There is no shortage of terrible things buried deep underground, but, in Holly ancient weapon, you will become the worst of them all. This roguelike is by Acquire, one of the studios behind octopus tourists series, puts you in control of a powerful robot seeking revenge on the humans who buried it for thousands of years. However, reaching the surface and destroying all the humans will take longer than you expect.
At first glance, Ancient Weapon Holly is an action-packed, fun, and functional roguelite. The game includes ten levels to play, each level has increasing difficulty. Holly starts with a basic ranged attack and the ability to open holes in the floor for enemies to fall into. They can be closed to instantly kill most enemies, especially once you’ve upgraded your attack power through the game’s version of the spherical grid. It’s a fun mechanic and the combat is chaotic enough to keep you interested for a few hours, but the game’s lack of depth makes it feel repetitive long before Holly emerges.
To progress through each floor, Holly must find and destroy enemy Gates while defending her Altar from the approaching Assassins sent to stop her. Destroy all the Gates and Slayers and she will advance to the next floor. If they kill her or destroy her Altar, she will return to the previous floor. Since this is a roguelite, all the upgrades you’ve purchased remain, but you’ll lose any collected and unspent resources.
The fact that you only go down one floor when you die makes the game much easier, but it also gives the feeling that this is just a single run in Holly’s relentless pursuit of the surface. It also means you don’t have to waste time on easier floors after you’ve upgraded your abilities, which is a nice touch.
The problem is that most of the floors feel too similar. While there are some new monsters introduced during play, the same basic enemies are present throughout – they just take more kills on the higher floors. The layout of each level is also too similar, meaning there are no visual markers to show your progress. An additional environmental hazard or a new mechanic to consider in the later floors would do wonders for the overall gameplay of Ancient Weapon Holly.
While the idea is fun and engaging, the plot feels a bit dated compared to the actual gameplay here. There aren’t any big cutscenes or shocking reveals as you make your way to the surface. The game tasks you with collecting each of Holly’s memories that have been locked away in treasure chests on each floor, but even doing so doesn’t yield any new insight into her motivations. her or the world around her. The only thing it does is slightly upgrade your abilities each time. Useful, but nothing that hasn’t already been accomplished by the game’s skill tree.
Each of Holly’s stats can be upgraded using items dropped by enemies as you fight your way through levels. Some new abilities are unlocked, such as being able to fast travel through dungeons or being alerted when Slayers approach your Altar, but the basic strategy of the game never really changes. You’ll rely heavily on your basic attacks against most enemies and your ability to bury against Assassins. There’s a slight balance issue here – we finished upgrading every orb on the skill tree before reaching the halfway mark, which made the last half of the game less engaging.
Overall, Ancient Weapon Holly is probably considered a bit easy compared to most roguelikes/lites, which can work both against it and in its favor. Slayers move slowly enough that they never threaten our Altar no matter how long we stay away from it, and when we upgrade our attack power, basic enemies will never causing too much trouble for us. Because all of the materials you need to upgrade your abilities can be found on every floor, you can quickly become overwhelmed by spending some time grinding on the lower levels. , where enemies pose less of a threat.
All of this is not to say that Ancient Weapon Holly is a bad game. If you just want a simple roguelite game that focuses on action and combat, you’ll probably get 10 to 15 hours of enjoyment here. However, there’s nothing here that would make the game stand out among them. Tons of other examples on Switch. It’s too safe and predictable. We wanted a little more.
We only encountered one bug during our time using Ancient Weapon Holly. When we switched the Switch from handheld to docked mode, we encountered severe frame rate issues. These were so bad that they made the game nearly unplayable until we closed the software and reloaded. This fixed the problem, making it more of an inconvenience than anything else.
Ancient Weapon Holly can best be described as serviceable – it’s not bad at all and we found ourselves liking it for the majority of our time playing it. However, it plays with an overly simple formula and doesn’t do enough with its main character or setting to stand out among other ambitious games on the Switch. It needs a little humor or a sense of tension. Something to give it more character and personality. We enjoyed the gameplay and combat, but we found Ancient Weapon Holly to be forgettable.
Conclusion
Roguelite fans will likely be divided on Ancient Weapon Holly. Its combat is fun and provides a fun challenge for a while, though it doesn’t have the depth or personality to make it a truly great entry in the genre. Everything feels too safe and predictable for our liking. It just needs something – a compelling story or a more unique mechanic, to make us want to see humanity perish.
