Technology has evolved at a breakneck pace throughout our lifetime: communication has become instantaneous, travel that would have taken months now takes hours, and the spread of ideas that used to take months to spread from word-of-mouth is now done with the click of a box. In terms of sheer potential, the future is incredibly bright for humanity, and it is inevitable that ingenuity will bring about revolutionary ideas that were never even considered before. Currently, society is focused on A.I, the potential and implications of artificial intelligence working alongside humanity to bring about a better future. There are some who are afraid of being replaced by machines and others concerned about a takeover by these machines in an effort to “optimize” humanity.
But what New Elysium should’ve spent more money on was a better antivirus.
Battle Shapers is the story of a Shaper-model robot revived in the outskirts of New Elysium, a former paradise for humanity and machinery alike before the spread of a mysterious virus. This infection burrowed its way throughout every robot in the facility and corrupted them, leading to the rise of Overlord bots as the mechanical revolution drove humans out of the city. You play as Ada, a Shaper-model robot originally built for adaptability and integration into various roles alongside humanity. You’ve been revived by Meemo, a smaller bot struggling to survive on the outskirts of the city while hiding from the Overlords’ hordes, and he tasks you with taking back the city and liberating it from the malfunctioning machines and the virus that took them over. Equipped with nothing more than a pistol, you set off to find the truth and take down anything that gets in your way.
The game is an FPS with a highly-refined atmosphere: everything around you shines as if recently polished, circuitry lines the walls, floor and ceilings, and the city still looks pristine and utopic… except for the purple virus-y things. You’ll have to run and gun your way through the randomly-assembled floors of the Overlords’ towers, collecting Credits to spend at a handy merchant-bot’s shop, various new guns and abilities to shred your foes with, and a powerful material known as Turinium. After entering the city proper, your run fully begins as you select your target out of the three different towers and the Overlords guarding them. Each run will randomize which Overlord is at each tower, as well as giving the tower itself unique modifiers that affect what enemies spawn frequently, what hazards you have to avoid, and even how the Overlord can try to take you down. That’s right, these Overlords aren’t just waiting for you in the boss chambers. Using their full control of the towers, they can occasionally use their Retaliation boost to make your current room harder by spawning powerful new enemies, raining bombs from the sky or even launching tornadoes all around the arena! They’ll also be taunting you in their own unique ways as you fight your way toward them, some itching for a fight and others dismissing your presence entirely. Throughout your run, ammo isn’t something you’ll have to worry about as you can infinitely reload the up to two weapons you can keep on you. However, your enemies have that ability too and will do their best to reboot your hardware with some lead-powered “percussive maintenance.” However, the best Defense is a good Offense: sometimes your defeated enemies will pause before their defeat, glowing with purple light. This is your opportunity to run up and knock them out, causing them to explode after a few seconds or upon hitting another enemy and leaving behind a shield refill as a parting gift. This provides an entertaining dynamic to your combat, as you’ll find yourself running into the line of fire to punt your foes into each other and heal yourself. If you can play well, you’ll end up coming out of such an encounter with more shield than you had before. If not… well, punching your enemies in the face is still a good idea. In fact, if you punch an opponent on the brink of death, it’ll trigger the same Takedown as if you’d knocked them down first, providing another interesting risk-reward element.
One thing you’ll notice rather quickly when you inevitably lose your first run is how underpowered you feel: while you might find yourself getting into a groove and feeling comfortable with your weapons against the various mooks thrown your way, the Overlords are a VERY different story and will quickly prove why they’re the boss. Once you wind up back at the hideout, you’ll be given the opportunity to spend the Turinium you found during your runs on Cyphers. Cyphers can be discovered all around New Elysium, some hidden in crevices or hard-to-reach places and others reclaimed from your foes. Completing them for a small fee of Turinium can unlock new items and abilities to encounter on your next run, spawning them immediately to take on a test-drive, or can be used to permanently boost Ada’s abilities and potential. You’ll also discover places seemingly within cyberspace that contain permanent upgrades to your abilities, such as the ability to dash out of dangerous situations or to wall-jump and access hidden secrets. Throughout the game you’ll slowly but surely build up your arsenal and unlock Ada’s true potential, and that starts with getting your Core back from the Overlords. Once you’ve done that and unlocked your full first moveset, the true game can finally begin.
One thing that I absolutely loved about the pacing and design of Battle Shapers is how your upgrades build onto themselves in a very natural way: while at your weakest during your first run, you can still see plenty of secrets and side-paths all across New Elysium, including inside of your hideout! Likewise, there are hidden puzzles all across the rooms of the Towers. The major upgrades slowly snowball together, such as dashing across a gap you couldn’t clear before unlocks the ability to place positive modifiers onto each floor of a Tower. On the other hand, the smaller puzzles reward you with a new Cypher when first opened and provide random bonuses on every subsequent run, providing incentive to solve them again.
Throughout your runs you’ll be finding plenty of different variations of weapons and abilities, each with their own unique boosts. Since the item pool is relatively small for a roguelike at first, the game makes up for it by randomly assigning unique attributes to each gun and power that you find. If you don’t feel like swapping what you have you can always convert them into Credits, but if you feel like the passive would mesh well with your build you can siphon it into your current equipment. Combining these passives allows you to stack up combos onto your guns and abilities such as launching grenades, increasing your critical chance, stacking effects onto your shots and more! This flexibility comes with a drawback: if you decide to swap out your equipment for something better, you can only take the inherent passive of your previous item with you, losing the bonuses you previously stacked on it. This isn’t the only way to get more powerful, as you’ll also be claiming minor core upgrades to add attributes to yourself for the run, major core upgrades to boost yourself to the next level, and hack unit buffs to permanently augment the remaining Towers after you defeat an Overlord. With so much potential and possibility baked into each and every run, you’ll quickly find yourself falling into the addicting cycle of playing just “one more run.”
Battle Shapers is an excellent first showing from up-and-coming development studio Metric Empire. It oozes charm and polish with combat incentivising taking risks to stay topped-up like in Doom Eternal, an aesthetic and tone straight out of Hi-Fi Rush, and a melodic and impactful music score that would feel at home in Cyberpunk. I highly encourage you to visit New Elysium and enjoy its local entertainment, as blasting bots to boppin’ beats is quite a good time. Perhaps you’ll be the one to find out the mystery of the city’s takeover, the virus itself, and the city’s missing mainframe. In the meantime, I’ll be off to visit the Overlords: their hardware could use some lead-based updates.
Battle Shapers is available for PC via Steam.
Related: Reviews by Aaron Grossmann
Gaming is a passion that I, like many other people, hold near and dear to my heart. As an aspiring Game Writer and general Storyteller, I enjoy looking into the vast worlds and deep stories of every game I can. Then again, sometimes bad guys just need a good pummeling, and I am more than happy to provide!
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