This game got me instantly with it's graphics, since most other Survivor style games use low resolution pixel graphics, Beautiful Mystic Survivors shows some beautiful 3D environments, effects and character models and with that is a welcome change. For a "in development" game it already feels pretty complete - a lot of unique classes and characters to play and unlock, three procedural areas with a playtime of ~30 minutes each if you have a good run. The variety of weapons and items is also pretty unique in comparison with other Survivor style games. Since it's on the easier side when you play on "normal" this is probably a great way to get introduced into the new Survivor mini-genre. The gameplay loop, balancing and graphics make it very addicting. Ideal for occassional gaming sessions of around 30 minutes each.
If you never understood the "idle game" idea and how people could "watch a game play itself", Loop Hero might be the best possible introduction to how this concept actually works and where it's depth of gameplay lies. While it got all the dark fantasy tropes we came to love in place it completely shifts the gameplay from a tactical RPG with basic strategy base building to a world builder, where you control the world in order to level your hero and your hero follows a simple path, burning all their cooldowns. And if you overdo it your hero dies and you only get a small part of the loot of your journey. You could also call it a reverse tower defense, where instead of building towers to defeat a continuous swarm of enemies, you build tiles to level and challange your hero. Each stage is one map on one screen and it only starts with a camp and a path that builds the name giving loop. And with a deck of tiles you can later on customize, you build a world around and on that path to buff your hero, give them challanges and ultimately defeat enough enemies to have the boss spawn in. After defeating the boss you can return victorious or continue playing the map until you filled it with tiles completely. But that "bonus mode" will get extremely hard, very fast. It gets increasingly complex in it's normal mode, too, while never really becomming obscure or unfair. The overall progression is done in a rogue-lite pattern, where if you win or lose you end up in your base, which is growing too, and you can build buildings, gain more villagers, etc. The most important skill as a player is resource management, focusing on a build and giving your loop a rhythm of buffs and challanges your hero won't succumb to. To me and most people i know who played it it's insanely addictive and thus highly recommended to anyone fond of the fantasy, strategy and RPG genres overall.
The Good: The character development is insane, never seen before in an open world game, you get total freedom and unlike other games you aren't locked into the "archetype" you were going for just by having the first few points put into it's trees. And that's just the mechanical side, the fact that the player also is a real character inside this universe's narrative, with their own rich story and your decisions form the character's personality is a masterwork. The combat system is great. Guns feel meaty and are precise, blades can be used in many different motions and the parry system is stellar, some enemies just don't really phone in their attacks perfectly all the time, so parrying is as hard as in "those really hard" 3D character action games. The player has many options and so many different approaches to character development, it doesn't have to hide itself from games of the gerne "emersive sims" and is on par with the best in that regard. The main story and the array of fully acted and voiced substories are stunning. The main and sub story arcs interject on some levels with each other - characters from story arc one will acknowledge stuff you do in story arc two and so forth - or an character might suddenly be missing and its acknowledged and played around it. The length is perfectly servicable, where just following the main story will net you in the same time as in the famous series about games about some ancient scriptues. The Bad: Game breaking bugs? Yes, occassionally, but reload solved all of them for me. Style - yeah, you have quite a lot of options, but if you go for stats forget about style completely. The driving is passable with cars still reacting really weird to bumps in the road or harsh steering. Faction or reputation systems are non-existent - personally the greatest letdown. Itemization is bad - optimally itemized player characters will all look exactly the same. Verdict: If you skip this you will miss out.
Classic mechanics, only the best of classic enemy types and classic level layout with alternate paths and maps. Modern flow, quality, hit impact, responsiveness of controlls and art style, blended into a pretty well made arcade machine border and screen effect. Highly recommended for beat'em'up fans and people who want to check out the beat'em'up genre, also pretty great for short bursts of play, speed runners and score hunters. You don't need a beefy PC for this game but it still looks great thanks to artstyle and special screen effects (which you can alter if you don't like them).
... with a tempting story, several storybranches, twists and intrigues you can even trigger yourself and unique bossfights against enemy avatars plus their armies this game will keep you playing for quite a while. The storyline with it's branches is so dynamic you can even switch sides and go to war for the enemy in the midst of the campaign or stay loyal at your chosen god's side. Another thing that made this game great is the quick and easy multiplayer mode - every player selects her or his favourite god and starts harvesting souls in good or evil ways, capturing expansion bases and just commanding their army to crush the enemy in an about 30 minutes skirmish. It's very well balanced, too, even if there are 5 gods and every god has unique creatures and spells connected to one of 5 elements. The trick is to not loose too much units to the enemy or harvest the souls of the fallen creatures back immediately or your enemy will get them and outnumber your army.
The skillsystem and slick combat was way ahead of it's time. Mixing all sorts of spells, magic and alchemy grenades, potions, wands, even crowd controll made the game better in PvP than Diablo 2 was. Coop was more accessible, too, but not as rich as Diablo 2's campaign. If you have friends to play with: Nox is a wonderfull sparetime multiplayer gem with no restrictions on how tricky or brutal to beat your opponents ass next respawn. Singleplayer was mediocre hack & slay imho.
