Kādomon: Hyper Auto Battlers Review

Coming across Kādomon: Hyper Auto Battlers, I was instantly interested by its concept. It's an auto-battler monster collector roguelike developed by Dino Rocket and published by Fireshine Games. They’re a small indie developer based in Adelaide, Australia, and that’s always a win in my book. So, I decided to give it a shot; is it worth trying to catch 'em all?

First off, I have to give some props to the overall presentation. The backgrounds are quite good, and the Kādomon you come across in your journey have some seriously unique designs, ranging from cute to cool. I didn’t dislike a single one, finding each of them useful in some way or another. The event art is also very well done, with some insanely detailed designs that I didn’t expect coming from a game like this. While it does remind me of (as well as likely very inspired by) Super Auto Pets, I really liked what I saw.

But let's get into the gameplay. After selecting your character, each having a different starting field effect item and starter Kādomon, you’ll be traveling up a branching map full of encounters and events, trying to get through three regions to beat the final boss. It’s a tried-and-true formula that, while you do get kind of sick of seeing it in every single roguelike, works: It makes for some interesting decision-making. You need to think multiple steps ahead as you go on your adventure throughout the region while also taking what your luck may give you, such as what Kādomon you want joining your party.

Fights play out automatically, with you simply doing your damndest to set up your team before you watch them do their best to defeat whoever is in their way. The main thing you’ll be doing is managing your Kādomon between battles, buying items and additional mons from the shop (which is always available, so that’s nice), then hoping for the best. It can be quite stressful yet satisfying to see the results of your labour, either eking out a victory, steamrolling through an encounter, or getting badly destroyed. It is pretty addicting.

The real stars of the show are the Kādomon, who come in all shapes and sizes. With different stats, abilities, and typings, some are more suited for direct combat, while others are better at support. You can even equip items to make them a little better. Kādomon can also evolve with each level up, improving their abilities up to two times. However, if you give them the right item when they level up again, they'll Hyper Evolve beyond their supposedly final form. What those items are, though, will take some guesswork or a guide to find, and even then, you need to hope RNGesus is on your side to come across it either on a recruitable mon or in the shop. There are only so many Restock Tickets to refresh the store, too, so it’ll be a while before you even get one. It will be recorded in your Kādodex, though, so at least you don't have to memorise it once discovered.

If your active party shares types, it triggers a Synergy which buffs your party. Each type has a different buff that corresponds to their playstyle. For example, Fire types get more attack while Grass types gain Regen. The more Kādomon of the same type you have, the more effective that buff becomes. You can even add a third typing to your Kādomon (if they don’t already have one) at Campsites to take advantage of Synergies. Yet, that’s all what a type can do. I can’t tell if there are weaknesses and resistances, so there isn’t much incentive to change up your team once you have a strategy going.

While there are over 200 Kādomon available to recruit, you can only have four in your active party with eight in reserve. It feels a little restrictive, but it does ensure that you really have to think about your team composition. Every mon has to pull their weight because you won’t make it very far if they don’t. However, if you do find yourself losing a fight, it’s not as bad as it could be. Win or lose, you still get the rewards, but you'll lose Morale points. Losing all your Morale will end the adventure prematurely. It’s actually a pretty forgiving system that doesn’t punish experimentation too much, but you still need to keep your wits about you. Bosses will take huge chunks of your Morale if you lose to them, so you better recover fast.

This all made for a satisfying gameplay loop of managing your team, constantly trying to get more out of your limited resources with each and every fight. As someone who loves RPGs and going through menus, I was captivated by it. However, there are times where I couldn’t keep up with what was happening in a fight, even at the slowest play speed. I know what I’m doing, but sometimes things just happen that come out of nowhere for me, like suddenly gaining 99 shields or having single-digit max HP when they were in the 70s the last time I checked. This is a little bit of a flaw because analysing your performance is necessary when you need to work out the kinks in your team.

But however your run goes, once it ends, you’ll unlock more items to use on your next run (depending on what challenges you completed) and go again. A complete run is only 30 minutes at most, so it's quick to restart before you’re back at it. I liked this a lot because it respects my time and my eagerness to get revenge or go for another win.

That being said, It wasn’t too hard to figure out a decent enough set-up, so I did manage to beat the game on my second run, only two hours in. However, that was only the base difficulty. There is some replayability with Ascension Mode, where you can increase the game’s overall challenge to your liking if you’re itching for a real fight. Otherwise, you can go out of your way to try to catch them all, discover all the Hyper Evolutions, and earn nice little ribbons for defeating the final boss with different mons.

There is a lot of guesswork when it comes to a bunch of systems, though. While the tutorial does get you started, you'll need to dig through the Professock menu (“Help”) to get more info, and even then, it might not be the most helpful. This is to encourage discovery and figure out stuff on your own, but sometimes you just feel a little lost on what is happening. Is there a type chart I should be referring to? What do items combine into? Wait, why do I suddenly have 145 gold berries when you usually only get two or three from selling items? Sometimes I just go with it; other times I’d really like some more explanation.

The worst part is some of the glitches I encountered. Now, it may say “v0.6.1” in my screenshots, but rest assured that it is indeed the 1.0 version, so you’ll likely encounter the same things I went through, like automatically skipping the evolution animation, not letting me see the next evolution animation, and errors with the rewards screen.

That’s not all. During some runs, shop items just disappear after being bought, so it doesn’t appear in my inventory, and I effectively wasted my money, or just doesn't display what exactly is on sale, only showing the price and nothing else. There’s also a chance the shop just… doesn’t restock when you use a ticket. They just throw away everything! That’s fun (I say while gritting my teeth). Also, I found managing items between your party members to be a little less intuitive than I’d like. I mean, to equip an item, you can just drag from the item bar to the mon you want. But to unequip it, you can’t do the same thing, but instead need to click on the Kādomon, view their card, then press the Unequip button. It could be a lot smoother if I could just drag and drop. These issues don’t ruin the fun for me, but some of these things aren't something you allow in a 1.0 version. Hopefully, they have been ironed out when the game actually releases.

Kādomon: Hyper Auto Battlers is pretty fun for what it is, with a nice gameplay loop to keep you hooked with each battle with tons of discoveries to find throughout multiple runs, from new strategies to all-new creatures. It’s not doing anything I consider too special, but it’s a nice time-waster if you’re itching for a quick journey. However, I hope the various bugs I encountered are ironed out sooner rather than later… and I don’t mean Bug types.