Well, that was a waste of money. I liked pretty much everything about Hammerwatch except the core loop, and I really should've realized that this would still be the case in this game. This sequel is loaded with meta-progression, which I'm a huge sucker for, and there are unlocks and stuff everywhere you look in the starting little city, which you also improve and rebuild and I'm also a huge sucker for rebuilding a run-down little hub town, but then the game itself is just endless corridors with endless rooms where you walk in, catch aggro and then kite backwards as you bottleneck enemies. Repeat for every combat situation in every room. On top of that, the obligatory roguelite item rooms in this game are for some reason obnoxiously difficult trap rooms that are far too hard to survive to make sense. It doesn't help that it's frustratingly inconvenient to switch characters and that most of the systems are very poorly explained. I just don't really get what I'm doing and I'm not really having any fun.

a hellspawn amalgamation of a bunch of negative tropes of the modern Action Roguelite. 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 meta-progression, ultimately I get the appeal but I just don't like it. I'd much much MUCH rather play something that's not designed around it. like yeah it's cool to see and feel that you're making some type of progress but, beyond feeling rewarded for your time investment, it doesn't feel earned.

this game is the poster child of the rote process of a difficulty spike pushing you to spend permanent currencies on stat boosts, and I hate it. it trivializes the inherent difficulty and authenticity of the learning curve. these bonuses make the game incrementally easier every run, which is counteracted with yet another present design flaw: giving enemies bloated HP and damage.

you progress by restoring your hub, you level up your class(es) and put points in enough stats to finally get your first win, and then it just gets worse 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 of these games, maybe even in all of the video games I've played 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 combat that boils down to walking into a room of 891341 enemies and constantly backpedaling.

it's just a horribly designed game that even fails as a roguelite. in all honesty about 10 hours in I edited my town file for infinite gold and ore to cut down on farming/grinding, went for 100% completion years later while depressed or something, and that still took me ~300 hours in total. 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'd never recommend it, definitely not to someone with severe completionist tendencies. I find it hard to say anything positive about it. it's a shame too since I liked the initial gameplay, but it was overshadowed by the unpleasant experience I had when I was a NEET that was glued to this game lmao.

A barebones roguelite. It has a hub village which offers permanent upgrades and procedural dungeons which are very large, sparse, and repetitive. Some of the sprite artwork is very ugly, gold is scattered in such large amounts it feels like the kingdom is suffering deflation, and gameplay is very dull.

Also weird that you're so small but the south walls are so large, so half the game is obscured from sight. Despite playing for hours I've made little progress in the actual game - never gotten past area 2, but I do have plenty of permanent upgrades and a couple of classes unlocked. Maybe it's just intended to be a slow grind?

Overall this game feels very cheaply made, lazy, and unrewarding.

Note that I haven't played this game in a long time. Maybe this stuff is fixed now?
Fun boss fights. Fun dungeons to roam through. Fun combat. Lots of cool drops. Good hub.
Why the 2/5?
Because of a thing called Ores. You need ores to upgrade your hub, which allows you to upgrade your stuff. You find ores as static spawns in the dungeons. At first, this is fine. You get enough. The issue that is the upgrades start costing more and more, as upgrades tend to. The rate you get ores never changes. This eventually traps you in a grindy hell reminiscent of classic EQ.
I eventually downloaded a trainer that gave me the ores I needed because the game was no longer fun to me.