I’m not incredible at action games, but I’d like to think I can speak with at least a little authority on them. I’ve beaten the Bayonetta trilogy on their second-hardest settings with gold ranks overall. I’ve played just about everything on offer from PlatinumGames (including Vanquish). I’ve even sought out games like Maximo and other obscure titles to scratch that never-ending itch for fun combat and interesting encounter designs. So, when I say that MIGHTREYA has the potential to be really interesting, hopefully you’ll hear me out.
Developed by Wazen of Assault Spy fame and published by 505 Games, MIGHTREYA is an attempt to combine the ever-growing presence of livestreaming with superheroes in a way that’s oozing with ample potential. It’s colorful, it’s flashy, and it’s certainly over-the-top as a compelling action game should be. But is it fun? How could it be better? And is it even worth your time trying? We’ll get to that. The game’s demo debuted ahead of Steam Next Fest, and I opted to give it a shot during the ongoing festivities. These are some of my initial thoughts.
Superheroes in the Age of Livestreaming
If you met Reya on the streets in broad daylight, you’d rightfully assume she’s just an ordinary teenager, out and about and doing all the things a teenage girl would normally do. That is, however, until swarms of kaiju start attacking Mahatma City. With the addition of a domino mask and a stylish jacket, Reya becomes a full-blown superhero, a devoted defender of peace and justice. With her “manager” Rio in tow, the duo film and broadcast Reya’s heroic exploits in the pursuit of content creation, unaware that a threat even greater than a routine kaiju invasion is looming beyond the horizon.
MIGHTREYA wears its influences with plenty of gusto. The premise alone hearkens back to the influence of both superhero comics and anime projects like My Hero Academia, along with some more modern sensibilities involving the ever-expanding world of livestreaming entertainment. Hell, I’d even say you could find some faint traces of 2012’s Chronicle in here, on account of how the game’s camera flies all over the place after Reya’s airborne maneuvers. Of course, there are the action game influences as well, for better or worse. We’ll get into that later.
How does MIGHTREYA play? It’s still in its early stages, so take what I’ll say with a grain of salt. What’s here is certainly interesting, but I do think there’s some room for improvement.
MIGHTREYA has what you’d typically expect from a stylish action game. You control Reya as she runs, flies, dashes, and zooms across the ground and the sky, attacking enemies with powerful light attacks, strong attacks, grabs, and a handful of special maneuvers that you can activate when you meet a specific criterion. Your light attacks build up a meter that powers your “Atma” attacks — aka, your strong attacks. Enemies that are stunned can be grabbed and thrown at other enemies. You can launch foes into the sky, smash them into the ground, rush distant foes, dash away from them with a projectile, activate a superpowered state that boosts your damage, and more. It’s a lot to take in all at once, admittedly. Prior to an additional tutorial being added to the demo, the game throws you immediately into the action with only a surface-level understanding of how all these pieces work together. It didn’t take long to learn, at least.
One of the things that differentiates MIGHTREYA from other action games is the sheer level of magnetism and verticality you’re working with. Reya will attack the closest enemy the camera is facing, meaning that if you’re wailing on someone and want to spin around to take out someone else, she’ll zoom right on over to them to deliver the pain. If you’ve ever seen one of those lightning-fast fights from Dragon Ball Z, you’ll get some major deja vu as you zip through the air, knocking everyone around as if they were cheap toys. This is especially true with how verticality comes into play here. Arenas are way more spacious than you’d expect, with ground combat often playing just a minor role in every battle. Instead, you’ll often be bouncing between aerial foes one after another, rising higher and higher as you jump across light poles and treetops.
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I always harp on things for their scoring systems (or lack thereof). Thankfully, MIGHTREYA not only features one, but it also uses its livestream theming to make this more interesting. You have the basics: don’t just repeat the same moves over and over, otherwise you’ll get a score penalty; avoid taking damage when possible and use your defensive maneuvers to the best of your ability; and make sure to fulfill audience requests whenever possible to maximize your potential point returns.
That’s right — because Reya is livestreaming her heroic adventures, you’re subject to fulfilling requests from the audience to appease their tastes. Some may call for a specific maneuver to be pulled off, and some have a strict time limit to adhere to. Whatever they may be, you have a direct incentive to keep them in mind as you fly around and bust heads. I can’t really think of any other game that does something like this, sans something like MadWorld in a far more scripted, direct sense, so it was pretty refreshing to see.
There’s one boss on offer in the demo, and I feel like it’s a decent showcase for how they’ll play out in the full game. Instead of wailing on their health directly, you’ll have to do some substantial damage to “break” them, putting them into a vulnerable state that allows you to really deal a ton of damage as you’re shuffling through their attacks. You’d think that this state would affect their ability to attack you, but. . . no, it doesn’t. For some reason. It’s just a means to actually deal reasonable damage to them.
Whenever I play games like this, I always think back to Bayonetta and how a common critique of it was that everything looked kind of bland. More specifically, you have all these elaborate and cool designs for enemies and Bayonetta herself, and they’re all standing in front of drab rock faces or Venetian cities devoid of color. And I always sat there and yelled, internally: Yes, that’s the point. It’s so you can actually see what you’re doing. Bayonetta 2 somehow missed the memo on that, and MIGHTREYA comes a little close to doing that too. Visual clarity was an issue throughout my time with the demo, but it’s hard to say if it’s something that you can’t really adjust to. Lots of flashing colors, particle effects, and other visual noise often gets in the way of seeing what you actually need to see.
I should mention too that the whole “livestreaming” aspect does admittedly feel at odds with the clarity needed for an action game like this. Having to look down at the bottom of the screen, away from enemy attacks and my combos and all the other stuff I need to see, just to see what one of the viewers is requesting feels at odds with what I actually need to be doing. It’s like Zero Tolerance. If I can barely see what I’m doing, I’m not going to have a good time.
There were some other minor gripes here too. The game’s performance was a little shaky, though that could be forgiven due to its status as a demo. The timings for your dodge and parry didn’t really click with me as quickly as they did in games like Bayonetta, or even something lesser known, like Evil West. I did occasionally clip through the ground a handful of times during the tutorial too, though I couldn’t really find a way to consistently replicate the issue.
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Should You Play MIGHTREYA?
It’s important to remember that this is just a demo. It’s meant to sell you on the idea of what MIGHTREYA might be like in its final release, as opposed to something that’s meant to completely represent the final product. There’s room for things to change, and they can change pretty substantially too.
I’m not a huge fan of what MIGHTREYA is like in its current state. But I think there’s a lot that can be done to potentially make things better, even beyond just technical improvements. It’s not as if Wazen doesn’t know what they’re doing — again, they made Assault Spy, and though I didn’t play it myself, it earned a pretty substantial amount of buzz for its fun gameplay. Even mediocre action games can be a fun time if they have other stuff going for them. I felt the same way about Lollipop Chainsaw, to some extent. I just want to be able to see what I’m doing more consistently.
I don’t think I can give MIGHTREYA my own stamp of approval. At least, not yet. I will say that you should at least keep an eye on MIGHTREYA, though, for how it might change in the future. There’s an interesting core here that I feel can be explored in a meaningful way. The kinks just have to be hammered out first.
If you’re curious, you can check out MIGHTREYA for yourself on Steam.
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