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dkirschner's Brotato (PC)
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| [July 15, 2024 08:12:30 AM]
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Brotato...silly name, simple game. This wasn't on my radar until I was browsing the Game Pass catalog looking stuff up, and saw it was rated "overwhelmingly positive" with like 50,000 reviews on Steam. That's a compelling recommendation! I like these twin stick shooter/bullet hell/roguelike hybrids (Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne, etc.) so I downloaded it. It's got a whiff of Vampire Survivors, too, the auto-play (whatever that's called), which I also enjoyed.
After thoroughly trouncing the game, I am unsure why it's at like 97% overwhelmingly positive with so many reviews on Steam. Like, it's good, but it's not THAT good! The gimmick here is that you can equip 6 weapons (or 12 with one of the unlockable characters) and that there are about 50 characters to unlock and play with. It is undeniably fun to equip 6 weapons and try out all the wacky characters. It's so over-the-top. Weapons are either melee or ranged, they go from tier 1-4 (weaker to stronger) and they come in different sets like precise weapons, medieval weapons, unarmed weapons, ethereal weapons, and so on. Having multiple weapons of any given set grants set bonuses. You can upgrade your weapons by combining two of the same thing (e.g., two tier 2 ethereal axes become a tier 3 ethereal axe). There are also explosions, mines, turrets, and other manner of thing that can damage enemies. You'll also be able to purchase a ton of items that affect your stats. Most add something but take away somewhere else (e.g., +2hp but -1 damage%).
So, as you progress through the 20 waves of enemies in a run, you accumulate experience and materials to level up and buy things. Based on what's available in the shop, you might start building out your character in many different ways (e.g., focusing on melee damage, focusing on high HP and regen, etc.). Your character affects this too, and this was a lot of fun tinkering with different characters. Dealing with constraints imposed by their specific limitations was cool. For example, Crazy gets 100% range with precise weapons, +25% attack speed, starts with a knife, has -30% dodge, -10% engineering, and -10% ranged damage. So basically, you want to buff up his melee and attack stats, and since his dodge sucks, you will avoid +dodge items and go with HP, armor, or something else. I think I had my first win with Crazy.
Other characters I remember having fun with include: Old (-25% enemy speed, +10% harvesting, -33% map size, -10% enemies, -10% speed [he was fun because of the compact map]), Loud (+30% damage, +50% enemies, -3 harvesting at the end of a wave [fun because of massive hordes of enemies]), Ghost (10% damage with Ethereal weapons, +30% dodge, dodge is capped at 90% instead of 60%, -100 armor [super fun, and my Danger 5 victory, because you can reach 90% dodge chance, but you have to build so as not to get one-shot because you start out taking almost double damage!]), the Artificer and the Glutton, who are both built around creating massive explosions, and the Masochist (+5% damage every time you take damage until the end of the wave, +10 max HP, +20 HP regen, +8 armor, -100% damage). I think the Masochist was my Danger 4 victory, and he was a lot of fun because each wave you start off with super low damage, and you need to get hit a lot to increase your damage. So, I built around boosting HP, regen, life steal, and armor so I could take a lot of hits, and then started getting + damage items later to negate some of the damage starting penalty. By the end of later waves, I was doing nearly +300% damage, which is insane. Basically, your damage % stops increasing later in the wave because you are one-shotting everything before you can get hit!
After you win a run on Danger 0 (the first difficulty), you unlock Danger 1, and it goes up to Danger 5. I considered beating the game at Danger 5, so that's what I did. I started questioning the overwhelmingly positive ratings when the game started getting repetitive and easy, which, all things considered, didn't take that long. It took me a handful of tries to beat Danger 0 and Danger 1, but Danger 2, 3, 4, and 5 each took 1-2 tries. And I used a different character each run, so it's not like I was perfecting my strategy with any given character. I just figured out how the game worked, some generally optimal strategies and items, and it was easy after that.
There is also only one map. The entire game takes place in a small space, and every run is basically the same in terms of what enemies spawn each wave. There are only a handful of enemy types, mostly of the "they're going to charge you" variety, and even bosses only have like three attacks between them. I'd see a new boss and be like "yeah! What's this one do?" and it would attack the same way as the last one. And every run is also basically the same toward the end. You've built a beast of a character, and you wade through enemies without a care in the world because you do so much damage, or your armor is so high, or you have 90% dodge chance, or there are health pickups everywhere, or whatever. So, by the time you've beaten a couple runs, you've probably kind of seen everything. There are more characters to unlock, some more rare items to get, but fun as it is for what it is. Worth playing if you like these kinds of games, but others have more longevity and variety.
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dkirschner's Brotato (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Saturday 13 July, 2024
GameLog closed on: Sunday 14 July, 2024 |
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