Loop Hero - Review (PC)

I never hid my love for Digital Developer and the ability of this publisher to discover and publish pearls of videoludic entertainment. From titles become cult like Hotline Miami, to pop phenomena like Fall Guys, it's hard for these guys to make a mistake. And, I don't know, they got centered again. Loop Hero, the new effort of the study Four Quarters Team. Available now only on PC, Loop Hero is a Roguelite with RPG, strategic and deck-building elements. Brutal, in its apparent simplicity, but incredibly addictive, so much so that the approximately 20 hours I spent playing the full version of the title are almost resible in front of the 300-400 hours that some users have spent only in the demo. This is to make you understand how this game can be fulfilling and deep, but let's go and see for good what it is about.

We rebuild the World, one pixel at a time

The incipit is certainly not the most original: an evil Lich has decided to erase the existence of the world as we know it, but fortunately a Hero is able to oppose the apocalypse trying to rebuild civilization, placing order in the primordial chaos that has arisen. Starting from our camp, we will walk in loop for days and days, meeting monsters of all kinds on our way to open our way to the Bosses of the various chapters of this cryptic history, and free the world from the wicked threat of Lich.

After a short and far too concise tutorial we are immediately thrown into the mix, or rather in the loop, that is in this virtual path generated procedurally but that always starts and ends at our camp. Our Hero moves and fights independently in this vacuous "world" that will be enriched by us using the cards we will have available. Before each run, in fact, we can assemble a deck with maximum 15 cards, each of which represents a biome or a particular construction that we can place in the game world, obtaining its benefits or showing the monsters that live there. When we grow lush prairie we will get care at the end of each day of the journey, erecting mountains we will increase our overall life points, building cemeteries we can guarantee valuable resources when we pass through that box, but we will have to take into account the presence of threatening skeletons to defend them. Result fundamental to experiment and discover the various combinations between cards, and the best strategies to get the most congenial synergies, learn which are the most fearsome meetings and how to exploit the weaknesses of monsters to our advantage.

But if the positioning of cards that give us bonuses appears logical and intuitive, why should we complicate our lives by placing obstacles on our path? Well, have you ever seen a hero who doesn't fight? How do you think you earn a living? Killing horrible and deformed creatures but it is obvious! In Loop Hero each trucid monster guarantees us experience points, useful to get interesting perks during our journey, as well as possible cards to add to our hand or equipment with which to improve our hero. Good old master game our task will be precisely in generating an adventure that will soak to our hero, not too easy not to get it unprepared to the final Boss, not too difficult to make it perish prematurely.

In fact, if our beniamino dies before making a full loop, we will lose 70% of the resources acquired during the run, not a few if we consider the effort and time necessary to reconcile them. To each loop we will then be put in front of a doubt, a bet with ourselves: to surrender to the inordigy and to make another round risking death, or to withdraw cautiously to our village bringing with us all that we have collected? A choice that has turned out to say little ansiogena and that has led to numerous impreci... Reconsideration.

Another round...

Even the bravest and hardest heroes need a break. In Loop Hero Once we finish a run (voluntarily or not) we will return to our camp, a kind of small village in continuous expansion inhabited by the few survivors of the cataclysm. Using the resources obtained in the loop we can build new buildings or improve existing buildings: building Gymnasium, for example, we will unlock the possibility of getting perk by raising the experience of our Hero; Crypt, instead, allows us to unlock one of the three classes present in the game, the Necromante. The Roguelite and strategic comparte also adds that management, therefore, fundamental to proceed in the game since some buildings will also guarantee us new cards for our deck, expanding not little our tactical possibilities.

If it is true that some buildings require a good amount of farming and grinding, it is also right to say that the game is based precisely on that, an infinite cycle of rounds orchestrated by ourselves, to maximise the collection of resources and, consequently, the chances of defeating the Bosses and complete the 4 chapters that currently make up the game. By passing hours things get a little bit more tedious, we start to identify strategies that are too much higher than others to be able to disconnect, and things get a little more monotonous. The possibility of experimenting with the various classes and their peculiarities definitely goes to relieve this problem: between Guerriero, Ladro and Necromante I certainly preferred the latter. Its peculiarity lies in almost totally exploiting the skeletons and ghouls that recalls from death to fight alongside it, thus making fighting against more enemies decidedly more affordable.

Speaking of the fight, you can say very little by being this totally automated and based simply on the statistics of our character, a feature that deals a lot with what we have used largely the Roguelikes until today: titles like Hades, Dead Cells, Enter the Gungeon base the core of their gameplay on the frenzy of the fight and the skills required to the player to overcome the indemnity pictures. On the contrary Loop Hero all this goes on the second floor, making gameplay certainly more passive but not for this less exciting. In addition, this style of play fits perfectly habits and needs of players who prefer long runs for several hours as well as those who are content to play more bits and run away, which is why we are sure that Loop Hero will soon see light on mobile devices too.

Technically speaking

We tried.Loop Heroon the following configuration:

AMD Ryzen 7 3700x @ 3.60 GHz

Gigabyte GTX 1080 8Gb

Kingston Hyper x FURY (2x8Gb) DDR4

Resolution 3440x1440 (21:9)

Given the graphic design and artistic style intentionally retro we had no problem in turning the title that is however locked at 60fps (not that there is reason to claim a higher frame-rate). Although not encapsulated in incredible bugs, it was however nice to see how developers got hungry to release as hotfixes as possible to ensure a smoother and trouble-free gaming experience possible to the rich playerbase that quickly came to create. The graphics that seem to come out directly from the Amiga flanks a savory 16-bit soundtrack but that, as well as the long gaming sessions, has been personally replaced by my Spotify playlist. Small disapproval with regard to the sound effects, sometimes a little too "crude" and unpleasant though contextualized in the time that the game emulates.

In conclusion

Loop Hero It is a title that surprised me and conquered me, that manages to refresh a genre that I love, that of the Roguelike, but that I admit to having become a bit stale and repetitive lately. The boys of Four Quarters Team they managed to build a deep and complex work... sometimes even a little too much! Although not exempt from defects, such as the "stitichezza" of the tutorial or the latent repetition manifested above all after a dozen hours, Loop Hero is definitely a game that deserves to be in the libraries of all fans and not, considering also the absolutely competitive price to which it is offered (14,99€). We hope that developers will remain active and coexisted to the community as they have demonstrated in this post-launch, perhaps delighted with some additional classes or new cards that can expand even more the possibilities that this dreamy experience offers.