Lynked: Banner of the Spark
Last updated: 2025-05-23
- Engaging, customizable combat system
- Blends town-building, roguelite genres
- Polished, deep, and balanced gameplay
- Charming, cozy atmosphere and visuals
- Seamless and enjoyable co-op
- Numerous bugs and crashes
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 86% · Negative 14%. Score: 14 / 100
Positives:
- The combat system is a major highlight, offering a fluid and engaging experience with diverse weapons, upgrades, and customization options. Players can experiment with different playstyles, from fast-paced action to strategic depth, making combat feel both accessible and rewarding.
- The game uniquely blends town-building and roguelite elements, creating a compelling gameplay loop. Players can alternate between action-packed missions and relaxing town activities, with each aspect complementing the other and providing a sense of progression.
- The game is well-made and polished, offering a substantial amount of content and depth. It strikes a good balance between challenge and accessibility, with a satisfying progression system and meaningful choices.
- The game has a charming and cozy atmosphere, featuring cute characters, appealing visuals, and a cheerful tone. The art style is consistently praised, contributing to the game's overall positive and enjoyable experience.
- The game successfully blends multiple genres and offers a variety of gameplay experiences. It includes features like fishing, villager collecting, and extensive customization options, providing players with diverse activities and ways to engage with the game.
Negatives:
- The game has a number of bugs and crashes, some of which can be game-breaking. Multiplayer functionality is also affected by these issues, as well as a lack of essential features like text chat and consistently empty lobbies.
- The game feels heavily geared towards single-player experiences, with limited multiplayer functionality and empty servers. Solo play can feel boring and progression can be a struggle, especially in combat dungeons and boss battles.
- The game's story and upgrade system are currently lacking depth and meaningful impact. Reviewers also noted a lack of enemy and map variety, contributing to a sense of repetitiveness. More content is needed to reach its full potential.
- The game suffers from poor weapon balancing and an unrewarding scrap system. There's little incentive to upgrade weapons, and some weapon types are clearly inferior to others, making weapon choice feel inconsequential.
- Missions can be inconsistent in difficulty, with some being too easy and others excessively challenging. Some reviewers found the difficulty spiked significantly after the initial refund window.
Gameplay:
- The game features extensive town-building and customization, with elements similar to Animal Crossing. Players can freely place buildings, decorate with futuristic items, and engage with robot villagers (Unibots) who have their own side stories. The town aspect involves farming, fishing, resource gathering, and unlocking new villagers, with a focus on creating a cozy and personalized home base.
- The game uses missions to provide goals, unlock content, and add flavor to the gameplay. These missions are structured in a roguelike style, involving clearing rooms of enemies, collecting upgrades and materials, and fighting a boss or a big wave at the end. Completing missions progresses the city and unlocks more mission options.
- The game includes critter catching and fishing minigames, allowing players to collect robot fish and bugs. Fishing is described as simple but satisfying, especially when catching legendary fish to create fish weapons. Information is provided on where and when to catch fish and bugs.
- The game features unconventional and customizable weapons, including a hoverboard and a bass. A grapple hook allows players to grab objects to throw, stun bosses, or grab smaller enemies. The grappling hook and various movesets provide multiple options for handling encounters.
- The game features a large number of collectibles and customization options. There is a lot to unlock, collect, and customize.
Performance:
- The game's performance and stability are inconsistent. While some players report smooth experiences with few bugs, others encounter frequent crashes, freezes, and optimization issues, even on different hardware configurations. Some players find the game polished despite being in early access.
- The game's performance on handheld devices like the Steam Deck and Legion Go is mixed, often requiring low settings and reduced resolution to achieve playable framerates. Some users are reporting visuals comparable to the Nintendo Switch on low to medium settings.
- Players are reporting generally smooth combat and good performance on a variety of hardware configurations. Some players are reporting smooth gameplay without adjusting graphics settings.
- The game appears to have CPU optimization issues, with some players reporting high CPU usage and performance degradation as their towns expand. The game may not be fully utilizing available GPU/CPU resources.
Recommendations:
- Many reviewers recommend the game, praising its blend of genres, charming elements, and enjoyable gameplay loop, especially for fans of games like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley with more combat. Some suggest trying it to see if it fits your preferences, highlighting the refund option. A few negative reviews cite bugs or balance issues, but the overall sentiment is positive, with many looking forward to future updates and content.
- The game is considered very fun and chill to play with friends or kids, especially when tackling bosses and looting. The cooperative gameplay enhances the experience, making it more relaxed and enjoyable.
- Purchasing the starter pack is recommended for immediate access to all weapons, but unlocking all weapons for free is possible early in the game, offering a cost-saving alternative.
- Some reviewers suggest waiting for a sale due to balance issues within the game. This indicates that while the game may be enjoyable, it could benefit from further balancing to improve the overall player experience.
- Many reviewers are looking forward to more content being added to the game. This suggests that while the current content is enjoyable, players are eager for additional features, quests, or areas to explore, indicating a desire for continued expansion and development.
Miscellaneous:
- The game is in early access, which is a common theme in the reviews. While some acknowledge the presence of bugs and limited content, others highlight the substantial amount of content already available.
- The reviewer purchased the Supporter Pack DLC to support the developers. The game includes a supporter pack, with other items earned in-game without microtransactions.
- The game's aesthetic and graphic design receive mixed reactions. Some find the graphics charming and reminiscent of Mega Man, while others suggest the style might not appeal to everyone.
- Reviewers question the game's world-building and context, such as the whereabouts of other humans and the combots' motivations. The initial level hints at a larger story that is not fully explored.
- The developers are responsive and thanked for creating a charming game and providing ongoing updates. This positive feedback highlights the developers' engagement with the community.
