BATTLERITE
Genre: Adventure Developer: General Arcade , Abstraction Games Publisher: Abstraction Games Platform: PC, Xbox One [reviewed], PS4 Release Date: Oct 31, 2017
Battlerite is Stunlock Studios followup to their
previous game Bloodline Champions. And, well over
a year ago, they were kind enough to send us the All
Champions pack for free. So I’m in a decent place to
give it a review. Especially since it finally left Early
Access and went Free to play on Wednesday. And
I’m just going to hop into the meat of this, since
while multiplayer games can have good lore, it’s not
really a focus of the game.
I’ll start by saying that I’m not good at this game.
And I get the feeling a lot of players won’t be, either.
The default hotkeys are very fiddly to deal with
during play, because hitting them means the loss of
your left or right movement.
That’s a problem, because positioning is key, as well
as dodging since almost everything in the game is
skillshots. long story short, if you don’t have a gaming
mouse with some extra buttons to map both normal
and ex abilities to, you’re probably not going to be
having a fun time with a reasonable win ratio. I’ve
probably won one out of every four games I’ve
played, and I’m sort of stuck with the default.
Not to mention the fact that there’s no way you
could map everything comfortably if you did. Still it
always felt like it would help me, considering my
giganto hands and stupid fingers. Especially since I
suck at WASD movement. Plenty of people will tell
you it’s superior, but a thumb is not a finger, and
mine’s the Moe to my hand’s’ Larry, Curly, Curly Joe
and Shemp. What I’m trying to say is, your
experiences may vary, despite what the git gud part
of the userbase might say. Though proper champion
selection can help. And a gaming mouse with a
bunch of extra buttons.
All of the champions are well designed, I’d argue.
That said, some are just better choices than others.
For example, they have markings for if a character is
beginner friendly. Some that aren’t so marked,
however, are probably better picks for a beginner. A
good example would be the Support Hero, Poloma.
She’s probably more straightforward and tougher
than at least 2 of the beginner friendly supports, but
is somehow not beginner friendly. The same can
usually be said of new heroes before an update, but
that’s par for the course. There are still combinations
If I’m being totally honest, the game just feels like
you’d want a controller. The problem being that you
would invariably suffer thanks to mouse aiming.
“Battlerite is a bit rough around the
edges; but those that it strikes a cord
with will probably love it.”