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If you like stylish action games, you should check out Mightreya. It’s from the developer of Assault Spy, a Devil May Cry inspired game where you play as a corporate spy. I wrote about it in a short article I did last year. You should check that out, too.
Before you get the demo, I think I have to do some white-knighting for the game. It’s a ton of fun, and it has a lot of new, interesting ideas. Thing is, those same new ideas and approaches are what make the game unfriendly to beginners. It’s a bit of a mess at first, with a steep learning curve and a disorienting combat system where you fight in mid-air while the camera tries its best to keep the action in frame.
It’s the kind of thing new players will bounce off instantly. It’s like the game is made of trampolines. You boot it up and go from zero to full motion sickness in a few button presses. This isn’t good as a first impression, but if you stick with it, it’s a rewarding game with well thought out mechanics and satisfying combat. That’s if you stick with it, which is a huge qualifier for a demo, which is supposed to grab you in the first few minutes like an over-eager first date.
I’m here to say, MIGHTREYA is a fun game that I recommend, but you need to be in the right frame of mind for it. I’ll try my best to ease you into the experience, and tell you one or two things the game doesn’t so you can get to enjoying the game before the spinning camera makes you uninstall.
Gameplay
MIGHTREYA is a 3D Character action game. You play as Reya, a girl who fights Kaiju (big monsters) on stream. You have a basic combo, dashes, and a ranged shot. This doesn’t sound like a lot of tools for a character action game, but what is here is used well. Each attack has a timing mechanic, where if you attack at certain points when you see a blue flash, you get a “perfect” version of the move with added damage.
The game’s combat gets a lot more complicated once the third dimension gets thrown in. This is a truly 3D game. You fight in mid-air, and you have to keep track of enemies that can attack from above and below. There are also attacks that take advantage of the elevation system. You can launch enemies higher, or slam them down to the ground. You can jump higher or dive down. This gives you different ways to avoid attacks and new angles to attack from.
For defensive options, you have a dodge and a parry. Timing the dodge to when an enemy attacks lets you phase through the attack and counter while the enemy is vulnerable. The parry, as you’d expect, is a defensive technique you use just as an enemy’s attack is about to hit you. It knocks the enemy back and stuns them for a bit, letting you beat on them freely. The thing with the parry is that it’s done by pressing the left analogue stick towards your opponent. If you mistime it, you can’t fall back on a block or anything like that. It’s a high-commitment option, which I like.
All of these attacks and techniques chain together into one another, letting you juggle opponents, slam them down into the ground, punch them up into the air all while zipping around. It’s a ton of fun, and feels great once you get into the groove.
Thing is, the game does a lousy job of teaching you any of it.
Bad Onboarding
Surely, you could learn all of these important techniques in the tutorial, right? Yeah, you can. After you finish a fight. For some reason, the tutorial comes after the introductory fight, where you’re expected to take down some enemies and a large kaiju at the end. If you fail, you restart. The controls are on-screen, sure, but you have no idea how to use any of them, or what they mean. It doesn’t tell you about any of the techniques or why you keep turning blue seemingly at random.
It’s an easy fight, and I got through it, but I had played the previous demo and had already gotten over the hurdle of learning the game. Even then, I had to dust off my knowledge and try a few times as I remembered how it all works. I can imagine it must be a lot tougher for a new player. Especially in a demo, where you’re supposed to get a taste for the game as quickly as possible.
You should still give it a try
When I played the demo, there wasn’t a tutorial option in the menu, it might get added later, but there is a training room. Go there and move around for a bit, getting used to the controls. You have your basic combo on the right bumper by default, if you play on a controller, which I highly recommend. Use left trigger to dash around and get a feel for how Reya moves and, more importantly, how the camera reacts.
Once you feel comfortable with the game, start the game. Use your basic combo to deal damage, and jump out of the way of attacks. Once the big guy shows up at the end, press the right trigger to charge a massive punch that will almost kill him. Press grab (x) to finish the fight.
After that, you’ll finally get thrown into the tutorial, where everything will be explained properly. Then you can complete a regular level, and fight a boss at the end.
The Boss
The boss needs a lot of work. It’s a huge difficulty spike, not because he’s tough, but because he zips around constantly, making it nearly impossible to keep track of. Even the lock-on has trouble with this one. He’ll circle around you, making attacks miss, and he has a nasty habit of zooming past you, teleporting to the other side of the arena, zooming past you again, then disappearing. It’s like trying to fight a fruit fly with a hammer.
The boss fight wasn’t nearly as bad in the first demo. Here, they gave the guy a pitcher of red Kool-Aid and now he’s running all over the place, blue in the face, with his ADHD acting up in full force. It’s genuinely frustrating how much he moves around.
The boss has a break mechanic. Once you deal enough damage, you’ll break his guard and he can be combo’d. In theory, at least. For some reason he can recover from hit stun just as quickly as he can while he has his armor, so anything other than mashing the regular combo will give him enough time to recover and attack you as you’re trying to hit him.
The bosses in Assault Spy had a similar mechanic, but once they were in break, you could smack them around and get stylish. They could still attack, but only if you left them alone. The boss in the MIGHTREYA demo attacks like nothing’s happening. It honestly feels like a bug. It’s not supposed to do that. You smacked him into break, you should get to beat him down for a bit and show off. The break timer is already laughably short, so it seems like you’re supposed to have a few seconds to unleash your most damaging combo, not mash away hoping the boss doesn’t swing at you while you’re readying a punch.
Conclusion
Even with all those negatives in the way, I still recommend the MIGHTREYA demo. I had a lot of fun with it, and I played through it multiple times, even if it wasn’t much different from the demo I tried a few months ago. It was more polished, and it added voice acting, but the game was the same.
The combat is fast, fluid and satisfying. All of your options feel strong and useful, and they flow into each other, letting you make cool combos on the fly. You can dash into an enemy, hit them with a flurry of punches, then smack them into the ground, follow them down and slam the ground for more damage, then dash back into the air to fight your next target.
Even with all the dazzling, disorienting action going on, the game’s core combat fundamentals are solid. You can dash out of the way of attacks and out-space them with smart movement. You’re not forced to use the perfect dodge or the parry; you can move out of the way. The dodge is useful, and it has a place, being a riskier defensive option for attacks you can clearly tell are coming. Same with the parry. If you risk getting hit, you can use the parry to open up an enemy, but it’s up to you to do so. It’s not like in a lot of these games where you’re forced to parry, since the enemies are always tracking you with their attacks and sticking to you like burnt cheese on a pan. There’s actual spacing. What a concept.
There are downsides, as I said. The new player experience leaves a lot to be desired. The game is a bit overwhelming at first (and afterwards), and it might put someone off. That’s a shame, since I think the game is great once you can actually play it. When you can parse what’s happening on screen without having a seizure or puking from motion sickness, you’ll find that MIGHTREYA is a fun, fast-paced action game with a lot to offer.
Except for the boss fight. Treat it as a kind of final challenge. I managed it, and I suck, but it was a test of my patience more than anything. After finishing it, I felt less like a pro gamer and more like a Zen monk.
Download the demo now! I highly recommend it.
What a shame, it sounds like it has some good stuff in it but I couldn't watch more than 5 seconds of the video you embbeded. Checking it out again in 6 months.