Recent reviews by Zaya

I recommend this game to anyone who does not mind a grind and is used to mmo's. The experience for new players is very confusing as bungo doesnt really give you any guidance or tips to navigate menus or to start progressing through the game's story and levelling system (light level).

TLDR: this game sucks at first but give it a few hours learning about the menus and what all the icons mean and it will get a lot easier, also watch some guides.

Il start off by saying, i don't recommend this game (in its current state) to new players trying to get into the genre. However if this game gets revamped or a similar style of highly skill based moba comes out, i highly recommend it.
This will be a long review and there't quite a bit to read. but TLDR the player base died for a few reasons and they took the wrong steps to compensate for it, hammering the nail in the coffin.

I have spent nearly 500 hours in this title, I started playing back when it was in beta. The game started out great, needed some work of course, but stunlock made the right choices and their game turned out very unique and HIGHLY skill based. I'm making this in comparison to other moba genres like dota and league of legends*. I'm going to talk about why i think battlerite died and what i think they could have done better in order to keep this amazing style alive.

I noticed that the game's player base was significantly low and i dont blame SLS (stunlock studios) for trying to bump up their player base by making updates. however, these updates they were adding , werent healthy for the game's future.
I'v noticed a trend over the past 6 or so years , that whenever a game that has unique qualities and some great fundamental mechanics but includes different "classes" "characters" or "champions", the developers strive to keep adding more and more characters to their roster similar to League of legends, overwatch, dota, paladins, etc.

but have you noticed that some games havent died out? take a look at team fortress two. This beauty of a game hasn't received many updates, but because they haven't ADDED more characters and complicated mechanics that could potentially be too hard to balance, they have a balanced game that is very consistent and is loved by many to this day.

The reason i think the player base of battlerite died was because they:
1) pumped out character after character without thinking about fine tuning balance before hand.
2)catered to the paying player with more cosmetics, frequent events and a battlepass.
3) most importantly, they didnt stay consistent with their base game's mechanics and style.

Let's talk about the first reason.
A lot of other reviews said similar things, but the first thing people jump to is always about "greedy" developers and a big money sink. But you have to realise that SLS still created this game and had a dream from the beginning, they had this idea for battlerite and they gave it life so we can't deny the fact that they still created a wonderful game.

Things started to go downhill when the player base was fluctuating from other game's popularity or from new games being released. SLS panicked, and thought their game was going to die out so they added even more champions but without thinking about their RETURNING players. this turned into some heavy meta's and a constantly shifting one because stuff was not getting balanced in the way it should have, before adding more mechanics and more characters.

So the returning players such as myself , came back to a completely different game that had felt completely different from when i started, forcing me to drop certain characters because they are countered to hard by other picks or just not up to snuff compared to some other counterparts. f/e destiny on release, she had broken hit boxes and had some over tuned damage on her rmb, so SLS said "oh this is way too strong" instead of minorly adjusting things, she ended up being god awful compared to other common picks like jumong because she got nerfed so hard - the meta shifted, then another character got released and destiny's play rate went way down.

TLDR the more characters you add, the harder it is to stay consistent in balancing your roster. - creating metas-

Secondly im going to talk about the main issue that a lot of players had. SLS created a game and of course wanted to earn some money for it, hence their lootbox systems creation and it actually being great. the event's were really fun and unique and people are willing to pay for their skins.

Things went wrong the moment battlerite turned into a F2P game. Battlerite royale came out and most players moved over to it and/or tried it out. It was fun and accepted in the community because it was THE first moba battleroyale. but the issue is, the arena community died... the people that still wanted to go back and play arena were met with ONLY the players that grinded the game and were really high level and were good. so new players got smashed going into matchmaking because the player base basically shifted to BRR. so:
1) Battlerite made free to play
2) BRR released and cost money.
3)Battlerite players moved over.
4) lost interest due to other games taking popularity .
5) the BRR players didnt come back, it isnt the same as Battlerite by any means. different items, different team play, different mechanics.
6) new players of Battlerite were met with a tough matchmaking system because the player base was so low.
7) the players that lost interest try and come back to Battlerite and were met with a low player base, struggling to find a balanced game. so they left.
8) Battlerite died. along with it's pro league.

The third and final reason why i think battlerite died, was because of the inconsistency. The game was meant to be the next generation of Bloodline Champions players. but what we ended up with was a bunch of moba Battleroyale players that threw in a plethora of gimmick items and strange mechanics that could throw RNG into the mix.

Arena had it right. It was fast, skill based, and a unique genre. All it needed to do was to gain loyalty from players that loved that style of game and it definitely could have grown. But as mentioned before, the player base naturally fluctuates based on other games popularity. but instead of catering to the loyal players who love the game for what it is, they didnt stay consistent and ended up with a game that didnt feel as true to the original intention of its origin.

I will not recommend this game to players looking for a "new style" of moba. they will be met with a brutal matchmaking system due to the low player base and too many champions to get a grasp of and learn how to play as/against as its extremely skill based.

However, If one day a new developer or even Stunlock themselves, decide to revamp this game and make it great again and revive this style/genre i highly recommend players to try it out, and to come back and play.

Much love for this game, and I hope one day to play it again like i used to.

A very visually stunning and well made game from the legends themselves! Supergiant had great voice actors to go along with their well thought out character design and the voices seemed to match really well with their lines. On top of the gameplay being very fun and can be challenging, the story is well written and interesting. Highly reccomend, not only this but all of this dev's games. 10/10

I absolutely LOVE this game but it would be 10 times better if there was online co-op.

just in the short time i played this, the campaign is really fun and challenges you once they teach you the basics of how to control your car then they through more and more obstacles in and challenge you to finish them without dying. i would recommend this game to anyone even though it is still in beta and if you like a fast paced challenge, play this game. 10/10