MythForce

My first hour with MythForce was genuinely delightful. The animated intro rolls, a theme song blasts, and the whole thing looks like a Saturday morning cartoon from 1983 somehow got fed into Unreal Engine. Beamdog, a studio whose entire back catalog is built on remastering other people's classics, set out to build their own original IP, and the art direction alone proves the passion behind that call. Cel-shaded goblins, mushroommen, and undead skeletons populate procedurally generated dungeon rooms, and the visual fidelity of the cartoon-style post-processing is genuinely impressive given how hard that effect is to pull off in a first-person 3D engine. The four playable heroes each fill a clear archetype. Victoria the Knight tanks with a shield she can throw or charge with. Rico the Rogue can teleport behind enemies and backstab them. Maggie the Mage hurls fireballs and can summon a familiar but folds under pressure. Hawkins the Hunter keeps enemies at range with fire arrows and precise sniping angles. Each character wields two weapons and picks up perks between rooms from randomized three-option selections, letting you nudge toward glass-cannon, caster, or tank builds depending on what the dungeon drops. After a post-launch update, full per-class skill trees were added, which meaningfully expanded build identity compared to launch. Combat itself has decent feedback: landing blows connects, cooldowns are tuned to fire frequently, and learning enemy spawn points in each room eventually turns those same-y corridors into familiar arenas you can exploit. Here is where the trouble starts. The game runs across three chapters of three levels each, nine episodes total, and the loop repeats everything from scratch on death with only permanent Citadel upgrades carrying forward. In solo play the thin content becomes apparent quickly. Rooms follow a predictable pattern: clear enemies, break jars, open chests, grab an upgrade, advance. The enemy roster looks varied on paper but fights blur together fast. Outside of co-op, where player banter and class synergy inject real energy, the grind from run to run wears out its welcome before you get deep into the difficulty tiers. The online community is also effectively dead at this point, which makes finding randoms to fill a four-player squad a genuine logistical problem rather than a casual option. For players who can muster a regular group of two to four friends, MythForce works considerably better than its mixed review score suggests. Four-player runs create enough chaos and collaborative perk discussion to paper over the repetition for several sessions. The skill tree update and elemental combo system added post-launch show a development team that listened to criticism. But if you are buying this primarily for solo runs, the content ceiling is low and the permanent progression grind is slow enough to frustrate before it pays off. The 80s cartoon nostalgia hook is real and executed with obvious craft. The roguelite skeleton underneath it is functional but thin, and the fantasy roguelite market is crowded with games that go deeper.

Alex · Scout Team

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