I’ve seen plenty of roguelikes over the years and the genre is fairly popular for the most part. They are mostly two dimensional in terms of movement and/or graphics. You see many games sharing mechanics found in games like Spelunky, Binding of Issac, Dead Cells, Hades, and so forth. However, you don’t really see as many first person shooter roguelites for some reason.
Battle Shapers is one of the few first person roguelites I have played. I know Returnal is one but I didn’t have an opportunity to check that game out yet. I’ll just cut to the chase, overall I enjoyed my time with Battle Shapers. The game feels like Mega Man but in first person.
As always, I’ll start with what I perceive to be flaws in the game. Now I understand what I’m about to describe may not be problems for other people but I always mention them so people will be aware of any potential issues. My main goal is to provide as much information as possible to help people make a purchasing decision and to that end I have videos, streams, articles, and podcasts episodes to cover as many aspects of the game as possible.
One of the main flaws in my humble opinion is the lack of weapon and grenade variety in the very beginning of the game. This is a very minor flaw since you start unlocking weapons after just an hour of play time. However, it definitely did feel a little stale when you kept running into the same weapons and grenade abilities in the same run. Instead of feeling excited about finding a new weapon or ability in your run, you are met with disappointment since it’s something you’ve already seen.
Now again, this is a very minor problem since you earn enough currency to unlock new weapons pretty easily but it may create some friction and turn a small portion of gamers off from continuing the game. A simple fix would be to increase the starting pool of weapons and grenades by even just one more and the beginning of the game would feel much better.
Another very minor complaint is that most of the weapons feel the same. Now the different weapons actually do different amounts of damage, have different effects, as well as range, but as for how they feel when you shoot them, they all feel the same. This is mostly because the pool of weapons is very small at the very start and once you start unlocking more, you get more unique weapons. Even with more weapons however, there’s just something about the game where the shooting feels a tad lackluster. It might be the audio design or the visual effects but they don’t feel too different from one other.
Personally speaking, it didn’t really take away from the game and I pretty much enjoyed using most of the weapons, but it didn’t really feel like I had to change my play style to match any of the weapons other than for the shotgun, since the range on that weapon was very short and you only have one bullet before having to reload.
This leads to another very minor complaint, reload times. Reload times take what feels like forever in this game for some weapons. Battle Shapers can feel fast paced at times and being stuck reloading a weapon is not fun at all. It slows the pace of the game down because you have to run away and find cover and wait for your guns to reload. Now you do have a passive upgrade that reloads unequipped weapons and you have two weapons you can switch between. This kind of bypasses the long reload times but it just doesn’t feel too fun for me.
Now again, I actually enjoyed Battle Shapers quite a bit. These minor complaints didn’t really take away from the fun I had but they were noticeable enough to me that I brought them up. As for the positives, the game looks pretty darn stylish.
The world is very colorful and shiny. Everything looks pristine and slick. I didn’t even think of this but most of my friends watching me play this game mentioned that it looked like Overwatch. This is probably one of the few times that someone has compared something to Overwatch as a compliment sadly.
The game play is very fun for me. The game has an interesting mechanic where punching a staggered enemy will restore shields. This lead to me shooting most enemies from afar, running up to punch a staggered enemy, and finally dashing away to safety to then repeat the process all over again. It feels fantastic except for the few times when the punch misses, due to my own error.
The shooting, punching, and movement felt pretty smooth and seamless for the most part. The punch is sort of similar to Doomfist’s in Overwatch where the momentum of the punch carries you forward slightly but definitely not as far as Doomfist’s does. In addition to the punch are other movement abilities but I’ve only unlocked the dash so far. There seems to be a wall run ability which I have yet to unlock.
This leads into another fun aspect of the game. Similar to metroidvania titles, some areas of the map are inaccessible without certain movement abilities and you have to go look for them in some hidden side areas of the world. There does seem to be an upgrade that lets you punch through walls as well but I have not found that yet.
Like Mega Man games, once you reach the end of the level you have a boss fight and they feel pretty fun for the most part. Some people complained about the bosses being pretty bullet spongey on launch and the developers seemed to have nerfed the health quite a bit. I was able to beat the first boss on my second try so it doesn’t feel too difficult. The first boss had a tiny floating drone that shot bullets and lasers and the main boss robot would shoot bullets and then leap at you with a melee attack that did massive damage.
I died halfway through the first level on my first playthrough, and then at the boss on my second, and finally beat the boss on the third. Once you die, you go back to the main lobby where you can spend your earned currency to unlock new weapons, abilities, and passive upgrades to health and shields for future runs. The rate at which you earn currency seems to be pretty fair in that an hour of game play should get you at least one new unlock.
Overall, Battle Shapers is a fun game. The shooting and movement feel great and combing through the levels to mindlessly shoot robots, find loot, and unlock new upgrades makes for a fun experience that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1421290/Battle_Shapers/
Review Score: 88% positive with a total of 136 reviews as of this writing (10/19/23)
Developer: Metric Empire
Publisher: Metric Empire
Release Date: Oct 3, 2023
MSRP: $24.99
I received a key from Terminals. Thank you so much for the key!
Time spent: 3.5 hours
Achievement Score: N/A
Ducky Obrien 