There are a wide variety of weapons you can equip your mech suit with, each with its own advantages, disadvantages, and resource costs. Defensive barriers and turrets can take on smaller groups of enemies attacking your base, but getting directly involved is absolutely necessary to survive large-scale skirmishes. While you can build defenses, you will only take direct control of the mech that you use for construction, exploration, and combat. You will encounter the occasional horde as you explore and colonize new areas, but the real challenge lies you when armies gather and rampage through your defenses in hopes of destroying your base and ending your attempts to colonize this hell. There are huge armies of enemies to take on in some excellent bullet hell action.Īnd when base construction and resource gathering items become a headache, there are massive armies of enemies to take on in excellent bullet-hell action that puts your skills and gear to the test. I was proud to have finished the campaign leaving this setup as is, but for those looking for a less stressful experience, it’s pretty impressive that these options have been included. However, if you want to adjust the difficulty, The Riftbreaker has tons of options to customize your experience, including changing the frequency and strength of enemy attacks and other random encounters like weather events, and increasing the abundance of resources available for you to harvest. But when I finally emerged victorious, I felt a surge of achievement and satisfaction that is hard to come by. It’s the ultimate test of readiness, time management, and high-stakes combat, and it’s not for the faint of heart. My final hours with the campaign had me on my feet and sweating profusely as I watched the numbers go up and down and juggled 18 different projects without enough time to accomplish them all, not to mention the looming armies approaching my location from multiple fronts. This proliferation of resource and base management can be very rewarding, but also very stressful. See also MMORPG giant says new game is "greatest success in 25 years" - release also for PC, PS5 You must also find and configure mining operations in resource deposits and build defensive towers to automate some of the responsibilities of protecting your bases from incoming attacks. One moment you are spending resources to build a power plant to power your ammo factories like in an RTS, and the next moment you are running around shooting and dodging hundreds of enemy attacks the way of bullet hell.
It has base building and tower defense components, survival elements like resource gathering and management, an RPG-like crafting and gear system, and top-down combat with loot.
The Riftbreaker is incredibly ambitious, combining the best components of a dozen genres to create something multifaceted and memorable. But The Riftbreaker succeeds in so many other ways that it was pretty easy for me to ignore the horrible jokes playing in the background. The writing and voice acting in particular are often ridiculous, and the main character, Ashley, is as interesting as a sheet of drywall. The characters and story are smooth and forgettable and feel like an afterthought primarily used as an excuse to give you increasingly challenging objectives to complete. thousands of monsters (or have a panic attack in real life).
Even with several unfortunate mistakes and a smooth history, surviving on the skin of my teeth through meticulous time management and split-second decision making made it all worthwhile.Īs a frontiersman sent to colonize the unexplored planet of Galatea 37, you run in a mech and have to establish a base of operations, survive the incredibly hostile local flora and fauna, and open a portal back to Earth before they eat you several.
Whether I’m managing resources, building my home base, making upgrade decisions for my mech, or battling hordes of enemies, this top-down RTS / shooter hybrid rarely leaves me feeling at ease, in a good way. There were so many moments while playing The Riftbreaker where I stood on the precipice of annihilation – my resources dwindled, my base relatively defenseless as I struggled to put out fires, and tens of thousands of aggressive aliens marching in my direction.