The Player Who Can’t Level Up Preview – Dante’s roguelite tower
by Dominic L · tsaIt’s always nice to discover something new. While I’m heavily invested in a bunch of anime tales thanks to Crunchyroll and a library full of manga, I’ve never got into the world of webcomics. That must be why I’ve managed to miss The Player Who Can’t Level Up, a Korean webcomic that owes a fair debt to Solo Levelling, centring on a character Kim Kigyu, who… well, he can’t level up.
In our world, that amounts to very little, but in the world of The Player Who Can’t Level Up, it’s a recipe for disaster, as Players have been tasked with protecting the world from the never-ending onslaught of monsters spewing from otherworldly gates. Without the ability to level up, you’re practically dead meat, or, at least, you would be if not for Kim acquiring two Ego Swords – Lu and El – who are capable of levelling up themselves. It all makes for an intriguing and fun setup, with bags of potential.
The story is delivered by static web-comic pages, presented in traditional black and white penmanship, and I actually think I prefer this over a 3D engine cutscene, especially when the game’s roots are in a comic rather than a cartoon. The Player Who Can’t Level Up commits a cardinal sin in its first 3D cutscene, by showing you some awesome combat but not letting you take part in it, but we’ll let the slightly odd pacing issues slide when it’s not finished yet.
The Player Who Can’t Level Up is a nippy anime roguelite action game – think Gran Blue Fantasy Re:Link or Zenless Zone Zero with roguelite progression – with Kim heading into the different levels of a mysterious tower to explore and discover exactly what is going on. You’ve got a great array of different attacks to take out your enemies with, from your basic sword combos through to Ego skills that enhance your speed or damage or Ego Shards that you can equip to add certain effects to your load-out.
Our hands-on took us through the tutorial into some gameplay, and it’s immediately obvious that it’s doing all the right things in terms of combat feel, making you feel suitably powerful, and rewarding you for dodging at the right moment or engaging the right skill just when you need it. There’s a healthy batch of different creatures to take out too, starting from diminutive mobs through to some hulking great badniks who’ll easily take a chunk out of your health bar.
You can fight back with your Berserk form. Clearly borrowing from Devil May Cry, you can enter the Berserk state, transforming into a half-demon as you do. This then gives you a new suite of incredibly powerful combos and attacks, that absolutely decimate everything around you, all the while looking incredibly cool. So far, so good.
As a roguelite, you unlock new abilities as you progress through a run – for a game about a guy who can’t level up, there’s a hell of a lot of ‘levelling-up’ going on. You get to choose from different Ego Shards, tailoring your loadout in just the way you want, increasing health, critical rate or upgrading your abilities with new effects. Or not, if the gods of RNG aren’t on your side. Death gives you the chance to upgrade your swords and unlock other abilities in the Domain of Egos, so your next run should take you all the way past the Guardian of Swords at the top. Well, the top of this demo, anyway.
The Player Who Can’t Level Up wants you to go fast. As you climb through the tower there’s a constantly ticking clock caused by Erosion. Let this reach 100% and that’s the end of the run, though you’ll encounter ways to reduce it at various points to keep your run going. It means that while you might want to explore a little, really you need to face forward and run straight at the next bunch of enemies.
There’s an odd dissonance between that heady, breathless pace and the music, which is mostly extremely atmospheric and chilled out. I started to want a little more angst, anger and haste from it, the longer my runs went on, and it does feel as though it needs a little aural stimulus to push you on to the next level.
As a starting point, The Player Who Can’t Level Up is bags of fun, and I really like the world that it’s bringing to life. There are a few rough edges – text translation isn’t always spot-on, and some of the English voice-acting is a bit naff – but there’s a lot to like here. We’ll be keeping a close eye on it on it cilmbs its own tower to release.