Battlerite Review (Demon of Zero)
It's honestly a shame that more people don't know the name Stunlock Studio.
I feel like the lack of people talking about how badly they fucked this up stems entirely from nobody realizing what they did. These guys had the best battle arena game ever, bar none, literally zero competition at the time or since that comes even remotely close and they blew it. TWICE.
Bloodline Champions was amazing. It died. Battlerite was a resurrection of Bloodline Champions under a new IP to 'escape the limitations of a publisher' and I was fucking ecstatic over that because it was everything I remembered and more.
Guess how that played out? They let it die. And why did they let it die? Why, to chase Battle Royale money of course. What else? Make a new 'battle royale' mode in the dedicated arena pvp game, fail to deliver updates of any kind to the actual gameplay, and then make people pay for the 'new mode' because it's actually a new game and... oh hey look it didn't gain traction and died like the vast majority of other BRs that followed the trend. Who could have seen this coming?
It's just so frustrating, too, because they managed to still get rewarded for this behavior in the end by releasing V-Rising - see all those people praising how the combat feels in that game?
I'll fucking bet. I felt that same way when I first experienced it in Bloodline Champions, and I felt it all over again when I relived it in Battlerite during the early days when it was a glorious rise from the ashes. I'm sure there is more to V-Rising as a game, but without the combat they practically lifted directly from the game they abandoned I promise you it would not have been nearly as successful.
TLDR - I would love to recommend you this game. If it was in the hands of another studio, I probably would be wholeheartedly singing praises for it and would fall over myself in my haste to recommend it to literally anybody who would listen. But unfortunately, the game that I would - to this day! - call the definitive skill based PvP arena experience is in the hands of a company who doesn't care enough to maintain it. So Battlerite died just like Bloodline Champions did before it, and this time Stunlock Studios doesn't have the excuse of a 'restrictive publisher' to hide behind.
We live in a world where not enough people hate Stunlock Studios for what they did. I just hope to do my part in fixing that.