GODBREAKERS is a roguelite action game with an emphasis on fast-paced combat and ability stealing mechanics. It’s incredibly fun, and it has more than enough content to last you a lot of hours, but the current version does have a few issues worth bringing up. Let’s talk about it!
Full disclosure: I received a review copy from the developers, and these are my impressions after the first few hours.
Fluidity That’ll Make Gods Tremble
Let’s start off with what’s good. The game has pretty fluid movement and attacks that feel almost seamless to chain together. There are barely any combos in the game, but each of the weapons have a handful of attack chains and dash/jump strikes that you can use, and you can cancel out of them by dashing.
If you’ve played any similar action game or soulslike, this isn’t going to be anything new. What sets it apart is the “Godbreak” mechanic, which lets you steal a one-use version of an enemy’s attack.
With a full meter, you can can possess an enemy that has low HP and absorb their unique move. Godbreaking doubles as an AOE attack or defensive maneuver as well, because diving into an enemy makes you temporarily untargetable until the mob you’re possessing explodes or you manually detonate them.
The gimmick doesn’t seem to go much deeper than that from what I’ve played, but it does add an extra layer of skill expression to the moment-to-moment gameplay. Since you have a relatively small window to trigger a Godbreak, you can be smart with it and keep certain targets healthy enough until you need to blow them up or duck out of damage.
Diverse Maps & Foes
The game has a map selection mechanic where, at least for the first couple of levels, you have multiple biomes to choose from. Here, you got two maps for the first two levels, each with its own unique hazards and enemy types.
There are only a handful of truly unique mobs and bosses for each, since stuff like the various hound-like pinecone enemies show up in all of them. From the deadly goop monsters in Sabboath to the punch-happy rock guys in Marik, there’s enough variety that the zones feel sufficiently distinct.
Maybe A Little Too Frantic?
Before anything, I do want to say that I’ve beaten the “final boss”, though if the victory cutscene and missing codex entries are anything to go by, I’m guessing there’s a true ending here that’ll take quite a bit of work to unlock.
With that said, the journey to my first win took around 3 hours worth of runs. A bit of it is definitely carelessness, but the game will put you in moments where there’s just too much going on in the screen. You see, outside of hard crowd control effects, there really isn’t any way to interrupt enemies.
If you don’t have a stun or your dash charges are on cooldown, you’re completely screwed if you find yourself in a sea of red telegraphs. This occasionally results in completely unavoidable damage if you’re playing solo.
This was the absolute worst in the penultimate zone, Karaja. Not only will you encounter a lot of telegraph spamming elites by this point, you’ll also run into “modulator” mobs that buff allies and debuff you. You can eat so much unnecessary damage with how hectic these rooms can get.
Modulators are extra annoying. These creatures will constantly fade away off to the side if you’re attacking them outside of the brief window where they’re vulnerable, all while spamming heals and empowering their allies. I’m used to them now, and I actually love saving Godbreaks for the rejuvenator variants, but this enemy type will undoubtedly frustrate a lot of people.
Solo-Unfriendly Design
The occasionally overwhelming nature of the combat honestly feels like a sign that the game is primarily designed for co-op. While there’s nothing wrong with that, you barely get any room to breathe while playing solo.
This becomes way too apparent as you’re approaching the last zone. I mean, the penultimate boss fight is a duo, and you’re practically forced to adopt a hit-and-run playstyle to chip away at their health. You can barely finish half an attack chain before some AOE attack drops on your head.
You can play the game with a party of up to four players, which seems like the intended way to go about it. This basically means you’d need friends who bought a copy as you are very unlikely to find playable public lobbies here. As I’m writing this, there’s surprisingly one that I can join, but the server name is in Romanian, so I’m probably gonna have hella lag if I hop in.
Underwhelming Upgrades
On top of the telegraph spam, the upgrades you can get are another pain point. There’s no “power fantasy” to speak of, as almost everything gives you a hilariously low 1-2% stat boost or chance to trigger an effect.
Sure, it adds up throughout the run, but these upgrades barely feel impactful, especially since you’re forced to play a hit-and-run style without a group. They could at least buff it a bit for solo players specifically, otherwise, it’ll get old fast.
Even the meta-progression system doesn’t feel all that great. It’s really more of the same complaint, but just bump up “1-2%” to maybe “5-10%”. As in, congratulations, your healing item is now 5% more effective, or you can use it 10% faster than before…
Is It Worth It? Well, Maybe!
Don’t get me wrong, the game is still very enjoyable. I see myself playing this more, since I do kind of want to check out the challenge modes and maybe even get the true ending. There’s also a relatively large collection of cosmetics to unlock!
My only issue with wanting to do that at the moment is that I’ll probably be going for the exact same DOT-centric hit-and-run build that got me my first win, because it seems to be the “safest” and least frustrating for solo gameplay. I’ll see if I can experiment with other builds as I progress further.
The issues I have with it are fixable, if the developers agree that they’re problems to be fixed, but I don’t want to be presumptuous as they do seem to really have this vision of it being more of a cooperative game.
Overall, I’d say GODBREAKERS is still very much worth it if you’re looking for an action roguelite. I don’t claim to be the best at this particular type of combat, so there’s a chance that you fare much better. Just know that the game definitely leans heavily towards group play, so temper your expectations if you’re going into it completely solo.