I picked this game up about a month after its 2018 release. at the time I was eagerly anticipating Risk of Rain 2 and that ended up taking another full year to release in early access. at the time I figured it would've been neat to have another addicting roguelite to fill the void that the original Risk of Rain had left. it was working for a bit when I did enjoy my first few hours with this game, but it all quickly soured once it devolved into horrific amounts of tedium

this game is like a hellspawn amalgamation of most negative tropes of the "action roguelite." it's a very front-loaded experience, designed to force you into grinding for the sake of nothing more than masochistic "progression." I have my reservations when it comes to meta-progression in roguelites, ultimately I can see the appeal but I just don't like it. I'd much much MUCH rather play something that's not designed around it. like yeah it's cool to see and feel that you're making some type of progress but, beyond feeling rewarded for your time investment, it's not really earned. I hate the rote process of a difficulty spike pushing you to spend permanent currencies on stat boosts. it trivializes the inherent difficulty and authenticity of the learning curve. these bonuses make the game incrementally easier every run, which is counteracted with yet another present design flaw: giving enemies bloated HP and damage

you progress by restoring your hub, you gain character levels and buy stats to finally get your first win, and then it's all downhill from there. barring DLC campaigns there is no proper ending past that point, you just continue grinding minuscule stat upgrades for an eternity while its systems are at odds with one another. "progressive taxation" (?????) has to be the worst thing I've ever seen in any of these games, maybe even in video games I've played period. on higher NG+ cycles it was a necessity to do farming runs just to prepare yourself for your 1+ hour long slog. this is all without even mentioning combat that boils down to walking into a room of 891341 enemies and constantly backpedaling as other reviews on here have stated

it's just a horribly designed game that even fails as a roguelite. in all honesty about 10 hours in I edited my town file for infinite gold and ore to cut down on farming/grinding, went for 100% completion years later while depressed or something, and that still took me ~300 hours in total. I hate that it's still one of my most played games on Steam lol, I should just reset my achievements and pretend those 346 hours never happened, but I digress

all in all, playing Heroes of Hammerwatch solo with a completionist mindset was a nightmare. I'd never recommend it, definitely not to someone with severe completionist tendencies. I find it hard to say anything positive about it. it's a shame too since I liked the initial gameplay, but it was overshadowed by the unpleasant experience I had when I was a NEET that was glued to this game lmao