This deckbuilding top-down hack ‘n slash presents an alternative take on the French Revolution. How alternative, you ask? Well, there’s a cosmic humanoid dwelling within the lower levels of Paris, spawning brain-controlling flower blossoms. Referred to as Lady Bliss, this entity descended from space during the King’s coronation. Playing as skilled swordsman René, renowned for getting jobs done, Lady Bliss is just one of a handful of factions you’ll be rubbing shoulders with to sway the revolution. They’re your lifeline, in fact, able to bring you back to life upon defeat via goo-filled incubation pods, adding a very welcome fantasy overtone.
Liberté does a very good job at drawing newcomers in, commencing with the introduction of Lady Bliss – a half female, half fungus hybrid – and explaining the basics in a clear and concise manner. The presentation is surprisingly polished, featuring a stylish UI, lavishly drawn character portraits, sharp writing, and voice acting that exceeds expectations. The French Revolution setting also holds much appeal, largely unappreciated outside of early Assassin’s Creeds.
It plays similarly to Diablo, featuring a top-down perspective and a hero able to leash a combo of sword swings by holding down the A button, in addition to performing a mixture of melee, ranged, and defensive manoeuvres on a cooldown. These aren’t gained through levelling up – they’re provided randomly by a deck of cards. Forty cards can be taken into a run and after defeating soldiers, guards, religious zealots and other opposing forces you’ll garner a handful, populating your arsenal of attacks. Each card requires mana to activate, filling a slot at the bottom of the screen and automatically assigned to a button. As cards must be ‘burnt’ to increase mana, you’ll need to think carefully about which to activate and which to discard.
Only one type of card can be assigned at once, be it a wide-range melee attack, a projectile move, or a support skill such as the ability to replenish armour. Ultimate abilities are far rarer, gained for completing key missions – such as an artillery strike as a reward for blitzing the palace. Consumable items are also acquired via cards, including a variety of healing tokens and throwable poison vials. It’s wise to have a health item equipped as the action doesn’t pause when the card selection screen is open. This is problematic during boss battles, forcing you to dash to a safe space and franticly flick through the deck.
While the deck building aspect may sound a tad complex, it takes almost no time at all to wrap your head around. Upon returning to Bliss’ domain more cards can be crafted, requiring resources gained as faction rewards, and while there isn’t a function to auto-assign a deck there are gauges to assist in creating a balanced assortment. Talking to NPCs such as the market’s butcher will occasionally result in a bonus card being handed out, while any silver found can be spent at the market hub on cards that passively increase melee damage, etc. Alternatively, silver can be spent on hired muscle, resulting in a burly chap following you around.
Runs incorporate four acts, each boosting faction reputation, and usually end with a tense boss battle. In keeping with the roguelike theme, levels are randomised, essentially formed from a combination of linear city streets, harbours, monuments, outdoor squares, levelled buildings, plus set-piece locations such as a theatre, cathedral, and the palace. Indoor locations are mostly good looking, whereas the city streets can look quite bland, almost a generation or two behind the times. Presumably to mask asset recycling, camera angles sometimes vary from one location visit to the next. Graffiti changes changes too, some of which is amusing. Missions meanwhile see you on supply runs, sabotaging stagecoaches, barging into courtrooms, disarming cannons, and fighting waves of guards.
The combat is fast-paced, but a little messy with it. Enemies attack in groups and their attack radiuses are highlighted in red, giving ample time to dodge out of the way and retaliate with a backstab. The default melee attack charges cooldowns, making for a frantic bout of attacking, dodging, and using consumable items proficiently while the cooldown gauges swiftly deplete. An untimely demise sees the run end, even if you died on the final boss. This is where much of the game’s frustration lies, even though bosses sometimes drop health tokens to give you a fighting chance. From the main menu an easier ‘story mode’ setting can be activated, but this doesn’t guarantee success as bosses will still wipe you out if you’re ill-prepared.
I was smitten by Liberté initially, experimenting with different decks, learning how to prepare for bosses, and discovering the best items to purchase from the market square. While death sets you back quite significantly, it also feels like it’s part of the learning process. After around three hours of play, I finally completed my first run and was presented with a congratulatory screen…before being abruptly thrown back to the main menu. My story progress was a modest 15% at this point, but the achievement for finishing the first chapter hadn’t unlocked – a milestone presumably beaten. I jumped back in, only to be presented with missions I’d already completed, bosses I’d defeated, and locations visited dozens of times. Understandably, this is a roguelike with a heavy amount of randomisation, but every run started to play out almost identically after just 2-3 hours of playtime.
Before writing this review, I’d put just over six hours into Liberté and not only has it emerged to be quite repetitive, but also an enigma. I tried selecting different difficulties and choosing different missions – tricky when trying to side with certain factions – but the outcomes never seemed to change, and the progress gauge only rose incrementally. Looking online, it seems that the achievements are broken (according to True Achievements, only two are obtainable currently) so it remains a mystery on how progression is handled – and how much of the game I had actually seen. I’d like to think that after six hours of play, I’d beaten at least two of the six chapters, yet it also seems that I’m somehow trapped in a perpetual loop, forced to run through the same Parisian city streets endlessly.
Liberté has been in Early Access on PC for a while, and the irregular sense of progression is a telling sign of this. I honestly can’t tell if it’s broken or if each run is supposed to share similarities with mission objectives recycled ad nauseam. The fact that I’ve put over six hours into it and I’m still replaying sections from the first hour, despite completing several runs, would suggest that it simply suffers from heavy repetition. All I can say for certain is that it isn’t very respectful of your time and has major issues when it comes to moving the storyline along. It’s a strange predicament for a game to find itself in when the fundamentals are well-designed and the presentation is polished. When I first started playing Liberté, I never expected it to leave me as bewildered as it did. Truly a uniquely flawed experience.
Superstatic’s Liberté is out now on PC and Xbox Series. A PS5 version is coming soon. Published by Ultimate Games.