Godbreakers review

Take them to church.
Godbreakers

You know when a game reminds you of something else and you can’t put your finger on it right away? That’s what I had with Godbreakers, a new 3rd–person co-op roguelike from To the Sky and Thunderful Publishing. And then after a few hours it hit me: Godbreakers has something of Risk of Rain 2 about it, with a healthy dollop of Hades 2 on the side. Of course, being third-person means the Hades stuff is less obvious at first, but it soon makes sense.

Godbreakers is about, quite literally, breaking gods. Your role in this world is to seek out and destroy tyrannical deities in an attempt to liberate a number of worlds currently in their thrall. Your ultimate goal is Monad, a hugely powerful entity who rules over the other gods with an iron fist. In fact, in your quest to assault and defeat Monad, the other gods you fight over and over impart their power and wisdom to you.

Godbreakers

It’s a roguelike, so when you die, the run ends and you’re spat back to a nexus area with whatever you’ve unlocked, be that new skins, heads, weapon archetypes, or the special currency you need to unlock permanent buffs. Here you can swap out your skins or practice with your new weapons. There are six archetypes to unlock, including a huge scythe, a bludgeoning “pillar”, and a pair of lightning-fast twin blades.

What reminded me of Risk of Rain 2 is that as your Godbreaker picks up new loot, it alters their appearance in fun ways, adding special effects to certain body parts or clipping armour to them. It’s incredibly fast-paced, and in order to control any battlefield you’ll need to be fast and precise.

Each stage is presented as a series of small contained arenas in which enemies spawn in numbers. You beat them back using light and heavy combos, dashes, dash-attacks, and specials. Each weapon has a special move on cooldown, such as the twin blades’ ability to bounce between multiple enemies, and you’ll have one elemental attack mapped to R1 that might do an AoE burst, throw a bomb, or apply a debuff to your weapon.

Godbreakers

There’s a strong sense that Godbreakers is made for multiplayer, which I haven’t tested much prior to release. Played solo it’s fast, frantic, and fun, but I often felt I wasn’t doing enough DPS. You can cancel out of any move using a dash, which helps you get out of trouble, but I found elemental specials like bombs or poison, incredibly weak even when upgraded a few times at the pre-boss merchant.

No matter which random items and buffs I was able to loot through the stages, I always found the third and fourth world in a run (there are six, but you’ll only go through four per life) incredibly tough. I ended up stuck for some time in a loop of wiping the floor with World 1, struggling enough in World 2 to use most of my healing items, and then getting trounced in World 3. While each stage is pretty enough, there’s little variety from run to run in enemy spawns or level layout, which meant repeated runs did begin to feel very repetitive, even for a roguelike.

The unique selling point in all this is the ability to God-break. Get an enemy low enough and accrue enough Source energy, and you can hit R2 to absorb them, destroying them with a small explosion and taking their unique power as a single-use attack or buff for you. Each enemy and mini-boss can be absorbed in this way, and unleashing Godbreaks mid-fight can often turn the tide of an encounter with groundlings, or deal decent one-shot damage to the boss. There’s a decent variety of these attacks, too, some applying debuffs like Decay or Slow to the enemy. When played with friends, well-timed Godbreaks can be devastating.

Godbreakers

Defeating Monad unlocks an array of additional challenges, as does completing World-specific challenges called Quests. There are bonus challenge stage to take on, too, if you’re lucky enough to spawn a teleporter in a run. A lot of Godbreakers is based on RNG, but permanent buffs unlocked in the nexus increase your chances of things like healing orbs or currency drops. You’ll also find hazards like mines and traps scattered around levels, many of which tie in to your Quests.

The bosses themselves are the main attraction in Godbreakers. Each World is punctuated with a mini-boss whose power you can absorb, and finished with a large-scale fight with a full boss. Of them all, my favourite might be Uhr, who feels almost like a special encounter in Monster Hunter, dropping shields to hide behind as he unleashes a huge nuke, and then spawning massive tentacle-like pillars to crush you. Some, like Alphatane, feel like bullet hells, bombarding you with AoEs, enemy spawns, multiple projectiles, and creeping vines that ensnare you.

Godbreakers

There’s a lot to like in Godbreakers, but there’s arguably not enough content here at launch to really keep diehard genre fans occupied. Five weapon styles and six Worlds sounds cool, but each world takes about half an hour and they don’t change much from run to run. Also, only the first two are interchangeable, and the third and fourth are always fixed. You’ll have a more fun in a group, but even then it does get a little samey after a few hours.

But it feels great. The combat is so slick and moreish, and there is a huge variety of armour pieces, buffs, and special attacks to find, not to mention the number of Godbreaks available. If you’re looking for a deep or diverse experience, though, you won’t find it here. With a beautiful, minimalist art style and some great encounter music, there’s a lot to keep you coming back to Godbreakers even if it’s in short bursts, but here’s hoping for a little more variety down the line.

Summary
With a beautiful, minimalist artstyle and some great encounter music, there’s a lot to keep you coming back to Godbreakers.
Good
  • Slick combat
  • God-breaking is cool
  • Nice visuals
Bad
  • Not that great solo
  • Needs more variety
  • Can be frustrating
7.5
Good

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