Relic Hunters Legend is a frenetic action RPG game that promises to put another Brazilian studio in the spotlight, Rogue Snail, the same creator of Chroma Squad. Launching on September 25, 2023, for PC, PS5, Switch, and Xbox Series, the game has already arrived with excellent recommendations and has been collecting positive reviews in the gaming world, with addictive features that attract attention, especially due to the wide range of mechanics. The most incredible thing is that we're talking about early access, and even so, for me, it seemed very complete, with various characters, modes, and campaigns to follow.

It's worth noting that the game depicts an online story in an extremely fast-paced looter-shooter, which can promote interactions and facilitate the progress of missions, recovering memories and stolen relics against the big bad ducks. Yes, the great villains of our narrative are the dreaded space ducks.

In this online mode, there will be a maximum of four players in a match, either with friends or with random players. At first, I didn't understand the proposal very well and found myself in a match with two strangers without even knowing how they got in, but this made the gameplay much easier and made it much quicker to get to the next level than playing solo.



The boy with the white hair

The story will deal with our teenager Seven (this part is going to sound a bit weird), who travels through space-time fleeing from a science lesson and meets Ace, a donkey with a jetpack, and begins to face the great evil duck empire, which surprisingly also controls the amphibians and oppresses all the planets. In fact, in one of the opening cutscenes, one of the generals complains about losing a battle and blames his subordinate, who explains that he lost thanks to a white-haired boy. So, led by Peaky, the Relic Hunters will do anything to find the memories of the real past.

Although you start your journey as Seven, you can also unlock different characters (there are seven in total) as you progress, all with their skill kits and unique cosmetics. In addition, you can develop skills and equipment for each of them, allowing you to create different builds focused on your style of play, causing damage, tankiness, or serving as support for your team.

Continuing, the narrative won't just be tied to one main storyline; acting like a good RPG, Relic Hunters will offer alternatives for your gameplay, with side quests that will allow you to explore more of the universe. Even at the beginning, it's important to do as many as possible, because there will be lots of loot and tutorials for new players, and the fact is: the sooner you learn the mechanics, the better because there are so many of them.



Endless possibilities

As mentioned, the mechanics offered by the developers are many, so it's up to the player to decide how best to follow their path, from choosing their build to the path to be taken. However, to do this, you'll need to understand very well how everything works, and I admit, it can get quite confusing here.

To give you an idea, here you even have to claim the missions you've already completed. Upgrading skills is also a task that needs a bit of attention, as it works on a tree system in 3 different ways: attack, defense, and passive, so it's important to think about how you play, whether you're going solo or in a group; there'll be different strategies and different difficulties. To take advantage of this, for each map in the 7 possible game modes, we will know 3 difficulties: the Imperial Age (normal), the Age of Chaos (hard), and the Broken Age (epic).



This is where the RPG style comes into its own, because as well as building up your skills, you'll also need to collect equipment and evolve it with pieces found on the maps to become stronger. In addition, leveling up your characters is essential, increasing attributes such as power (attack), stamina (life), agility, and spirit (special attack). This special ability is recharged from time to time and needs to be used wisely. I was surprised by its power and excited about the possibility of using it to defeat bosses.

Now, the loots are all scattered around the map and easily accessible; however, you have to complete them in full and explore areas that you might not even pay attention to collect all the items, where you'll also find the relics, identified by boxes with yellow or green stars, a purple heart, and a blue chest. Be careful; near the portals, you can find chests with ammunition. It may seem silly, but at times I ignored this fact due to the huge amount of bullets available; however, due to the great speed of the action in Relic Hunters, I ended up running out of ammunition at times in one of the available weapons.



Maximum optimization

The developers made a point of including support for 4K resolution, unlocked framerates, and super-widescreen to improve the game's graphic quality. In addition, the animations in battle and even outside of battle are extremely beautiful and convey a certain emotion to the players. However, perhaps because it was early access, some crashes were common, especially when starting a new stage, not to mention the lack of a Brazilian server, which led to very high ping.

In addition to the very lively and beautiful artwork, I can say that the soundtrack and auditory feedback are to be congratulated. Battles certainly gain an extra thrill because, with such speed in combat, music speeding everything up makes the experience even more complete.

In conclusion, I think it's important to reiterate that at times I was a little lost by the excess of mechanics; however, it is a fact that the great variety is very pleasing because somehow players will be able to explore different niches and complete themselves.

Thanks to the PR team at Rogue Snail for making Relic Hunters Legend available and making it possible to create this content.