Liberte (Xbox Series) Review

Roguelikes are, usually, a hard sell to me. As someone who enjoys playing new games for new experiences frequently, gameplay designed around constant repetition with high difficulty doesn’t do much for me. There are the odd exceptions that pull me into this gameplay loop, usually those with cosmic horror, Cthulhu Mythos, or Lovecraftian elements in them. What can I say, I’m a sucker for those genres, gameplay be damned. Liberte, from developers Superstatic, already looked interesting due to its French Revolution setting. Throw in a healthy dose of Lovecraftian weirdness, cosmic body horror, and a deckbuilding system, and you’ve got a title I had to cover. 

Liberte throws you into the shoes of an amnesiac Parisian, awakening just as chaos engulfs the streets. It seems that during the coronation of the newest king, an inexplicable creature intervened, causing an upheaval that throws all of Paris into chaos. The cities’ four factions, already on edge, take this as a sign to initiate full-scale rebellion. Rebellion against the crown, against the church, against each other, and against the mysterious monster spreading chaos across the country. 

Like all roguelikes, Liberte‘s gameplay progression and story beats are based around repetition. Each run tasks you with playing through a handful of chapters, killing enemies, levelling up, and unlocking more snippets of the story. A successful run lets you tackle a further set of stages, at higher difficulties, with your currently earned level and skills. Should you die at any time, it’s a restart with all your skills, levels, and money reset. What persists is unlocked story points, rare resources, and new cards you’ve forged.

The combat is quite fun and fast paced. You have a three-hit combo, a dash that also works as a parry if timed correctly, and a skill bar with five slots (one reserved for healing and support items). Your first couple of runs will be spent getting used to the combat system but, once you do, and slowly figure out which skills are best for you, the combat becomes hectic fun that relies on a fair amount of skill and tactics, not just raw speed and attack power. For instance, the game throws mobs at you early on, with attack patterns that mean you can’t rely on your three-hit combo to do the damage you want. Usually, it’s best to work on hit-and-dash tactics, moving around mobs and out of attack ranges for as long as possible.

Your support skills are based around a card deckbuilding system. You build a deck at your base between runs, crafting new ones to add to it, which are randomly drawn during a run. You can’t just play a card though, you need mana to do so, which you can only get by burning other cards. Each card needs a specific amount of mana to play, with the same amount of mana gained when you discard it. With a limited number of slots, you must decide what to use and what to get rid of, making for some serious planning before every encounter. There’s also enough choice on offer for distinct character builds and you can on ranged or melee attacks.

Your characters “true nature” allows you to use both the skins and basic skills of each faction’s various main characters. You unlock these, along with rare resources, by completing runs and missions for each faction. Your options include handy all-rounders and slow bruisers, but I settled for playing as Ana, the leader of the Rebellion, as her dual-wielded pistols and ranged style suited the encounters better for me. I supplemented those with skills and cards that buffed up ranged damage, added new ranged attacks to my skill slots, and an armour buff that also restored health on use for when enemies got close. 

The games story is also surprisingly great, focusing on the interplay between each faction and the monster, though the drip-fed delivery between runs can impact the pacing There are some choices to be made in certain stages that push the story along slightly different trajectories, but you have to be prepared to replay things more than I cared for. 

Which brings us to Liberte‘s flaws. The first is repetition, and not just in the roguelike gameplay loop, but also in the level design. It isn’t long before you’re replaying the same handful of missions, over and over again, at different difficulty levels to unlock the next part of the story. The stage design doesn’t help matters either as most missions amount to one long corridor, broken up into separate rooms now and then. You’ll soon see same areas over and over again, with the only difference being which bad guys you’re currently going up against, and maybe a change in the camera angle. Most roguelikes employ a similar structure, but Liberte feels particularly limited in this area. 

Another flaw is the pace at which the story progresses. As fun as it is, there’s too much of the same dialogue to be sat through just waiting for something new to pop up. Between this design and the gameplay loop, Liberte felt like a game more at home being played through bits and pieces, rather than extended sessions. 

Liberte is also a game in dire need of performance patches. While combat may look chaotic and fast enough, there’s a near constant judder and camera stuttering that feels like bad frame-pacing. The game is riddled with it, along with moments of traditional performance drops and are also some effects not displaying correctly (mostly when activating your supers). It suggests the game need some optimizing, as Liberte is very much an indie game when it comes to the presentation. The 3D environemnts and models do a decent job but won’t set your world on fire, though the 2D character portrait art is quite gorgeous and it features a pretty great soundtrack as well. 

Wrapping up, Liberte is in desperate need of some performance patches and more environments to play through, it that doesn’t stop it from been a fun roguelike with an interesting story and surprisingly satisfying combat and deckbuilding gameplay loop. If you’re a fan of the genre and can put up with its issues (or wait on a patch or two), there’s still a decen game worth hacking-and-slashing through.