Bloodroots

Genre: Top-Down Action

Players: 1

.

Review:

Bloodroots is a Top-Down Action game that has players taking the role of a bloodthirsty guy tearing through hordes of enemies while wielding as weapons whatever implements he can find at hand. This game was released on multiple platforms in 2020, including the Nintendo Switch.

Visually, Bloodroots has a cartoony art style that’s pretty striking, with cel-shaded colorful characters that make it look much like a cartoon, albeit a cartoon with a lot of violence and blood. This is paired with an energetic soundtrack and plenty of screaming from your character and enemies. Overall, pretty good.

Some have compared the gameplay here to the Hotline Miami games, and it does share a few things in common with those games. Namely, you’ll be picking up your weapons on-site, making use of their limited number of uses, and then frantically searching for a new weapon, all in a situation where one hit kills (both for you and enemies), but the game lets players restart quickly to give the game a “just one more try” feel to it.

The difference here is that the majority of Bloodroots’ weapons are all melee weapons (with some throwing weapons), and some of these weapons provide different movement options. The oar lets players pole vault, the sword lets players charge forward through the air, and the ladder… well, you can probably figure that one out. As a result, where Hotline Miami had players watching enemy movement patterns and trying to decide whether to pepper them with a shotgun or to use the precision of a rifle, Bloodroots has you deciding whether it’s better to toss a wagon wheel to cut through a group of foes, cut through them with a sword swipe, or if you should swipe at them with a chain to try to take them all out at once.

Unfortunately, this heavy focus on melee combat makes it much easier to fall prey to one of the game’s biggest flaws – it is extremely easy to mis-judge an attack and miss, leaving yourself open to a retaliatory strike that will instantly kill you. And while I dies countless times in Hotline Miami, each of those deaths felt earned – my aim was off, I didn’t account for the other guy taking aim at me from across the room, I didn’t take cover well enough… but here, time and again I would take a swing at enemies and whiff because I had mis-judged the distance of my swing.

That’s not the only issue either. This game uses an isometric overhead view and there is a little platforming, and those two things do not play well together. I have died multiple times to mis-judged jumps due to this perspective. Also, the fact that weapons only have at most three uses is a bit frustrating and means you’ll be doing far more weapon-swapping than you ever did in Hotline Miami, and unlike that game you won’t be chucking emptied weapons at enemies to faze them while you search for a replacement.

It’s a shame that Bloodroots’ limited weapon range and isometric perspective make it far too easy to die, because its great premise and art style are otherwise pretty fantastic. Unfortunately, while I had a good amount of fun with this game when things were going well, these moments of fun were interspersed with a lot of frustration.

tl;dr – Bloodroots is a Top-Down Action game where players grab anything they can get their hands on to use as a weapon, with the game playing kinda’ like a melee-focused Hotline Miami. Unfortunately, the melee focus and isometric perspective make it a bit too easy to misjudge things, die, and have to try again, which is a recipe for frustration. The result is a game that’s at turns fun and aggravating.

Grade: C+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}