Once any genre reaches a certain level of popularity, over-saturation is inevitable. Doom and Diablo clones are everywhere, there are dozens of XCOM-alikes and Soulslikes, and now Hades has joined such vaunted company. Titles like Realm of Ink, Redacted, Beatslayer, and Sworn do their best to emulate what made Hades so damn playable and likeable, and now new adventure Reignbreaker has thrown its hat into the ring.
As warrior Clef you are sworn to defeat the evil Queen who betrayed you, and to do so you must strike out from a central hub and attempt to “Raid the Bastion” by fighting through hordes of enemies to reach the monarch in question. Each level is a series of bridges that you must unlock by first raiding the connected Vaults. Breaking the Vaults rewards you with the expected power-ups such as more damage, faster cooldowns, or higher crit chance. There’s nothing here we haven’t seen before.
The main difference in Reignbreaker is Clef’s weapon, the Javelin, a huge lance that she can use to stick bombs to enemies, or jam in the floor as a short-lived turret. It’s used to open locks and break mechanisms to disable traps and can be upgraded in a variety of ways. Unfortunately the rest of Clef’s repertoire is fairly predictable, as is the enemy mix and inevitable boss fights against overpowered monstrosities that are more battled of attrition the first few times.
Between runs Clef awakens in her hideout with a few NPCs wandering around who she can talk to. The problem is there’s no point. They don’t really offer much in the way of help, and often you’ll seek out a particular NPC with an exclamation mark to receive a single meaningless line of dialogue. Hades worked because failing a run pushed the story forward anyway, or unlocked new NPC interactions, upgrades for the hub, or at the very least rewarded you with some deliciously well-acted dialogue. Reignbreaker simply doesn’t, and like many of its mechanics the hub seems to exist just because Hades has one.
One area where Reignbreaker does do well is the music, although when you hear the same battle music over and over again it gets harder to appreciate quickly. The main menu theme is pretty cool though. It’s also a little more generous with health refills than most similar games, which at least keeps you from dying so often. The only times I really struggled were when I ran into bosses.
Despite being riddled with weird bugs that mostly seemed connected to the controller input such as one that made Clef glide around the arena without moving her feet, there is some fun to be had with Reignbreaker. It lacks the pinpoint accuracy and subtle nuances of the game it tries hard to ape, but the hard-hitting combo-centric combat can feel quite satisfying in the moment. Ranged attacks take too long to charge, though, and there are times when it just feels unresponsive. In later areas this becomes more egregious when enemies hit so hard and there are just so many of them.
The story isn’t bad, but struggles to feel coherent when so many of the enemies you talk to are only presented as still images during dialogue exchanges. It really does feel like you’re just throwing yourself against a wall time and again, and Clef’s overall lack of personality or presence doesn’t help carry the game when she’s your only company for so much of it. It’s also not a particularly good-looking game, with samey environments and a muddy, almost indistinct look to the visuals despite them being fairly minimalist.
Perhaps the best way to enjoy Reignbreaker is to accept it for what it is, and not what it isn’t. It’s a perfectly serviceable Hades-like with a few neat ideas but nothing groundbreaking, and might scratch an itch if you’ve played all the other options one too many times. It’s by no means a bad game, but it doesn’t quite do enough to stand out in an increasingly crowded genre.
