Haste Review Summary

Fluid movement and satisfying speed: The core gameplay loop is praised for its smooth, responsive movement mechanics and satisfying sense of speed. Players enjoy the fast-paced action, fluid controls, and the feeling of building and maintaining momentum while navigating challenging obstacles. Many reviewers compare the experience favorably to classic Sonic games, highlighting the game's success in capturing the essence of a thrilling speedster adventure.

Appealing visuals and art style: The game's visuals and art style receive widespread acclaim for their appealing character designs, vibrant colors, and overall aesthetic charm. Reviewers appreciate the unique artistic direction, often drawing comparisons to other visually striking games like Persona and Breath of the Wild. The graphics are consistently described as beautiful, cute, and well-executed, enhancing the overall gaming experience.

Excellent and engaging soundtrack: The game's soundtrack is consistently praised as a standout feature, with reviewers describing it as excellent, fantastic, and incredibly hype. The music is noted for enhancing the feeling of speed and tension, perfectly complementing the on-screen action. Many reviewers recommend the soundtrack as a must-listen, highlighting its catchy and enjoyable nature.

Enjoyable roguelite elements enhance replayability: The game incorporates roguelite elements that add depth and replayability to the core gameplay loop. Players appreciate the unexpected but effective integration of these mechanics, which provide opportunities for character customization and strategic decision-making. The roguelite elements feel natural and not forced, enhancing the overall experience without detracting from the fast-paced parkour action. The game is also considered relaxing despite the roguelite elements.

Satisfying perfect landings mechanic: Successfully executing perfect landings is a core element of the gameplay that players find highly satisfying. The game rewards precise timing and control, providing a sense of accomplishment when players nail a landing and maintain their momentum. This mechanic adds depth to the gameplay and encourages players to master the nuances of movement and control.

Unfair, repetitive procedural generation: Procedural generation leads to unfair difficulty spikes, unreadable levels, and repetitive environments. Obstacles are often obscured, and map layouts can be chaotic, leading to unavoidable deaths and frustrating gameplay. Bosses are also repetitive, with the same ones being reused throughout the game with minor changes.

Poor visibility, unclear guidance: The game suffers from poor visibility, unclear level guidance, and a fast-collapsing environment, making navigation difficult and deaths feel cheap. The spark trails, intended to guide players, often lead into traps. Challenge fragments also have inconsistent difficulty and can ruin runs due to unpredictable outcomes.

Unbalanced, scarce item system: The item system is unbalanced, with some items being useless or too expensive, and shops are rare and often inaccessible. This makes it difficult to acquire essential items and build up buffs, hindering progression. The roguelite elements feel unnecessary and poorly implemented.

Softlocks and game-breaking bugs: Players have encountered softlocks and game-breaking bugs that prevent progression, such as getting stuck in shops or during NPC interactions. Movement abilities sometimes fail to trigger, leading to frustrating deaths. These bugs significantly impact the player experience.

Exponential difficulty increase: From level 5, the difficulty increases exponentially, making it extremely challenging to progress. It can be very difficult to tell where the left/right edge is until it's too late, especially since the levels curve.

Slay the Spire-style level selection: The game features a level selection system similar to Slay the Spire, with branching paths and nodes representing different events, shops, and challenges. Players choose their route to the boss, adding a strategic element to each run.

Time-attack stage rush mechanic: The game incorporates a time-attack stage rush mechanic, where players must complete levels quickly while escaping an approaching threat. Players have limited lives and can choose to skip difficult sections, adding a sense of urgency and strategic decision-making.

Energy and diving mechanics: Successful landings generate energy that can be used for boosts and maintaining speed. Diving is a mechanic that allows mid-air adjustments for better landings and increased speed.

Mechanics easy to understand, unclear boost: The game's mechanics are generally easy to understand, but some aspects, like the boost mechanic, lack clear explanation. This can leave players unsure of how certain mechanics affect their gameplay.

Difficulty scaling could be improved: Difficulty scaling between shards isn't too egregious, but could be slightly less steep. From shard 3, there are more terrains that are difficult to deal with unless you know them in advance.

Inconsistent performance and optimization: The game's performance and optimization are inconsistent. While some players report smooth gameplay and excellent optimization even on lower-end systems or the Steam Deck, others experience significant frame rate drops, crashes, and lag, sometimes related to specific in-game events or settings.

Softlocks upon death/portals: Players are encountering softlocks, particularly upon death or entering portals, which forces them to restart the game. This issue severely disrupts the gameplay experience and needs to be addressed.

Lag in specific scenarios: Specific in-game scenarios, such as double acceleration ring tracks, levels with many particles, or levels with two trains, cause significant lag. This indicates that the game's performance is tied to specific, resource-intensive elements.

DLSS may cause crashes: DLSS may be causing crashes for some users. Disabling it has been reported to reduce the frequency of these crashes, suggesting a potential incompatibility or issue with the DLSS implementation.

Steam input deadzone issues: Players are reporting issues with Steam input deadzones and recommending custom curve adjustments for better control. This suggests that the default input settings may not be optimal for all players.

Rushed, unpolished, early access feel: Many reviewers feel the game was rushed and released prematurely, with some suggesting it should have been launched as early access. Common complaints include bugs, lack of polish, and unrefined procedural generation. Some reviewers suggest waiting for updates or sticking with the demo.

Fun, addictive despite flaws: Despite its flaws, many reviewers find the core gameplay loop enjoyable and addictive, especially for fans of fast-paced movement and roguelite elements. The game is often recommended, especially when on sale, with many feeling they are getting their money's worth.

Masterpiece, Game of the Year (hyperbolic): Some reviewers give the game perfect scores and consider it a masterpiece or potential game of the year. However, these points often lack specific details and may be hyperbolic, so they are given a low importance score.

Try the demo first: The demo is a good indicator of whether players will enjoy the full game. Many reviewers suggest trying the demo first to gauge interest, as the full game expands upon the demo's core mechanics.

Another great Landfall game: Many reviewers praise Landfall for creating another great game, with some considering it their best work yet. This reflects a positive sentiment towards the developer's track record.

Roguelike parkour with repetitive biomes: The game blends roguelike elements with fast-paced parkour, focusing on retries rather than level progression. While the game description mentions ten shards, the actual game seems to have only three main biomes that repeat with slight variations.

Intriguing but vague story: The game features a protagonist named Zoya, a messenger traveling between worlds. The story is present but somewhat obfuscated, with some reviewers skipping it entirely, while others find it intriguing.

Anticipation for community mods: The game includes Steam Workshop support, allowing players to create and share mods, including map mods. Reviewers express anticipation for the community-created content.

Camera angle affects gameplay: The game has some interesting details, such as slowing down the music when the player makes mistakes. Also, tilting the camera parallel to the ground enhances the sense of speed.

Unclear obstacle/benefit distinction: The game features strange, carnival-like hazards with unclear functions, making it tricky to distinguish between obstacles and beneficial elements. This can lead to confusion and unexpected outcomes.