What the fuck kind of beat-em-up game has moba style cooldown abilities and no grab attacks whatsoever?
Holo X Break is the latest game from KayAnimate, of Holocure fame. Just like Holocure, Holobreak has very high presentational quality for a free fangame, perhaps even more so than Holocure. The pixel art throughout the game is beautiful and some of the music really goes hard. There's a bunch of love for the Hololive franchise here with a bunch of nice attention to detail and references that fans will enjoy.
Unfortunately, whereas Holocure was actually really quite good as an actual game (at least for Survivorlike standards), HoloBreak doesn't manage to get the fundamentals of the beat-em-up/belt scroller genre right. The player characters have nothing but a dodge roll, a basic 4-hit auto-combo, a couple of cooldown abilities and a super move that charges up very slowly so don't expect to use it more than once or twice per stage. The dodge roll can't even be used to cancel out of attack recovery animations (which can be over a second for even basic attacks), charge attacks and cooldown abilities can only be charged while stationary, and a lot of characters have no real crowd control options. This leaves the player character feeling clunky and fundamentally weak, incapable of reliably dealing with the later stage enemies and boss fights.
How does Holobreak remedy this? Ideally it would be through having better fundamental game balance or more interesting character movesets, but instead the fundamental weakness of the player character is addressed through ugh... a bunch of tacked on RPG-style mechanics. Levelling, character stats, consumable items, recruitable party member npcs, equipment, equipment upgrades, random equipment drops and probably some other stuff I've forgotten. Although having a good build can make the game more fun (and a LOT easier), none of these mechanics really feel at home in a beat-em-up game. The randomness of item collection also makes your success a lot more RNG-reliant than it reasonably has any right to be.
I don't even think RPG-mechanics in arcadey action games are inherently a bad thing either. Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is a similar anime-girl pixel-art beat-em-up game with a lot of RPG progression, but that game is great due to its wealth of interesting character movesets, level design and combo potential.
On the whole, Holo X Break is still ok, especially for a free game - it won't hurt to at least give this game a shot if you're at all interested in hololive, but after Holocure, I can't help but feel a bit disappointed.
Holo X Break is the latest game from KayAnimate, of Holocure fame. Just like Holocure, Holobreak has very high presentational quality for a free fangame, perhaps even more so than Holocure. The pixel art throughout the game is beautiful and some of the music really goes hard. There's a bunch of love for the Hololive franchise here with a bunch of nice attention to detail and references that fans will enjoy.
Unfortunately, whereas Holocure was actually really quite good as an actual game (at least for Survivorlike standards), HoloBreak doesn't manage to get the fundamentals of the beat-em-up/belt scroller genre right. The player characters have nothing but a dodge roll, a basic 4-hit auto-combo, a couple of cooldown abilities and a super move that charges up very slowly so don't expect to use it more than once or twice per stage. The dodge roll can't even be used to cancel out of attack recovery animations (which can be over a second for even basic attacks), charge attacks and cooldown abilities can only be charged while stationary, and a lot of characters have no real crowd control options. This leaves the player character feeling clunky and fundamentally weak, incapable of reliably dealing with the later stage enemies and boss fights.
How does Holobreak remedy this? Ideally it would be through having better fundamental game balance or more interesting character movesets, but instead the fundamental weakness of the player character is addressed through ugh... a bunch of tacked on RPG-style mechanics. Levelling, character stats, consumable items, recruitable party member npcs, equipment, equipment upgrades, random equipment drops and probably some other stuff I've forgotten. Although having a good build can make the game more fun (and a LOT easier), none of these mechanics really feel at home in a beat-em-up game. The randomness of item collection also makes your success a lot more RNG-reliant than it reasonably has any right to be.
I don't even think RPG-mechanics in arcadey action games are inherently a bad thing either. Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is a similar anime-girl pixel-art beat-em-up game with a lot of RPG progression, but that game is great due to its wealth of interesting character movesets, level design and combo potential.
On the whole, Holo X Break is still ok, especially for a free game - it won't hurt to at least give this game a shot if you're at all interested in hololive, but after Holocure, I can't help but feel a bit disappointed.