➤ Spellbreak, the review 🎮

Raise your hand if you feel the need for a new battle royale. Very few, as we imagined, and on the other hand we had already addressed the problem of market saturation a few weeks ago with the Hyper Scape review. Not even Ubisoft, betting everything on close collaboration with Twitch and giving away hundreds of thousands of euros, has managed to move players from Warzone and Fortnite, while implementing many and different innovations in a game that, despite everything, was fresh and rather original. One wonders then how the guys of Proletariat will perform the miracle, even in the face of a beta that has failed to leave its mark or to attract hordes of players on its servers, a unique and fundamental piece to establish the success of a mass game like this. Spellbreak it tries anyway, landing on all platforms with a cross platform plus cross save system that could initially bulk up the community and a classic free to play type of monetization ready to attract, hopefully, more than a few curious ones. However, there is no shortage of packages to buy to have an initial boost of gold and aesthetic objects, with an outlay ranging from 50 euros for the Mage DLC up to 120 for the most complete bundle. So is Spellbreak worth our time?

Where the magic is born

Spellbreak is an atypical battle royale and this diversity is immediately denoted as soon as you enter the game. Instead of the usual 100 players, the servers host half of them, but still keep one map generously sized. All this therefore translates into a game system that rarely puts under constant pressure, trying instead to distinguish well the moments of research and strengthening from those where the fighting with spells and magic are the masters. As the title easily suggests, in fact, in Spellbreak the guns are replaced by magic gloves, which remind us so much that of Gully from Battle Chasers, and that allow us to cast up to four spells once worn.

In all we have six classes, obviously linked to the elements of fantastic imagery with skills related to ice, lightning, poison, fire and so on. Overall, therefore, the game is varied even if it leaves something to be desired on the balance, despite the many months of closed beta held before the launch. In fact, if the skills of Pyromancer and Cold-blooded can inspire fear, the damage that can be generated with combinations of Geomancy and Thunderbolt are of a completely different kind. Before being catapulted into the world of Spellbreak however, you will have the possibility to choose your left glove which, mind you, you will not be able to modify for the entire duration of the match. Choosing one glove rather than another is not such a trivial choice because in addition to giving you two specific starting spells it will also allow you to acquire passive bonuses once you level up in battle, providing advantages depending on the style of play chosen. .

Quite uniquely Spellbreak allows you to to level up surviving the various bubbles closing critical areas, granting you bonuses, enhancing your spells and making you generally more dangerous. However, since the battlefield is common to all players, the exact same advantage will be given equally to all spell casters still alive, for a feature that tends to quickly lower the time to kill as the game progresses. . The skill therefore counts up to a certain point and luck, like any self-respecting battle royale, has its fundamental role. In addition to the gloves in the crates scattered around the game you can find belts, potions and amulets to inflate your statistics of health, mana and armor but also extra skills that, just like the Hyper Scape hacks, will allow you to become invisible, spot enemies behind walls and much, much more. The more you upgrade, the more you accumulate agility and the ability to move quickly around the game map to become very difficult targets to hit and thus be able to give life to spectacular aerial duels.

Unlock your love!

The spell casting system is no frills and does its job fairly well were it not that the spells themselves create total confusion on the screen when multiple spellcasters collide in game making it difficult to see other players and essentially reducing almost to zero the readability of the action, an uncomfortable and unpleasant situation when two spells of the right ones will really be enough to put you out of the game. So we try to play with cunning and exploit the environment to avoid creating this kind of situations but in doing so we also lose much of the fun for an alchemy that has not exactly satisfied us. It is a pity that the game does not return a more pleasant feedback because the particularity of being able to combine incantations between them to create even more devastating effects or try to counterattack with the opposite element at the right time were mechanics that could give more satisfaction if treated more.

Even with the rewards and with the game mode we are far from excellence due to very little originality, with the risk of boring new apprentices after only a few game sessions. The graphic style, on the other hand, is particularly pleasant, in a successful mix between Fortnite and Dauntless with a cel-shading that is not overly marked but still capable of giving a cartoon look that gratifies the eye. A waste then to indissolubly link the decorations and customizations to the models of the various magicians, rather than managing them as usual aesthetic skins; what sense does it make us choose the character initially if then to select the rarest clothes we have to bend to completely replace our hero? A carelessness that also drags on in the scarce rewards at the end of the mission, which will force you to play for a long time before you can buy any object from the daily shop. In case you want to spend some hard cash then know that on Epic Store i prices are lower and given the cross progress we suggest you download the PC client in case you decide to take the initial bundles.

Comment

Tested version PC Windows Digital Delivery Epic Games Store, PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, Nintendo eShop Resources4Gaming.com

6.5

Readers (21)

7.5

Your vote

Spellbreak is yet another free to play battle royale in a saturated market for some time. The game mechanics are pleasant and well thought out but it is the chronic lack of the game structure that, today, comes to tire inexorably after a handful of games. The wow factor of casting spells and being able to combine their effects wears off after too short a time, with the incentives to keep playing that boil down to a few handfuls of gold tokens and some poor customization. A wasted opportunity to refresh the genre given the potential at the base, a pity that now occurs too often in this kind of productions.