't keep up. (Which you can change, thankfully, to something easier on the eyes or dyslexic friendly.)The loot that drops in battle is a big part of what keeps you busy: while it’s fairly robotic early on, you soon have to stop and think about which stats are best for your class. That said, the muted palette isn't going to be to everyone's tastes, nor is the chunky pixel font all of the text and stats appear in. Watching the map go from blank slate to overwhelming collage is a rewarding sense of progression that at least somewhat makes up for the lack of customization in your character. I found the balancing act between adding useful tiles and not overwhelming my hero with new enemies to be one of the best challenges in Loop Hero. Beasts inhabit the woods, vampires come down from their castles, skeletons roam the graveyards, fishmen emerge from rivers, and gargoyles fly in and land just about anywhere. “However, along with the benefits that those tiles bring (largely minor things like boosts to attack speed for forests or a town that restores some HP when your hero passes through) come corresponding tradeoffs. So for the first few uneventful loops, well, it's a good time to fill your water glass or grab some snacks in the kitchen. This even goes for boss battles: it’s very strictly your stats vs theirs. Once you're in a fight your fate is controlled by your and your enemies' Attack Speed, Defense, and Damage stats, with a dash of whether or not the percentage chance gods give you more Crits, Counters, and Evades than the other side. In those first few minutes you won't do much, quite literally, as battles are hands-off. The correspondingly retro music's good, too, even if a few tracks play a bit too often for the couple dozen hours Loop Hero will likely take you to play through. The art in fights is more detailed, showing 8-bit warriors slugging it out with basic attack animations, though like a 1990 RPG the sprites don't vary with changes in weapon or as enemies level up. It’s inhabited only by your hero – little more than a 4-bit blob of white pixels – and a handful of bouncing green bubbles representing basic slime blob enemies. “The map is represented with charmingly simple pixel graphics for the loop itself, which begins as a featureless, angular path through the lonely darkness. It's a delightfully unsettling, disorienting place where even the elaborate pixel art portraits of the bad guys aren't sure what's going on. Even abstract concepts like knowledge and permanence are vanishing into the void. Loop Hero’s world is ending nobody can remember things anymore, so those things are disappearing. I only escaped because once its stat-building puzzles are solved there’s not much more to it.Before we even get to its strangely hypnotic and unorthodox gameplay, it has to be said that this is the most excellently surreal apocalyptic fantasy setting since Dark Souls. This exploratory experiment drew me in so deeply with its buffet of synergies and clever strategies that I lost track of time while playing more often than not.
There's nothing quite like this strange combination of idle game autobattler with roguelite deckbuilding and puzzley tile placement.
Loop hero platforms full#
But what's left if you take away character control and just about everything but crunching stat numbers and filling in the map? You get Loop Hero, and it turns out to be a game full of compellingly unique ideas and a weird fantasy world that demands attention. The tactical decisions, crunching numbers, the strategizing, conserving strength for future encounters. Traditionally, some of the best stuff in an RPG is the combat.
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