I picked this game up about a month after its 2018 release. at the time I was eagerly anticipating Risk of Rain 2 and that ended up taking another full year to release in early access. I figured it would've been good to have another addicting roguelite to fill the void that the original Risk of Rain left once I stopped playing it after 100+ hours. it was working for a bit when I did enjoy my first few hours with this game, but it all quickly soured once it devolved into horrific amounts of tedium. it's a very front-loaded experience, designed to force you into grinding for the sake of nothing more than masochistic "progression."

I have my reservations when it comes to metaprogression in roguelites and ultimately I can see the appeal but I just don't like it. sure it can be nice to see and feel that you're making some type of progress, but it's not really earned. I hate that rote process of hitting a difficulty spike that pushes you to spend permanent currencies on stat boosts, it trivializes the difficulty and authenticity of the learning curve. these bonuses make the game incrementally easier every run, and that's counteracted with yet another design flaw present in this one -- giving enemies bloated HP and damage.

in HoH you progress by restoring your hub, gaining character levels and buying the stats to finally get your first win, and then it's pretty much all downhill from there. barring DLC campaigns there is no proper ending past that point, you just continue grinding minuscule stat upgrades for an eternity while its systems are at odds with one another. "progressive taxation" (?????) has to be the worst thing I've ever seen in any roguelite and one of the worst in video games period. on higher NG+ cycles it was a necessity to do farming runs just to prepare yourself for your 1+ hour long slog. this is all without even mentioning its flawed combat system that boils down to constantly backpedaling from enemies as other reviews on here have stated. it's just a horribly designed game that fails as a roguelite. honestly I edited my town file for infinite gold and ores early on so that I could cut down on farming/grinding and it STILL took me ~300 hours to grind out 100% completion. I hate that it's still one of my most played games on Steam lol, I should just reset my achievements and pretend those 346 hours never happened, but I digress.

all in all, playing Heroes of Hammerwatch solo with a completionist mindset was a nightmare. I find it hard to say anything positive about it. it's a shame too since I liked the initial gameplay and I can see why others would continue to like it, but that was all overshadowed by the unpleasant experience I had when I was a NEET that was glued to this game lmao. I could never recommend it, especially not to anyone with severe completionist tendencies like me.