Battle Shapers Review

 Battle Shapers is a sci-fi FPS roguelite developed by Metric Empire and published with help from Kepler Ghost. Being in Early Access since the 4th of October 2023, it is now fully released and ready to be enjoyed by everyone. As someone who really can't deny a roguelite, will this be worth saving the city over or is it simply better to let it rot?

Corruption has spread through the futuristic city of New Elysium, forcing its citizens to flee and turn its Shapers into renegade Overlords. You are Ada, a reactivated first-generation Shaper. Being the only one free of corruption, you’re tasked to fight through towers full of corrupted bots and take down the Overlords to reclaim the city. I think the storytelling is okay. There’s a bunch of lore to find throughout the levels, where the characters will discuss various topics, but there isn’t any section to replay those conversations so if I needed to check there’s no way to re-read it.

It would’ve been nice to have some voice acting too. You can’t really pay attention to the dialogue when you’re in the middle of a firefight after all, and it makes the game quieter than it should be… until the rock music and the explosions override all that. Although, speaking of which, the music is seriously great. Rock is my personal favourite genre, and here you’ll be listening to it with each and every fight. Each area has its own theme, and it definitely pumps you up to kill hordes of robots.

As for the levels themselves, there are only four towers consisting of a futuristic garden, a robotics hub, a skyscraper, and a super scary final boss place. The rooms you fight through are nice with some variety, consisting of combat rooms, platforming challenges, and secrets but they get repetitive very quickly. The only difference you’ll encounter with these areas is the order of the rooms and what boss is in charge. It’s not bad by any means, but even four hours in, I saw almost everything available.

The gameplay fares much better though when it comes to variety and, most importantly, fun. Battle Shapers very much reminds me of Deadlink, which is one of my personal favourite games of 2023 (and not because I managed to get quoted in one of their trailers), especially with the Takedown mechanic. When killing an enemy, there’s a chance they’ll glow purple. That means they are Exposed and if you punch them, they drop shield pickups and go flying to potentially chain kills. With HP vials being rare and expensive, you’ll be relying on Takedowns a lot. Combat is very fast-paced and staying still for a moment will go very poorly for you. Eventually, you do get into this combat flow where you're running on pure instinct; punching, firing, and spamming abilities at anything vaguely threatening. It can get very chaotic at the later levels, but it’s very fun and is just difficult enough to be satisfying. You aren’t overpowered, but you aren’t underpowered either no matter what build you make. Here’s a tip: the more explosions you create, the better your run goes.

But how will you get through all those robots without the right equipment? You get two guns, an equippable ability, a core ability, and a dash as part of your basic kit but it can definitely be improved. As you complete combat rooms and challenges, you’ll obtain rewards like more powerful items and major and minor enhancements. Weapons range from shotguns, pistols, assault rifles, and launchers, while equippable abilities range from ground slams, grenades, and turrets. All the guns and special equipment you get are very fun to use no matter what you’re forced to play with. 

But that isn’t all! Like in Mega Man, taking down an Overlord lets you take their power through their Core, such as the ability to wall jump, punch through walls, and create shields, as well as major upgrades you can find on your run that focus on certain aspects like cooldowns or buffs. These Cores get stronger the more you use them too, and even get a sweet paint job out of it eventually, despite the fact that for the majority of the time, you’ll only be seeing Ada’s giant fist and her gun. At least you’ll often see her in cutscenes and upon using certain abilities.

Once your run ends (either through death or a win), you can spend your obtained Turinium on the Cipher Cloud to get permanent upgrades, such as better stats, access to more weapons and abilities, or some more useful quality of life options, such as opening every chest in a room at the end of combat. I was surprised how often you obtain Turinium, it’s just as common as credits so you will always have something to spend on when you return to base. Not all the Ciphers are available right at the start though, and some must be found from killing enemies or hidden away in the levels. It makes replaying and exploring the levels fun and rewarding every time you go on a run.

Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty and… well, it’s not exactly perfect. Without touching the settings, I noted some drops in performance during some of the fights and the loading times are long enough that they break the game’s pacing. Also, there is some pop-in with textures every time I start the game or just respawn. As for the glitches, well for some strange reason, the PlayStation controller button prompt to interact with stuff is stretched. Also, in one session, the dialogue just stopped playing so when I picked up lore collectibles, nothing happened, and the boss intros were more awkwardly silent than usual. Like, seriously, I have no idea what a Shaper actually does outside of combat. Finally, and I might be wrong, but when choosing a modifier for the current area, Ada grows extra fingers to punch the ground with. It makes a cool effect, but that’s probably not intentional.

My biggest gripe with the game is the amount of time commitment you need to beat a run. Runs are not fast to complete. It’ll take an hour to two hours to beat a run casually. Getting a quick play session in isn’t exactly possible and if you need to quit the game in the middle of a run, you’ll need to restart. The game does save after getting through an area or beating a boss, but if you quit in the middle of a run, you’ll need to start fresh.

Battle Shapers is pretty damn good, with fun fast-paced combat and plenty of exploration, platforming, and secrets to really sink your teeth into. However, it lacks polish in some areas, and it can be oddly quiet even with the volume turned up. I’ve seen better, but it’s still a great time, and it's definitely worth fighting the robotic Overlords.