Hammerwatch II Review (Switch eShop)

Gather forth, mighty heroes, for there is a world to be saved. Evil dragons are lording over humanity while a necromancer has usurped his brother’s throne. We need adventurers with great skill and power to fight through dungeons and battle monsters to give the world a spark of hope. Also, we really need someone to collect ten flowers for us and a child has lost their horse doll and their parents couldn’t possibly handle such a task.

That’s the crux of Hammerwatch II. Epic adventures are mixed with the most mundane and trivial tasks, each given the same weight and purpose by the barely-there narrative. The sequel picks up moments after the final boss of 2013’s Hammerwatch. The hero has slain one of the three dragons that are ravaging the world and must return to the king for a new assignment. Despite pulling off such an impressive feat, it doesn’t feel like the world actually cares.

Aside from the odd villager commenting that they didn’t think they’d see you again after you entered Castle Hammerwatch in the first game, the world at large seems unbothered, which undermines any impact that you’d get from the narrative. It is hard to make your players care about the plot or the world when the people in it don’t seem to. Even the king, who sent you on the quest in the first place, doesn’t offer anything more than a mild acknowledgement that you’ve brought him one step closer to reclaiming his throne.

It is an unfortunate choice because the action RPG mechanics that made the first game so fun are still here. You pick one of five classes, all of which are fantasy fiction standards – Wizards, Rogues, Paladins, Rangers, and Warlocks. We experimented with several of them in our time with the game and found that they play differently enough to feel distinct but never quite enough to warrant playing through multiple times.

Each has a ranged attack that requires either stamina or mana, plus a melee attack that can be performed at will. They also get new special attacks as they level up, some of which are visually interesting but ultimately don’t feel overwhelming when compared to the constantly increasing power scale. You use the left stick to move around the screen and the right stick to aim, which isn’t groundbreaking for the genre but still serviceable and fun. There is a decent variety of enemies to engage and some well-designed boss fights, but issues pop up when you delve into dungeons to find them.

Many of the dungeons have the same basic design philosophy with a colour swap on both the backgrounds and the enemies. It makes it somewhat dull to wade through, especially when you will have to do so multiple times, both because each area has multiple quests tied to it and because you’re going to die repeatedly. Death costs you 20% of your gold each time, making it a frustrating but not insurmountable hurdle to overcome.

Combat is fun and chaotic, but there are a handful of technical issues to navigate when you’re not mowing through enemies. Each time you head into a new section, there is a significant loading screen, plus particularly crowded dungeons will occasionally cause a drop in frame rate. The most frustrating aspect, though, is trying to navigate the menus when changing equipment or levelling up. Moving the cursor with any precision is nearly impossible, which makes everything take a bit longer than it should, a damning issue when so much of the game is built around upgrading your equipment to take on new and more deadly opponents.

Multiplayer is online-only (though local co-op was eventually added to the first game so it might be on the development timeline for the sequel). Like in Hammerwatch, you can adjust aspects of the game like how much gold or equipment you lose when you die or how difficult the monsters are, but the fact that it is online only was a big disappointment. Couch co-op could make this a great party game.

If you can get past Hammerwatch II's shortcomings, there is plenty of game here to get stuck into. The starting area alone will probably take you two or three hours to complete while the story itself will take around 30 hours depending on how often you die. There is very little direction given by the narrative, though, so you will occasionally wander into a new area with a sudden and deadly difficulty spike. If you enjoy a game where you will spend a couple of hours grinding for both gold and experience before you’re ready to tackle the next area, Hammerwatch II gives you a good helping of that.

The visuals do a decent job of capturing the old-school vibe that developer Crackshell is going for, but the imprecise shading makes it difficult to tell an insurmountable cliff from a set of stairs. This is made even more difficult when you’re on the overworld being chased by giant wasps in the rain, something that happened to us more often than we’d care to admit. Especially in handheld mode, it was nigh impossible to see the subtle cracks in the walls that signalled a secret path due to the poor lighting in areas.

The combat is definitely the saving grace of Hammerwatch II, but the lack of a compelling narrative and a frustrating menu design makes it difficult to recommend without some serious caveats. The technical shortcomings and lack of local co-op don’t do it any favours either, but if you’re looking for a big game that offers plenty of grinding before you can tackle a new challenge, this could be a solid adventure to dive into.