Battle Shapers – fear of ambition. Review

Not defined

Roguelikes with a first-person perspective are a fairly niche genre segment, but they have their own audience. Over the past couple of years, we have seen a simple combination of roguelike and shooter motifs in Deadlink, interesting experiments with form and genre approaches in Witchfire, the adrenaline-fuelled ultra-violent retro attraction Mullet Mad Jack, and the much less bloodthirsty Roboquest. The latter, obviously, served as the main source of inspiration for the Metric Empire team: its debut Battle Shapers presents a visual style that is quite friendly to players of any age, and not particularly hardcore gameplay, and the basic combat dynamics are very reminiscent of the “colleagues” project. Frankly speaking, Battle Shapers is a bit slow with original ideas, as if the developers were afraid to be too ambitious. But maybe other people’s ideas are implemented at a high level?

The gloomy tones of the opening scene, alas, are not visually supported by most of the game’s levels.

⇡#Three Strongholds

Clouds have gathered over the utopian idyll of New Elysium – the rebellious Builders, modestly calling themselves “Lords,” have completely captured the city. The last hope for the return of calm to the polis is Ada, an architect and warrior from a bygone era, who is in cryosleep just for such a case. It is she who will have to personally overthrow the three rulers who are wreaking havoc, return peace to the streets of New Elysium and reveal the true nature of the disaster that suddenly fell on paradise.

The renegade architects settled in three heavily defended strongholds: the Stinging Mantis fortified in the gravity garden; the Lady of the Wind sits in the stormscraper; Well, the center of robotics was occupied by the High-Voltage Colossus. In each of these locations, we will encounter a crowd of minions of the Architects and fight them in battles with unique conditions that reflect the essence of the lords of the location; It won’t be without additional difficulties, such as special traps and other obstacles along the way. And also, as soon as we eliminate one of the Architects, the difficulty in the remaining locations increases due to additional conditions and obstacles.

Between the arenas, acrobatic tests also await us, which, however, are repeated time after time, so they do not pose a threat during repeated runs.

The game cycle will be familiar to all fans of roguelikes: at each stage of the passage we have to systematically destroy opponents in the arenas, then get to the Architect and deal with him – and repeat until victory. Some battles feature special conditions, such as Isolation, during which you must defeat several enemy groups, including a particularly ferocious adversary. And sometimes shootouts are diluted with simple quests like finding keys to doors, or alternative paths that lead to additional values, fights with mini-bosses and rewards.

As expected, during our forays here and there we will come across ways to increase our power: increasing our chances of survival, improving our abilities and, of course, strengthening our arsenal. The choice of guns in Battle Shapers is familiar: pistols, shotguns, machine guns and grenade launchers. Each type of weapon, of course, has several subtypes that offer different firing modes, rates of fire and types of damage – electroshock, fire, vibration and kinetic. For the most part, the barrels are made of high enough quality to allow you to enjoy shooting, but, of course, they are far from the sensations of weapons from the same Witchfire.

A powerful ability can be removed from a weak gun and placed in a more suitable one, and in one weapon you can collect as many as three abilities!

In addition to guns, active skills like a pulse grenade that deals damage in an area, or, say, a mirror turret that shoots piercing projectiles that also reflect from surfaces, will work against robotic enemies. And after defeating the first Architect, Ada also unlocks core skills – a local analogue of an absolute ability, which multiplies our combat power. For example, “Burst” inflicts huge explosive damage in a circle and, in addition, reflects projectiles at the senders, and “Ball Lightning” fully lives up to its name: it launches a huge ball of lightning at enemies, which causes significant damage to everyone in the affected area.

And the core skills also influence the assembly as a whole, determining additional effects during, say, finishing moves, dashes, or while performing certain actions. As the action progresses, you can add different properties to the core: for example, simply reduce the recovery time of all abilities, or, say, while using “Ball Lightning” you yourself turn into ball lightning. There are quite a lot of options, however, almost all the most interesting things can be experienced in literally one run…

If the enemy glows pink, you can carry out a finishing attack and build up battle-worn shields. Yes, just like in DOOM, only without the brutal animation

⇡#«Srednyachok” for dinner

As you already understand, Battle Shapers diligently copies roguelikes in general and roguelike shooters in particular. The project follows the beaten path, slightly changing the form of familiar game elements, but not their essence. And, it should be noted, it does it efficiently – at first the game gives a certain amount of fun. But this approach has one critical drawback: without new ideas of its own, Battle Shapers becomes boring after the first playthrough. And you can complete the game extremely quickly – in one or two runs.

Further interest is fueled only by the desire to try out new types of weapons and core skills, but even this fuse will not last long – different barrels do not provide a fundamentally new experience, and some are simply boring to use. And the core skills, as I mentioned above, completely exhaust their potential in one or two runs. The simple narrative also does not create a desire to run through the arenas of the game again, as does the fact that the locations do not change in any way from race to race.

On each floor you can choose one Architect move, which will provide useful bonuses on that specific floor

The potential of Battle Shapers is enough for literally one or two evenings, which seems like a completely frivolous approach for the genre. The situation could be saved by a cooperative mode – the possibility of passing for several players directly suggests itself. But, alas, this is where the developers decided not to follow in the footsteps of the creators of Roboquest – there is no co-op. And with this decision, combined with the almost complete absence of fresh genre ideas, they finally framed Battle Shapers as a mediocre and passable game.

***

Despite a fairly solid implementation, Battle Shapers has nothing to offer experienced players either visually, gameplay, or narratively – except maybe a couple of hours of unremarkable shoot-em-ups. And personally, I am sorry that the ambitions of the people from Ubisoft were only enough for a project that does not stand out among its competitors in any way, and only copies the best practices of its colleagues.

Advantages:

• Cheerful gameplay with a sufficient (for a couple of hours) number of different weapons and abilities;
• Diligent transfer of mechanics and genre developments from other FPS roguelikes…

Disadvantages:

• …But you won’t find original ideas or their interpretations in Battle Shapers.
• After the first playthrough, interest rapidly dives down;
• The lack of cooperative modes puts an end to the potential opportunity to return to the game.

Graphic arts

Battle Shapers does not skimp on bright colors and rich gamut, but at the same time it turns out to be as faded as possible at the level of perception – none of the locations stands out for its unique style, or interesting work with color, or the curious design of enemies, or memorable images. And the colorful palette with sunny lighting does not at all reflect the gloomy cataclysm specified by the narrative.

Sound

Standard level of quality: clanking metal, shots from different barrels, explosions – everything is appropriate, although it does not create any special level of involvement.

The same applies to music – combative guitar riffs and fantastic synth motifs functionally fill the sound background, but have very little effect on atmosphere or immersion.

Single player game

A passable roguelike action game without any frills or interesting game finds.

Estimated time of completion

It will take you an hour or two to complete one successful run, and another couple of hours to try out different combinations of weapons and abilities.

Collective game

Not foreseen.

General impression

Battle Shapers fits perfectly into the concept of a one-night project – it is performed at a sufficient level of quality to give a little momentary dopamine, but is completely devoid of elements that can hold for a long time.

Rating: 6.0 / 10

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