Looper Tactics Review

Looper Tactics is a very strange but surprisingly functional and interesting blend of genres. Combining aspects from deck builders, roguelikes, and autobattlers to form a very enjoyable gameplay loop.

The setting is incredibly mysterious, drawing from traditional fantasy, along with some more futuristic and technologically advanced features. The story is a little hard to grasp due to its abstract storytelling methods, along with some issues regarding translation — which also extend to certain card and ability descriptions. Despite this, however, it is engaging, and the introduction is a fantastic hook. The world manages to be fantastically charming, with many of the characters seeming incredibly tired of the hundreds of loops they’ve gone through, which is rarely seen in other roguelikes and is a very pleasant change.

The gameplay is the star of Looper Tactics, and unlike so many other similar titles, the loop is far more forgiving and easy to understand while not compromising on difficulty and depth. Deckbuilding is very intuitive, sticking to a traditional faction system for each of the cards, which typically synergise with others of the same faction. Despite this, you are not locked into a single faction at all, which allows for a vast amount of experimentation by combining faction cards to create entirely unique decks. Alongside this, there are four heroes to be unlocked, which also correlate with those specific factions. Battles play out in a similar fashion to Hearthstone Battlegrounds, being a card-based auto battler. And while the decks can be very well varied across runs, sometimes the battles can be too numerous and take too long, making runs incredibly tedious after a while. Boss fights are where the combat system becomes the most satisfying — or frustrating. While most of the game gives you a good amount of freedom, some boss fights have direct counters to certain decks, which you have no way of knowing beforehand, meaning sometimes you may struggle through no fault of your own. While this helps to encourage variety within deckbuilding, it doesn’t do so in an organic way.

The pacing is set throughout a set of levels, from B to SS, with a few option side levels. Each level is located within a large grid, which is very open and does hide some secrets. Admittedly, these secrets are very hit or miss, traditionally just unlocking additional cards or treasures (passive upgrades) or adding more cards to your deck — which isn’t always what you want. Many of these levels also have sidequests, oftentimes ending with an optional boss. While this is a nice choice, I found many of the unlocks to be relatively disappointing due to them being cards which didn’t fit into decks I enjoyed running. Each map also has a series of save points, which are a massive change of pace for the traditional roguelike structure. These allow for much more experimentation and risky plays, which is a very welcome addition to this kind of game. Unlike many other deck builders, most buffs which are applied aren’t removed after each battle, but after each level, so even your weakest minions remain incredibly relevant in the long run if you play your cards right. There are many resources which can be gathered throughout your journey: Gold — the most abundant — is primarily for buying new cards in each run, along with other miscellaneous purchases, such as treasures, healing and more, while Anima, Wood, Ore, Blood, Mindfire and Crystal are all required for the meta-progression, from new cards to hero buffs.

The game's presentation is relatively strong, if uninspired. The visuals are very pleasant, with an interesting style, yet much of the battle system seems to draw too heavily from its inspiration, primarily Hearthstone. The music and sound effects also seem somewhat bland, while not bad, I didn’t find myself particularly enamoured with the sound design. I did at least have no issues with performance; it ran perfectly smoothly throughout my play sessions, and I didn’t have any crashing or bugs interrupting.

Overall, Looper Tactics feels like a very strong foundation for what could grow into something much greater than the sum of its parts, yet as of now, suffers from too many minor inconveniences and a lack of distinct personality, which put a dampener on its true potential.