Tears of Metal Review - Musou Mosh Pit

Barely Magic Mike
14 minutes ago
7 min read

I don’t know how many of you work corporate jobs, but let’s assume (for the sake of this intro) that you do and are of a gender where you’re expected to wear long pants to work, even during the summer. Then you know what it's like to walk around outside on your way in or out and feel every inch of your garments suction-cupped to your sweaty legs like a thirsty leech. Don't you wish that on a 90-degree day with the humidity of a rainforest, you could wear something shorter that lets your legs breathe while getting some air to your swampy undercarriage? This is my argument for why everyone should be allowed to always wear kilts.

In semi-related news, Tears of Metal is a game that allows you to do just that while fighting alongside your Scottish forces to reclaim your home from foreign invaders. So you get to wear a kilt and have a short commute! Sounds great minus the dying. Small details.

Tears of Metal is developer Paper Cult's newest project launching into early access, and when juxtaposed against their previous release, Bloodroots, it's very clear that this developer likes the color red. Bloodthirsty roguelite fans rejoice, because you will be seeing a lot of it. Thankfully, Tears of Metal is also an incredibly easy game to pitch - this is roguelite, Scottish Dynasty Warriors. And frankly, aside from Samurai Bringer, I can't think of any other indies that try to do the Dynasty Warriors shtick. It's about damn time.

Now, I haven't played a ton of Dynasty Warriors personally, but I've played enough to know that it scratches a certain pocket of dopamine that a simple hack 'n' slash or beat-'em-up doesn't quite reach. Dynasty Warriors, and Tears of Metal by association, has you dealing not just with a few enemies at a time, but massive hordes of them at once that can be satisfyingly flung back with massive attacks. In the moments when you can dash into a horde and wipe them out with a single attack that knocks them back like an earthquake hit, it feels like a tremendous power trip.

Fans of Dynasty Warriors are probably sold at this point, and you should be. Tears of Metal is not just a great take on a Musou battle system, but a tremendously fun roguelite in its own right. Because of this, I want to clear up one thing early - despite the early access moniker that understandably fills some gamers with dread, Tears of Metal doesn't feel the part. The experience you'll get on day one feels complete and polished to a spit-shine, with little to nothing in the way of bugs or unfinished content sticking out to me. Overwhelmingly it seems that the early access release is intent more on balance and adding new content, given that Paper Cult intends on a full release within 4 to 12 months depending on player feedback. Whether that comes to fruition doesn't matter at this point - if you want to jump in, what's here might as well scrap the Early Access tag altogether and nobody would be any the wiser.

Indie fans have been waiting for a game like this

So what should you expect? At its core, Tears of Metal employs a very typical roguelike structure. Before and between runs, you'll have access to a settlement with a variety of areas that can upgrade heroes’ abilities, their weapons, the troops they lead into battle, and so on. While the amount of resources you get from a run will certainly vary based on your level of skill, progression, especially that which unlocks new weapons for your warriors, feels a bit slow. Not egregiously, since your heroes’ skill trees in particular feel easy to grow quickly, but it's a slight shame to be teased with weapons and abilities that you know won't unlock for ages.

When you're ready for battle, you can choose and promote a number of commanders with different weapons and skill sets. Serial min-maxers will have a lot of fun with this system to get the most out of their troops, but I never felt it was necessary to have a good time or succeed. Once that's all set, you'll dive into your map, where for each region there's a randomly generated set of battles for you to take part in for different kinds of resources and rewards.

Battles will always begin with your troops charging into an open area filled with pockets of smaller skirmishes that you can explore and engage with to your heart's content. While areas do repeat quite frequently, they're nicely designed to offer lots of rewards for those who explore, including lootable treasure chests, currency for upgrades, and even rotisserie chickens hanging over a fire you can eat for a little health boost. Be careful about visiting too many battlefields in a run though - the more you visit, the more resources and perks you get, sure, but the higher your enemy’s overall threat level also gets, making future battles and bosses more difficult.

Each pocket of combat will have you utterly obliterating dozens of small soldiers with a combination of the X and Y buttons for strikes and heavy attacks, respectively, as well as special attacks that vary by hero. Each hero also has different combos that you'll definitely want to learn, but they're thankfully simple and easy enough to remember that I never felt like I was forced to memorize fighting game algorithms. Within each pod of weakling sword fodder, there will be some much bigger baddies who you'll want to take on 1v1 as much as you can manage - their strikes hit hard, and correctly parrying or dodging them is crucial for success. Complete all of your objectives within an area, most of which just require a comical amount of bloodshed, and you can collect your reward and move on.

Rewards will allow you some choice between different types of clans that will allow you to spawn toxic flames, stun your enemies, inflict curses that link your enemies’ damage together, or otherwise. Some of these felt really fun to use while others felt a little less impactful, but they do a nice job of mixing things up for builds between runs. Similarly, the various characters at your disposal play differently and cleverly enough that the game became more addictive than repetitive. I was especially drawn to Brienne, whose damage-scaling combo system felt deeply addictive in moments when I could manipulate it to my full advantage.

As you might expect, you clear enough regions like this and a boss unlocks. I didn't love the bosses, since the amount of damage they take relative to the safe opportunities to dish it made battles feel overlong at times, but they're not bad by any means other than simply paling in comparison to the standard battles.

While I wouldn't say narrative plays a large role here, being largely about Scottish native warriors trying to take back their homeland from invaders both human and fantastical, some optional notes in each warrior’s upgrade screen are written surprisingly well, and worth a read for those looking for a little optional lore to up the emotional stakes. Speaking of emotional stakes, I have to point out one incredibly trivial but baffling omission here - when you win a battle, your hero can, with the press of a button, raise their arms and cheer “Fer Scotland!”, only for your army to… completely ignore you and not join in? How is it possible that every time I do this, my soldiers make me feel like that one guy who starts clapping once the plane lands? If most of the early access period is focused on adding battle cries, frankly I won't be disappointed.

There are some other minor issues at play here, though, in all fairness. There's enough debris strewn about the battlefield that I sometimes found myself wishing for a jump button, or at least for more obstacles to be consistently destructible rather than having to take long-winded detours to certain spots on the battlefield. You'll also visit the same locations very frequently, even though the core gameplay is strong enough that I rarely got tired of it.

Online co-op is a weirder beast. It works very well, technically speaking, as you can get up to 4 players working together on the battlefield, but whatever scaling currently exists feels a little off. Even in just 2-player runs, each region’s battles felt almost trivially easy, yet led to a boss fight that was often brutally difficult. Balancing aside, even, it just doesn't seem like multiplayer does much for the experience aside from letting you chat with your friends while playing. I didn't find any meaningful synergies to employ while playing with a friend, so it rarely felt like we needed to work together at all.

Right now though, the biggest issue by far and one that needs quick patching is that Tears of Metal’s runs can be quite long, at least an hour if you're progressing well, and yet there's currently no ability to save and quit without losing all of that run’s progress. This really should be a standard feature in every single roguelite now, so for now I'd recommend playing on a device that allows you to suspend and resume if the case arises that you need to step away.

Speaking of devices that let you do so, Tears of Metal runs great on the Steam Deck and is an excellent choice for those who want to spill blood on the go! You'll see some frame drops in more hectic battles, but overall I can't complain much. The game looks great too, with a low poly art style combined with a fairly wide variety of environments and color palettes that make for a smooth and appropriately chaotic experience that never hinders the gameplay. I enjoy the soundtrack too, which features rousing battle music and more melodic, mournful bagpipe tunes for the time between runs. The overall presentation is just fantastically well-done, especially for a title that claims to be unfinished.

Overwhelmingly, Tears of Metal has established itself as one of my favorite early access titles I've reviewed, and one I intend to keep coming back to since there's lots of content still to unlock and experience. Anybody looking for a good Musou game that doesn't have the word “Warriors” in the title will feel right at home here, but anyone in the mood for some bloody and visceral melee combat should love it all the same. Tears of Metal is a great early access game and one worth playing now, earning itself the Silver Genie Lamp of Approval.