Mythforce, a new roguelite loosely designed after the 80’s fantasy animation, looks like the setting of a joke. Stop me if you hear this: a knight, a rogue, a wizard, and a guard walking into a dungeon. Then they all die because they run out of stamina.
There are two video games at odds within Mythforce: one a breezy and efficient dungeon crawler where you kill dozens of enemies while chatting with your co-op crew, and the other a slow-paced, intentional combat game that requires precise sword flips and evasions. To survive for more than a few minutes. I agree with either approach, but the first seems more in line with Mythforce’s cartoonish tone and its manly multiplayer structure. Perhaps it would be too difficult for a misguided step in front of a blazing statue to burn half my health when healing potions seem to be the rarest commodity in this fantasy world.
I was surprised at how much weight Mythforce puts behind the sword swings from a first person perspective when I hit the mouse button for a charged strike. It feels a bit like Vermintide in those moments, which I mean as a compliment. But being hit by enemies a few times meant a big problem: the rogue was squishy as hell, and sometimes I even took damage while dodging backwards which seemed Like a sword scope. Sometimes first-person combat can make it difficult to locate the exact Hitbox, and I’d ignore that in a game like Vermintide, where healing is fairly spread out and the average enemy is little fry that you can knock away with with a giant hammer. Here only three enemies slowly walking towards you pose a huge threat, and playing a long-range character seems safer than engaging in melee range.
Mythforce has some magic, with a nice mix of shaded characters and slightly mysterious 3D backgrounds. The art style embodies the aesthetic of Thundercats, or Masters of the Universe, and is well suited to what feels like a generic dungeon crawler world. The four hero classes available at launch are classic D&D. The first enemies you encounter are, of course, skeletons. All of the procedurally generated rooms you fight are filled with a handful of enemies, chests, and pots to unlock to get progressively better coded loot.
It’s comfortable and familiar from the jump, although if you survive for a while, you start to run into enemies that are a little different than D&D 101, like mushroom men who shrink themselves at will to run circles around frustrating sword swipes. These strangers are one of the reasons I wish Mythforce would lean more towards slasher pieces – I want to know what kind of creativity lies later in the dungeon.
At least in this early access case – which is launching exclusively on the Epic Games Store – the roguelite build seems to be dying early and often and rebooting over and over to unlock character perks that make you a little stronger. This works brilliantly in a game like Hades where the action feels great from the get-go, and each round provides a different set of powers to match quickly. By contrast, with a steady set of character skills and a much slower pace, death in Mythforce is more of a grind. Start over and fight the same skeletons again, but with +5 to start your stamina this time thanks to the level up.
I played Mythforce solo and in groups of two and three players, and I felt better with a bigger team. There’s a certain degree of scaling here, but damage to enemies and traps feels more punishing when you don’t have a teammate pull enemies away while the other spends 10 steady seconds to revive a collapsing ally.
I can see myself as a completely flattering figure in Mythforce given how far I’ve come and appreciate all the power I’ve amassed. Founded by former BioWare developers and known for Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Editions, developer Beamdog obviously wants this to be a game that you can play for a while before you max out the different XP bars and unlock perks. But prioritizing that meta layer seems to have left the rooms a bit barren to be interesting and fighting in a bit punitive way that makes me eager to get back to running again after losing the gear I was just missing.
A year in Early Access might turn Mythforce into an exciting roguelite, but at first it feels like the game to turn to if you have a frenzied co-op that’s already exhausted Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Gunfire Reborn, and Risk from Rain 2. I especially hope to see Mythforce more fun inspiring it Cartoons in the eighties. More Chaotic Skeleton Energy, please.
The first episode of Mythforce will be released in Early Access on April 20.