Tears of Metal Early Access - Is it worth it?

It finally happened, someone made a Musou roguelite. Tears of Metal has just entered Early Access, which is where it’s set to stay for the next 4-12 months. Despite this, it’s already quite feature-heavy, containing three of its five heroes, most of its content, and hours of things to do. The game has a lot to like about it already, and you can easily sink lots of hours into it, but the question stands: is Tears of Metal worth it in Early Access, or are you better off waiting for its full release sometime in the next year?

At first, you can only select a single hero. Specifically, this is William Wallace, who you may know as the protagonist from the film Braveheart. The basic gist is that you pick a hero, choose from infantry leaders, and then get dropped onto a map that allows you to pick what route you want to take. What you’ll find in each map region varies, as events are randomly selected from a pool. You’ll typically find yourself in a battle of some sort, of course, but there are also random events that can see you trade resources for rewards or trips to the merchant. Standard roguelite stuff.

In terms of gameplay, its very much in the vein of the Dynasty Warriors games, only the skirmishes are much smaller due to this being a roguelite. Instead of being dropped into a large map that you fight your way through, you’ll find yourself in small areas with a few objectives that just take a matter of minutes.

Characters have different capabilities, including weak and strong attacks, area attacks, finishers, and the ability to summon infantry members to attack foes. You’ll fight groups of enemies, but peons mostly stand around and look at you.

The main thing you’ll want to look out for, naturally, are elite enemies. You can’t take much punishment, so mistakes are costly, and individual attacks can eat up a lot of your health. Regular elite enemies aren’t spongy (although you’ll have to break the guards of the ones with shields), but mini-bosses routinely show up too. These are kind of tedious to fight as they’re predicated on having to dodge their attacks and wait for openings. After multiple runs, these can get more than a little repetitive.

Each region ends with a proper boss battle that you’ll need to win to progress. The first one is extra tedious, as he has a ton of health, a very wide range, and is really only typically vulnerable for a moment at a time.

I do like a lot of what Tears of Metal has to offer, but the high enemy damage output and tediousness of the boss fights do kind of sap my will to keep playing. However, if this doesn’t bother you, then the game is honestly worth the asking price already, given how much content is on offer.