Loop Hero Review (Nintendo Switch OLED)

Welcome to our Loop Hero Review where The Lich has thrown the world into a timeless loop and plunged its inhabitants into never-ending chaos. Wield an expanding deck of mystical cards to place enemies, buildings, and terrain along each unique expedition loop for the brave hero.

Loop Hero Review (Steam)

Loop Hero Review Pros:

  • Decent graphics.
  • 242MB download size.
  • Touchscreen support.
  • Trophies-in-game achievements.
  • Fonts-pixel, high res, and dyslexia-friendly.
  • The modes-the game plays out over two modes adventure and planning. The adventure will have you moving forward automatically whereas planning will pause the game and allow you to deal with management etc.
  • Combat-auto battler side-on view.
  • Day/night cycle with enemies and dangers appearing over time.
  • Drag and drop inventory system.
  • Retreat button.
  • The story is told like a choose your own adventure game.
  • Tutorial tips as you play.
  • You can see the whole map straight from the off.
  • Two game speeds- x1 and x2.
  • Get loot from enemy fights.
  • Gameplay-you go around a looped level over and over but can place tiles to change the loop and its dangers. Cards like add vampires or add meadows to increase health regen.
  • Campfire-start of the loop and passing it will then re-populate the level.
  • Play how you want.
  • Easy compare gear pop-ups.
  • Can fast scroll or auto-scroll conversations.
  • Cool art.
  • Controls take a bit of getting used to but it does use a very engaging button shortcut system that looks harder than it is but you soon realize you couldn’t play it without them.
  • When placing tiles you will get icons to show where they can be placed.
  • Settings- have the game pause automatically when you do a loop or after a battle.
  • Hover over any cards to see what they are/do.
  • Stats-shows your damage output, max hp, damage to all, defense, evasion, and how much hp you get every new day.
  • Fits the handheld environment.
  • Plays out over a really nice minimal graphic tileset. Looks retro with the characters but modern in the tiles and placements.
  • You pick up the gameplay concept within minutes.
  • Load out-weapon, shield, armor, rings, necklace, helmet, and boots.
  • The loot lust game is on point.
  • Feels like a board game in a way.
  • It doesn’t state it but it looks like loot has rarity which adds buffs to items.
  • Gets really addictive.
  • You see enemies spawn and move around.
  • It just looks really good.
  • The gameplay is solid.
  • Damage and status effects bang-up on screen as you do combat.
  • You build the game world by populating it with locations, events, enemies, and more. You do this via the cards.
  • Boss bar-as you place cards onto the game it will increase this bar and once full will spawn the boss on your campfire square.
  • Collect materials for crafting.
  • Hover over enemies in a battle for stats and attacks that they have.
  • Arrow system on loot with up being good and down being bad.
  • The main camp is where you turn materials into new buildings like gymnasiums, refuge, smiths, herbalists and so much more.
  • Death-you keep 30 percent of your materials.
  • Can upgrade buildings.
  • Deckbuilding menu-select which cards can randomly appear in your game.
  • The game splits it into chapters.
  • Buildings can increase campfire restoration and other buffs.
  • Roguelike elements as you don’t keep any loot except materials.
  • Can play it with just a mouse.
  • Every run generates a random loop.
  • You get materials from placing cards and passing through locations.
  • You personally feel like you are improving.
  • The satisfying (sometimes scary) moment when you re-populate the loop.

Loop Hero Review (Steam)

Loop Hero Review Cons:

  • The controls are excellent but you need to get used to them as they are wildly different than you expect.
  • Doesn’t go in too much detail or not enough detail on all the cards and loot mechanics.
  • When you change equipment it discards the old one with no way to undo it.
  • You don’t always know how many enemies you are facing.
  • Takes ages to fill the boss bar.
  • No way to see or change controls.
  • You have zero control of combat which leads to situations where your character will not attack the best enemy first.
  • Item management in-game especially is not great as you cannot just discard items and instead have to wait until it fills up and pushes the bottom items off.
  • Runs do go on for a while.
  • Ghosts are just assholes.

Related Post: Time Loader Review (Steam)

 

Loop Hero Review (Steam)

Loop Hero:

Official website.

Developer: Four Quarters

Publisher: Devolver Digital Games

Store Links- 

Nintendo

  • 9/10
    Graphics - 9/10
  • 9/10
    Sound - 9/10
  • 8/10
    Accessibility - 8/10
  • 9/10
    Length - 9/10
  • 10/10
    Fun Factor - 10/10
9/10

Summary

Loop Hero is a game where you play as an adventurer who goes into a randomly generated loop. A loop is just a path your character will follow, you have no control over your character from movement to combat, instead, you can swap between the two modes at will. Those modes are adventure (it plays the game) and planning (pauses the game). You soon learn that pausing the game after battles is a good thing! OK so a loop is when you pass your campfire and you will get a certain amount of health back when you pass it, how much you get is set by your actions during a loop run. The World will have a small number of enemies but you populate it by playing cards like forests that can spawn rats or cemeteries that spawn skeletons, to grander locations like vampire mansions. The reason you place them is to earn loot, earn materials for your settlement, and build the boss bar that once full will spawn the end of chapter boss. Your settlement is where you go after death and you use collected materials to buy new buildings to improve your chances out in the loops. Loot lust is high with it dropping a lot, and you can use the comparison pop-ups or simple arrow up and down the system to drag and drop items, they don’t say anything about rarity levels but items are different colors and can have passive additional buffs on them. You can’t discard a lot which is a pain and instead, it just gets cycled out, another bugbear is when you change items it auto deletes the older item so if you do it by mistake tough shit no redos. The thing is though Loop Heroes is just pure fan fucking tastic and it draws you in and never let’s go, you personally see your progress as you learn all about optimizing your placements, going for builds with the buffs and it’s just so satisfying. It all looks and sounds basic but the mechanics just click, the gameplay swells and you just lose hours at a time, you can leave it going when you are doing something else or have it auto-pause at set times so you never get a surprise and this means you can go deep. Overall Loop Hero is fucko g brilliant and one hell of a clever game.

Jim Smale

Gaming since the Atari 2600, I enjoy the weirdness in games counting Densha De Go and RC De Go as my favourite titles of all time. I prefer gaming of old where buying games from a shop was a thing, Being social in person was a thing. Join me as I attempt to adapt to this new digital age!