Hyper Light Breaker is a 3D open-world co-op extraction rogue-lite, a significant departure from its 2D role-playing predecessor, Hyper Light Drifter. As my first venture into the world of Hyper Light, I was left unimpressed with the current state of Hyper Light Breaker, but I’m certainly intrigued to see where this game will end up by the time it leaves Early Access.
In Hyper Light Breaker, players are thrown into the Overgrowth, a procedurally generated world with five vibrant open biomes filled with enemies to hack, slash, and shoot. The goal of Breaker is to gather resources, gear, upgrades, and weapons to defeat bosses known as “Crowns.” Eventually, defeating these bosses will open the way to the final boss, the Abyss King. However, the big kahuna himself isn’t available to challenge and will arrive in a future update. You can brave each run alone or invite friends to join you, making things considerably more manageable.
Dying in the Overgrowth will send you back to The Cursed Outpost to purchase upgrades and catch your breath before attempting another run — provided you have at least one “Rez” left. Once you die four times and use up your Rez, a new Cycle begins and the Overgrowth resets, changing the layout, sites you’ve explored, and resurrecting any defeated Crowns. The good news is that you can extract anytime by traveling to a Telepad and surviving against a wave of enemies. Doing this returns you to base with all your resources and durability in-tact and is the key to success in Hyper Light Breaker. Coming from games where you extract after you’ve collected what you need, it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that you need to extract early and often to have a chance at survival. Especially considering that extracting resets the Threat meter, which increases the difficulty the more you accomplish in a single run. I believe this is one of the key reasons many players leaving Steam reviews appear to be abandoning Breaker early on.
Combat revolves around using your Blade to slice up and stagger enemies and your Rail (gun) to shoot them from afar. With Rails having limited batteries, you’ll find yourself up close and personal in most fights, reserving your Rail only when necessary, with some exceptions in certain builds. Combat is simple but feels satisfying, evolving with mechanics like elemental damage the further you progress and understand the game. Throughout each run, you’ll come across Holobytes, which are the defining factors of your build, providing passive bonuses that can wildly affect gameplay when synergized together. Unless you can’t find Holobytes that work well with your build, that is. There are also Amps and deployable cooldown items such as grenades. Finally, you can also equip gear of different weights, affecting both your movement speed and defense. Dying removes one tick of durability from your gear, emphasizing the importance of extraction and survival.
Killing enemies (and breaking objects) rewards you with Blood, the primary currency of Hyper Light Breaker. Blood is used for just about everything, including collecting items, opening chests, replenishing MedKits, and purchasing from vendors. As it can be used both in the Overgrowth and back at base, you constantly need to decide how to use Blood effectively — Could this chest be worth it? Should I replenish at low health or risk an extraction? Do I have enough Blood to buy the upgrade I need back at base? It’s an interesting concept and one of the few key features that justify Hyper Light Breaker as a rogue-lite.
Blood isn’t the only currency. Far from it. There are various currencies with different purposes that are incredibly overwhelming at first but eventually sink in. Gold Rations, obtained when a new Cycle begins based on our performance, are the most sought-after currency, allowing you to upgrade vendors and unlock Sycoms, which essentially serve as your character’s class. Cores, obtained through chests and difficult enemies, are also essential for purchasing permanent upgrades back at base. With all the currencies, items, difficulty, and lack of directions, Hyper Light Breaker is a game that takes a very long time to acclimatize to, especially when playing alone. To put it bluntly, Hyper Light Breaker‘s early game is painful to slog through, even when the mid and endgame hold considerable potential.
My main problem with Hyper Light Breaker is how little guidance is present. Now, do I want a roguelite focusing on exploration to hold my hand? Absolutely not, but a game like this needs some naturally occurring sense of progression. Titles like Hades offered something fulfilling after each run, whether those were literal upgrades, knowledge of how well a build works, or a sense of improvement. In contrast, runs of Hyper Light Breaker often felt aimless and ultimately fruitless. I returned to base with some scraps of currency, sure, but rarely an idea of how to improve the next run nor the drive to try again.
Throwing a player into an open world and telling them to go wild can be fantastic, but there needs to be something to push the player in one direction or another. A castle in the skyline you want to explore, a colossal beast you’re bursting to slay, a campfire with some ingredients scattered nearby. While visually interesting in areas, Hyper Light Breaker’s procedurally generated worlds feel empty. Early runs consist of gliding around open fields and slashing enemies while periodically finding an item or Holobyte. This is made even worse by how dire healing is; relying on either using very limited MedKits or restoring a tiny sliver of health by riding around and picking flowers.
It’s important to remember that Hyper Light Breaker is still in very Early Access, and Heart Machine has already made fantastic changes based on fan feedback. Breaker can be a blast once you’ve researched and poured time into it (and get lucky with drops), but more work needs to be poured into the early experience. This game has a robust skeleton that excites me for the future. However, unless you have the patience of a saint, I can’t recommend Hyper Light Breaker just yet.
Hyper Light Breaker is available to play via Steam Early Access on PC.
Published: Feb 17, 2025 03:00 pm