Loot Hero DX Switch Review – All About That Grind

Loot Hero DX is a game about a hero who collects a lot of loot. That may sound pretty basic, especially seeing as it’s essentially just another way of saying the title of the game. But, there reason it sounds so basic… because it is.

Developed by VaragtP Studios and published by Ratalaika Games (who both have some pretty great titles to their names including Plantera and Devious Dungeon respectively), Loot Hero DX looked like it was going to be a blast for grind obsessed players that just want to see numbers rise. And in a way, that is exactly what you get from the game, but unfortunately that’s all you get from the game.

Loot Hero DX contains the loosest semblance of a story. Apparently a dragon is terrorizing the kingdom, and so a knight decides to kill a bunch of monsters, turn them into money somehow (game logic don’t worry about it), and get strong enough to kill the dragon. It’s a classic hero’s quest storyline if you stripped out pretty much every aspect of story.

If you’re expecting some sort of grand fanfare when the dragon falls to your knight, then you’ll be sorely disappointed. What you get instead, I’ll get into it shortly.

Now that the story (or lack thereof) is covered, let’s go into the gameplay. Do you like playing games but hate having to use all those buttons so much? Well, Loot Hero DX has you covered! The control scheme is once again the essence of simplicity: use the joystick to move your knight to the left or more often the right… that’s pretty much it. Attacking is automatic when your knight collides with an enemy. They both take damage until one is destroyed. If it’s the enemy, then you can keep moving. If it’s your knight, then he loses some exp and respawns at the last shop you visited.

Shops are very frequent, with each level having about 6 dotted between groups of enemies. At each shop, you can spend your loot on upgrading your four stats: attack, critical rate, defense, and speed, while all stats can be upgraded endlessly (with increasing costs until the max 9999). Both critical rate and speed can max out, so it can waste your loot upgrading them. Additionally, killing monsters will provide experience points which go to leveling your knight again increasing his stats.

At the end (extreme right) of each level, there will be a boss. Generally, they have more health than their minions, but if you’re about to die you can pull back to regenerate health or go kill more monsters for level ups and loot to upgrade your equipment.

During my time with the game, I found that most bosses are actually easier to take down than the minions, as the minions will overwhelm you with their sheer numbers unless you pay attention. But overall, there really isn’t much challenge in the game at all. Just kill enemies and buy upgrades until you can get stronger to kill more enemies.

It’s not really a problem in itself (for grind lovers at least), but before long you’ll realise just how little the game has to offer. Each level is essentially just a reskin of the first level but with stronger monsters, more exp, and more loot. And to make it worse, once you defeat the dragon on level nine, the next set of levels are the same set of levels again.

Defeating the dragon does provide one other thing than the aforementioned higher difficulty levels and the unmentioned page telling you that you beat the dragon X time(s), it also allows you a rescued miner who will automatically mine for gold (loot) in the caves so you can collect it without having to do anything but go visit.

The miners also collect loot while you’re not playing, so leaving it for a while can net you the max of 9,999,999 gold in a few hours or overnight. Sadly this also means potentially less playtime, because you could unlock a miner then come back another day, spend all the cash, and repeat the process until you can easily go from dragon to dragon.

The game also has unlockable ‘feats’ or achievements. However, once again, these are very simple and easy to achieve except for the incredibly grindy “Get to level 100” final feat (For reference I was around level 46 when I had unlocked all other feats except level 50 and level 100).

To put it simply, the gameplay is too short. While the concept of Loot Hero DX is fun and the visuals and the music are pretty good, overall every aspect of the game suffers from just too little variety. It is more of a slight diversion than anything. Even as a mobile game, there really just isn’t enough content to keep you around long.

Loot Hero DX Review Provided By Nintendo Link
Developer: VaragtP Studios
Publisher: Ratalaika Games
Release Date: Jan 21, 2021
Price: $4.99, £4.99, €4,99
Game Size: 161 MB