Upcoming “medievalpunk” hack-and-slash Reignbreaker brings defiance to the roguelike genre, and we got to take an early look at it.

In Reignbreaker, players are put in the shoes of Clef, an ex-soldier who now seeks to take down the queen’s private regiment. Things aren’t so easy, though, as her sister is still a loyal part of the queen’s forces.

With a heavy cel-shaded art style and a punk rock attitude, Reignbreaker is a title you can’t visually ignore, but does it deliver when it comes to gameplay?

When it comes to its runs, Reignbreaker has players breaking through vaults with Clef’s key-shaped spear, which triggers different combat challenges. Breaking into one or two vaults lets you open the warden seal at the end of the level, allowing you to progress to the next part of your run.

Letting players choose their next encounter is usually par for the course as far as roguelikes go, especially the one that Reignbreaker takes its main inspirations from, Hades, but giving the player full control over how many fights they’ll engage with is surprisingly ballsy and definitely appreciated.

There are also timed doors, like the ones found in Dead Cells, which reward the player for clearing a floor early. All of these systems make it so the player has to find a balance between acquiring currency to spend in shops later in the run and also beating stages as fast as possible so they can get the timed rewards after breaking a warden seal.

Reignbreaker attempts to go for a Hades-like structure, which it does accomplish when it comes to its combat, but fails when it comes to its plot. Clef keeps bumping into these characters that we don’t have much context for, like we just got dropped halfway into a story.

While Hades made sure to flesh out its cast as much as it could, Reignbreaker is brief and sparse on character interactions, which limits our story content by quite a lot. The cast of characters Clef encounters, including her sister, shows there’s a larger story happening, but it doesn’t really feel as impactful as it should be thanks to this somewhat disjointed presentation.

There are little flourishes here and there that make Reignbreaker‘s world a little more interesting, though, like the fact that the game contextualizes loss of currency on respawn with Clef being robbed by the kids who drag her back to her hideout.

When it comes to its presentation, there are a lot of little things that the game fails at, like Clef not having a turning animation, which ends up making the character’s movement look jittery. Performance is also a mixed bag, with frame drops happening even when there aren’t any enemies on screen. Both of these issues hurt the game’s first impressions a lot.

Clef also has some issues with part of her kit. For a big character, her punches sure don’t have that much impact, and there’s a large animation lock after attacking that can make combat feel stiff until you get into a constant habit of dashing instead of walking. Reignbreaker‘s combat is not bad, but it clearly needs work.

My feelings on the game’s combat are somewhat split at the moment. On one hand, Clef’s punches don’t have a lot of weight by default, lacking the impact needed to feel satisfying, but on the other hand, her spear is absolutely fantastic to use, and the amount of variety it adds to combat is staggering.

Clef’s spear works both as a ranged and melee weapon, shooting projectiles at enemies once you stab them. Clef can also charge up her spear to throw it at enemies, which stays embedded into them while automatically shooting.

Different shot patterns can be customized before starting a run, ranging from big shotgun blasts to focused bursts of fire, which give players a good degree of customization over their moveset. The spear is a great crowd control weapon that feels really good to use, having a lot more impact and “oomph” than Clef’s regular punches.

On top of that, the player can also thrust their spear into the ground, which turns it into a turret that shoots in different patterns depending on what bayonet you have equipped. Thrusting the spear into certain pieces of machinery also activates traps that can be used against enemies.

I was initially disappointed by the fact that Reignbreaker only had one weapon available for the player to use, but that decision is very quickly justified once you realize just how many things the spear is capable of doing.

Clef’s bayonet spear is a multi-use tool in every sense of the word, and it is truly the most creative and fun part of the game’s combat. The heat system stops you from overusing it, but there are different upgrades that let you circumvent that.

Reignbreaker‘s upgrades are also pretty significant as far as modern roguelikes go. They are more stat-based than anything, not really fundamentally changing the way you play the game, but you can definitely feel yourself getting stronger while you progress through a run.

Main character Clef seems somewhat inspired by wrestler Rhea Ripley in her design, although that could just be me reading too deep into her facial expressions and mullet. Regardless, her design is pretty novel to see, especially in a setting that mixes mechanical, medieval, and punk in equal measure.

Clef’s design isn’t without issues, though, as the way she’s drawn feels inconsistent at points. The default portrait used for her in conversations is stylish and represents the character well, while the one used in the upgrade menu is drawn from an angle that doesn’t make her design look as appealing.

Clef’s design also doesn’t translate that well into her 3D model, which is a shame. Not only is a lot of detail lost, but her proportions also look off from the top-down perspective. The Clef that we see in the main menu and key art for the game looks different from the one we play as and see in some of the game’s portraits.

Reignbreaker‘s meta progression is done in a unique manner, having each perk take up one out of three available slots. Some perks feel basically mandatory, like the ones involving survivability, so I’m not sure if I fully enjoy this system just yet.

The game is especially difficult, as enemies and bosses hit incredibly hard, so having to choose between a perk that gives you a cool extra move or having enough health to actually survive the game’s tough boss encounters is not great.

Hopefully players get to unlock more perk slots as they progress through the game, because the idea of being restricted on what you can carry into a run doesn’t feel good.

With a little bit of polish and some performance fixes, Reignbreaker has a good chance of becoming a pretty solid Hades-like, which will definitely scratch your itch for familial drama interspersed between hyper-fast hack-and-slash combat sections.

The game gets a lot of mileage out of a single weapon, and if Clef’s arsenal is expanded upon when the game fully releases, then we might start reaching spectacle fighter levels of moveset variety.

The plot and roguelike aspects of the game are a little on the weaker side right now, but Reignbreaker‘s future is solid as far as its combat goes. The rest, unfortunately, needs work.

Reignbreaker is set to release on March 18, 2025 for Microsoft Windows (through Steam). You can also try out the game’s demo right now.