Morgenstern is a roguelike with some rocking heavy metal music to set the mood as you slaughter your way through dungeons in search of loot. With options to play single player PvE or in PvP mode with other players. I’ll be looking at the PvE single-player side for the most part.
This game just recently hit early access. It’s got some decent bones of a game from what I was able to see in the limited play review key I was sent. I got to enjoy a couple of the first levels and unlocked some further characters.
The characters themselves have some slight stat differences between them. They, however, feel more like for looks than anything else. While having slightly more health or a certain damage type helps.
After playing a couple of the different characters, it did not matter so much once you made some upgrades. You unlock them from looting reputation while clearing areas and making it out alive. I did not feel the three characters you have to earn reputation to unlock were a huge advantage over the starting ones. It also did not take too long to unlock. The game is still in early access, so that can somewhat be expected. People are mostly playing just for testing purposes.
I ended up going almost pure melee. While each character has a melee weapon and spell slots. There were only two different kinds of spells I was able to acquire. With mana being such a limiting factor. Melee was my main way to go in most combat situations where I had to defeat waves. With magic being used to help with crowd control or to burst down a powerful opponent.
With this game being a roguelike, you need to make it to an extraction point and take it to bring anything back with you. Otherwise, you die and you bring back nothing. Switching between some of the game modes did make me lose the weapons and other things I had with me in adventure mode. Thankfully, it all can be crafted easily.
There is a bit of a floor progression involved, where you are given a chance to extract out and save what you looted before going on. Once you decide to move forward, you have to clear out a smaller dungeon floor before you find yourself in yet another courtyard, where you must find the extraction node before leaving.
It was nice to see that finding an extraction node was abundant enough that you did not feel like you were taking such a massive risk that it was not worth it. It was also restricted enough, you know, if things were already a challenge just to get to it. You might as well take it and come back after getting a better run or upgrades to push further on.
A huge RNG of a run is the random options you must select every time you level up on a run. I’ve had some runs where I lucked out on some huge damage or health upgrades, and I'm just running around like I can’t be killed. In other runs, I had to be a lot more reserved and careful in my attacks.
Once you have crafted a decent melee weapon and have a spell, you can usually make up for a bad start. However, at some point, you are going to need the right upgrades from leveling up to fit the playstyle you are using. Getting a bunch of epic mana upgrades, for instance, on a melee playthrough is not going to end well.
The crystals you loot along the way allow you to upgrade things like max armor, health, strength, and many other stats. This upgrade, at least at the time of writing this, is also account-wide, so it applies to all your characters. Making it not a big deal if you decide to switch from one character to another.
There is also a passive system where you craft the passives. Like a lot of things, for the time being, there are not that many of them. With there just being two currently. One that heals you after getting so many kills. While the other type gives you more base damage.
While they are not cheap to craft, you tend to find the materials needed for them as a random reward for leveling up. Once you progress past the first couple of floors, there is a chance for passives to start dropping.
Funny enough, I did try one of the PvP modes. I sat in a room that had spawn locations for two others. I was, however, alone. So, I went around and broke some containers. I ended up looting the “best” weapon in the game.
This two-handed sword is so massive it’s laughable. It also deals rather insane damage. I just find it funny that I don't need to farm materials to craft it. I got it in an empty game mode. I did some testing with it in PvE adventure mode. I found it powerful but way too slow for my playstyle. That ended up giving me an excess to try out a different character while keeping the legendary weapon on the character I had played the most on.
Occasionally, you can trigger an extra event after clearing an area. There will be these statues that you can break open that will start a wave event. I found the one that has you fighting waves of Crazy Karens to be rather funny. Out of all the types I encountered, they were the easier ones to take down for some quick loot.
Perhaps the most enjoyable thing for me was the music that was blazing in the background. It just seemed like good creature-slaying music to me. It was quite heavy and just filled me with energy to push onto the next floor.
From what I've been able to see of the game. There is enough there that I hope in a couple of years this is one of those games I end up checking back into. For the time being, however, it needs a lot more to keep someone like me interested in it for more than half an hour.
With it being early access, it’s quite clear that a few things are just stand-in systems for the time being. I can only hope this developer is quite active in their updates. As something like this could change a lot over a couple of months.
Screenshots were taken, and content was written by @Enjar about Morgenstern.
Disclosure: A review key was received for free.
