Recent reviews by Raidus

EDIT:
MAJOR ORDER COMPLETE! WE HAVE SUCCEEDED, HELLDIVERS!
SONY ♥♥♥♥♥♥ AROUND, AND THEY SURE AS HELL FOUND OUT!
https://www.ign.com/articles/playstation-reverses-course-on-helldivers-2-psn-account-requirement

This is what happens when you piss off an army of gamers that have been trained into a well oiled machine of tunnel visioned focus on large scale cooperative goals!

Original:
Helldivers, our current Major Order has been made clear!

We must assemble to protect our world from the un-democratic changes that are being inflicted upon our forces. Your reward this time will not be medals. It will be the safety and sanctity of your information, a truly valuable reward!

Fairly solid little roguelike autobattler, especially for the price. It starts off with enough variety in the skills you can find to make each of your 4 party members have their own roles at some point in the run. (I've been running tank, healer, dps, buffer, and haven't lost yet)

It does have the 'merge 3 level 1 abilities to get a level 2, etc' type of system in it, but as you unlock some of the metaprogression, you'll be able to use this to fuse classes and abilities (healer + warrior = paladin, 3 warriors = veteran, etc), so it doesn't feel unnecessary, at least. And you can reroll 3 abilities of the same tier for a random one of that tier. I generally don't do this, since it feels like a waste when I can just sell them at the shop and buy what I want.

The one thing I'll say definitely needs worked on is the game's English localization. It's not bad enough to make it unplayable, but you have to assume a few things, and at least one ability description is just broken.

All in all, if you like roguelikes and you like autobattlers, you could certainly spend $5 a lot worse than this.

If you're looking for a game in the same style as SMRPG, you're in the right place. The combat is almost 1:1 with it, and functions very well for it, as is the in level navigation. It makes use of the timing system for attacks and blocks, though it does seem to be pretty balanced around active use of this. If you disregard timing anything, you're probably going to be in for a rough time. But, if you're struggling with getting good timing, you get a spell pretty early on that widens your timing windows to make it waaaay easier.

One tip/warning: If you lose a fight, it kicks you out of the fight with your experience intact, but any items you used don't come back. If you want them back, you'll need to reload your save. The dev's aware this is a common negative point, so there's a good chance this may get changed.

I'm going to start by saying that I've played this for a couple months of alphas prior to release, and have been in their Discord since then as well. I've seen part of where the game has come from, and how it's been changing recently. I'll give a run down of how the game is first, followed by the current situation with the game that should help with 'buy/don't buy' decisions.

1) What is Breach?
Breach is a 4v1 assymetric dungeon crawler. 4 players play as the Heroes, who are fighting through the dungeon to get to the end and kill the boss, while 1 plays the Veil Demon, whose goal is to kill all of the heroes before they kill the boss. Each room in the dungeon has a specific objective to complete in a certain time limit that will grant either side xp and levels based on who won (kill creatures, capture points, escort, delivery, etc). These levels will grant you access to one of three perks through your first 4 levels based on what gear you have equipped, and the perks last the rest of the match.

One of the interesting design choices in the game beyond the 4v1 design is the class customization. Currently, there are 18 hero classes (broken up between 6 'schools' of classes) and 6 Veil Demon classes. As you level up each of the classes through playing them, you'll be able to change out the skills each has for other skills you've unlocked from other classes in the same school. For their 1st through 4th skills, you need to have the class to level 2, 4, 6, or 8 respectively to change them or use them in other classes. Their Signature Skill (right click) can't be changed, but the answer to that is simply using the class the desired signature belongs to.

Example: The Battle school has 3 classes: Vanguard, Mana Warrior, and Auros Gladiator. Let's say I want to get War Cry, Mana Warrior's aoe taunt, on the Vanguard. First, I need to have level 6 in Mana Warrior, as that skill is in Mana Warrior's 3rd skill. Then, I need to have Vanguard up to 2, 4, or 6, depending on which of the first 3 skill slots I want it to replace. (4th is the Ultimate, which is only swapped with other ultimates) Simple as that.

The perks you have to choose from in matches is determined by your class' gear that you equip between dungeons. You start with basic sets for each school, and will gain more pieces with each run, win or lose. There are also a few sets you can buy for gold that aren't necessarily better or worse, they're just different options, so it'll depend on what you're using in your classes. There are also gems you can buy to get passive bonuses for a bit of gold (+hp, damage resist, lifesteal, haste, etc, etc)

While there's not a lot in the way of vertical progression at this time, the main progression comes from levelling the classes in each school so that you can customize your classes to be exactly what you want, and have more options to be able to use in your games.



2) Current game state

First off, this game JUST hit early access. There ARE some bugs, there IS room for optimization of, well, everything, and there are some balance issues in some of the skills, and they're working on all of those. Some people have reported framerate issues with 1070s and other similar cards (claiming drops down to single digit frames at times), but I've yet to notice that, only dropping to 40-45 on the low ends, and consistently sitting at 55-60 while on Ultra graphics. I'm not saying those issues don't happen, but it's not something everyone deals with.

There are only 3 maps, but there are plenty more in the works. They also have approximately 9 new hero classes and 3 new veil demon classes projected for their early access roadmap, set over the next 9 months, along with a number of other features.

One of the bigger problems that exists is the simple fact that gold rewards are far too low right now. Again, prefacing this part by 'they're aware they're too low, and are working on adjusting them.' As of 2 alphas prior to EA, you got about 100-150 gold a game, and about 2-5 piece of gear/gems. Gear sold for 30 or 60 (based on the piece) and gems sold for about 30g. The next alpha, they changed it so that only gear drops (1-3 pieces), and you had to buy the gems you want. This allowed for picking which you want, BUT the rewarded gold wasn't changed to account for this. (You'd get gem shards, which you needed to have to buy gems, but they were such a non-factor, they were taken out) Currently, everyone that's playing right now has a 30 day +100% gold/xp boost. You get +100% gold/xp for Coop vs AI games, and +200% for Coop vs Player matches. Right now, gold rewards WITH the boost are still sitting at about 100-120g for a normal game, but for short games (quick Demon wins), you're only looking at around 40 gold for fast kills. Now, the rewards already SOUND low, but when you account for: 400 gold per gem (each class can have 6 equipped), 600-1200 if you want to buy a piece of equipment (rarely necessary, but it's there), or a new class. The lowest are 2000 a piece, median is about 5500, the expensive ones are 10000, and the newest class is 15000. Even if you just purchase classes, the gold gain is absurdly low. (I have the $99 supporter pack, so I have all current classes, but even moving forward, or thinking of new players when this goes fully f2p after EA, this is a painful level of grinding to get gold) There's no one in their discord that has said gold's in a good place right now, and the devs (who are active in there, as well, and take all feedback seriously) are working on getting it back into better balance with everything else. Again, this change was just caused within the last 2-3 weeks, so it's not bound to be something that is a drawn out issue.

3) Should I buy it?

If you're willing to deal with:
Currently low map count (3)
Balance changes
A few bugs (most aren't ones that cause issues, but there are a couple that do)
Another 8-9 months of Early Access

then sure, give it a shot. If you don't want to deal with some of those, maybe give it a couple months (story mode is coming out in Q2), and take another look. If you don't want to pay for a F2P game, then see you in 9 months when it comes out of EA.

There are some reviews floating around that complain that the Veil demon player is OP as hell. The thing is, how well they do depends heavily on the team's performance and coordination. (With 72 hours played, there's ONE VD setup I've fought that was not fun to play against, but it's been brought up in the feedback channels of their Discord (not saying what it is, don't want anyone to try to copy it and abuse it)) Most people have reported that it's actually harder to win as VD than as Heroes. I've also played with a couple new players who immediately refunded their game after losing a couple games straight to the VD player (went straight to PVP instead of vs AI to learn the game), then left negative reviews. These types of reviews should be obvious to most, but sometimes you've gotta point out that they exist.