MythForce review

MythForce is the kind of game that sounds pretty good on paper. A roguelite featuring a team of mythic heroes facing endless hordes of enemies to take down a dark lord and his minions. It looks really good in trailers too, featuring art inspired by 80s cartoons like Dungeons & Dragons or He-Man & She-Ra.

In practice, however, it’s lacking anything to really make it stand out from the ever-burgeoning crowd of roguelite adventure games. MythForce is, sadly, as bland as these games come. Yes the art style is cool at first, but on higher settings it overdoes the film grain to the point that I preferred how it looked on medium. And it does nothing with the art that Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands didn’t do much better already. It renders skeletons and goblins and lizard ogres and mushroom-men, and it’s all so, well, samey.

Perhaps it’s by design but the result is that MythForce is almost bereft of personality. The four heroes repeat their lines ad nauseum, and there are very few other characters aside the main boss you chase through a given world and the skeletal merchant you happen upon regularly, who doesn’t talk.

Developer Beamdog is better known for reworking Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights and Planescape Torment. They’ve been around good writing and fun characters even if they’ve never created them. But in MythForce, that proxy knowledge isn’t present.

Each of the four characters fills out a standard archetypal role. There’s the tank; Victoria, the rogue; Rico, Maggie the spellslinger, and Hawkins the hunter. Their powers are what you’d expect, too. Victoria can throw her shield like Captain America or shield charge enemies, Rico can teleport, Maggie has powerful magic and can summon a familiar, but is squishy, etc. It’s all pretty simple, and you don’t unlock new skills as you progress, you just find upgrades and boosts to your standard kit. What’s weird is that I played as the heavily-armoured, mace-and-shield warrior, Victoria, and I keep getting upgrades for my second weapon, a much weaker bow.

The gameplay loop is straightforward. There’s no context to anything; you pick a character, press go, and are dropped into a randomly generated series of rooms. Kill the enemies to unlock the gate, then repeat, upgrading your abilities as you go. Upgrades do things like add health regen or increase stamina recovery, and they do make a difference. Eventually you’ll find a boss fight or a survival encounter, and then you move to the next world and do it again. Or die, and start again.

Unfortunately it’s all very repetitive. The landscapes are quite low detail but there’s a nice use of colour and lighting in the environments. Character designs are OK, but nothing to get too excited over. Sound design does nothing for atmosphere though, with stock effects and little music.

MythForce also feels a little too heavy and slow when moving around, and there’s something not quite right about the combat. For example you can block with Victoria, but enemies do heavy damage if they get you and the restrictive first person camera doesn’t help. Also, once you’re past the cool 80s intro, the art style sadly doesn’t bring anything to the game.

Ultimately, MythForce isn’t a bad game. There’s a good variety of enemies, lots of powerups, and the heroes really come into their own when you play with friends, but there’s little synergy between them to encourage experimentation. It’s almost like the example roguelike that comes with the kit, which means it’s at least very competent if safe. But in a market as over-crowded as the fantasy roguelike market, it needs to do more to get ahead.