Mythforce review: A great homage to 80s cartoon shows

Mythforce is a beautiful love letter to those old Sunday morning shows most people have grown up watching and loving, such as He-Man and Thundercats. Of course, the game is much more than just an homage. It’s a full package of co-op roguelite goodness.

The game has been developed by Beamdog, well-known for remastering and re-releasing some of the classic Dungeons & Dragons games on modern PC (Planescape: Torment, Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, and more).

Seeing this as their first foray into developing an original IP, the attempt is positive in many ways instead of being negative. However, it does come with minor shortcomings of its own.

Banding together to save the lands in Mythforce

Mythforce, unfortunately, does not have an over-reaching storyline. Instead, more focus has gone into players' gameplay experience instead of outright revealing what the story is. The game starts with a cut-scene that can be considered the opening for the “show." After all, the title was inspired by 80s cartoon shows.

The story is pretty simple and straightforward - Victoria the Knight bands together with three other heroes, namely Maggie the Mage, Hawkins the Hunter, and Rico the Rogue, to form Mythforce and protect the land of Eldryth from the evil vampire lord Daedalus and his horde of villainous companions.

The team of Mythforce heading to the fight (Image via Beamdog)

Apart from this, there isn’t much to go with. However, when it comes to the characters, the voice acting is excellent and makes all characters stand out from each other. Victoria, for example, sounds dutiful and vain, whereas Rico seems aloof and slightly carefree.

Overall, there is not much to complain about here. The game could’ve had more stories, but that slight does not affect the overall experience.

Hero selection offers satisfying choices

Before you start your run in Mythforce, you will get to select one of the four heroes to go on an adventure through the randomly-generated rooms. In total, there are four classes of heroes that are inspired by the Dungeons & Dragons:

Maggie: She is a Mage who is one of the finest spellcasters in Eldryth. Lacking the endurance and combat skills required on a battlefield, she uses her adept spellcasting to change the course of combat.
Victoria: A former Knight of the Solaire Royal Guard and the leader of Mythforce. A defensive hero with high stamina, she excels at close-quarter combat and crowd-control but is, unfortunately, slower than her compatriots.
Hawkins: An ex-monster Hunter who joined the ranks of Mythforce. Hawkins performs great at ranged combat and can phase through enemies, pulling them into explosive rifts using powerful shots.
Rico: A Rogue who is light on his feet and excels in one-on-one combat with short weapons, such as blades. Fast and agile, Rico can dash in to attack enemies while they are distracted by the rest of the party.

Each class of heroes has a specific ability exclusive to them, which can be used to help them on the battlefield. For example, Rico can throw sand at enemies to blind them on their path, and quickly stab and thrust his blades, dealing tons of damage. Similarly, Victoria can charge into enemies to incapacitate them for a while, and then serve the death blow.

Maggie, the Mage's ability page (Image via Beamdog)

All four classes play distinctly from each other, and depending on individual playstyle, one can determine how their overall dungeon run will go. Beamdog has also let players know how difficult each character will be for a newcomer to the game.

Victoria and Hawkins have been marked as one out of three stars in difficulty, Rico marked as a two out of three, with Maggie being the toughest among them. Once players decide the hero they want to pick, it will be time to save the world.

Mythforce's follows a standard dungeon-crawler

Maggie the Mage, using her ability (Image via Beamdog)

The general gameplay of Mythforce is pretty straightforward. Players have to complete randomly-generated rooms, which they do by using their abilities, prioritizing them as there is a cooldown for each of the four abilities the heroes possess.

Once done, they can either move on to the next room or further explore the same rooms for better weapons (which are color-coded for class), gold, or stat items like boots, and more.

As they keep on moving further, enemies keep getting stronger, starting with normal skeletons, and ending with big mushroom people. The current build contains a total of four types of enemies, which may not seem enough, but is sufficient to be a menace either way.

Using the Hunter and his abilities (Image via Beamdog)

While fighting enemies, players also need to manage their stamina and mana bar (if using a Mage or a magic weapon), as stamina is used for physical attacks and will slow a player down upon the bar getting emptied.

Playing and slaying enemies will allow players to temporarily increase one of their attributes for that particular run, making their selected hero powerful and enhancing the chances of clearing the level.

The character's overall rank will be increased by completing a level, and will also depend on the coins collected from each room. These will reward players with infusions and upgrade points.

These will improve that particular hero’s performance throughout the game, and depending on the infusion, will completely change how a character performs.

The gameplay experience is well-worth it for multiplayer co-op

Mythforce's gameplay experience is pretty interesting and drastically different between its multiplayer co-op and single-player gameplay.

The current gameplay design of Mythforce, from my time with it, feels a little unbalanced, such that the single-player solo runs of the levels will feel overwhelming, and at times, sometimes grindy.

The entirety of the game can also be played with a group of three friends thanks to co-op and lobby, in which case the enemies scale by a margin, but become much easier to deal with and annihilate.

Granted, the game is currently in Early Access and much work is left to do, which may change things over time. However, such a difference in gameplay experience is something to be a bit concerned about.

Graphics pay appropriate homage to the classics

Graphically, Mythforce follows a cell-shading process where every character looks straight out of cartoons such as He-Man and Thundercats, which is where the game has drawn inspiration from. The characters are properly modeled, with the environment looking slightly blurry but sufficiently detailed.

Combat's visuals are quite striking (Image via Beamdog)

In terms of performance, Mythforce was tested on a build with Ryzen 2600 and 16 GB RAM. With an RTX 3060 and all settings maxed out at 1080p, I am happy to report that the game ran exceptionally well, without any hiccups whatsoever.

Given that there is an omission in the detailed graphics settings for the game, it is safe to consider that the game will run fairly well on a card like 1050TI and above without any extra effort.

In conclusion

Mythforce is a great first attempt by Beamdog in creating their first original IP, and one which gloriously respects the past. While the single-player portion of the game certainly requires some balancing for a more forgiving experience, the multiplayer co-op experience is the soul and charm of the game.

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However, it is worth noting that a little bit more content before the launch would’ve certainly been appreciated. Given that the game is currently in Early Access and is scheduled to be there for a while, things are bound to change. As of now, the available experience is well-worth checking out, certainly making the title a must-play.