The Time-Shift Warrior is the best of many worlds. As a hack-‘n’-slash roguelite and tactical strategy game, the aim is to coordinate attacks between myself and four time-shifted “clones” to dispatch enemies quickly.
Lysfanga’s isometric camera angles looked set to feed my excitement for Hades 2 as soon as I sat down to play it at Gamescom 2023. In spite of Zagreus’s son-of-the-Underworld abilities, I’ve never seen him team up with past iterations of himself with such effortless ease as Lysfanga.
Shifting your gaze
My first thought upon seeing a trailer for Lysfanga was how its time-travel moves would work. You attack as many enemies as you can within a 10-second timeframe, either letting the clock rewind autonomously or rewinding yourself before returning to finish off the ones you missed. The grey skulls on slain enemies help you plan your attack, so you can let your past-selves do the work for you. In theory, you can do this many times before you run out of health, allowing you to kill enemies across the map in one shot.
My Xbox controller has a left trigger, so holding it down rewinds the time in Lysfanga: The Time-Shift Warrior. Even though rogue games are fast-paced and may feel at odds with my desire to plan my attacks more thoughtfully, being a demo allows me to be both speedy and tactical at the same time. To clear the map in neat thirds, I use the rewind function liberally, but it takes some getting used to.
When I meet a new enemy type, things really get interesting. Unless you kill them both at the same time, these two monsters will just come back to life. Let me introduce you to my time-shift clones. Dashing to one of the linked enemies, hacking it to death, then rewinding time and repeating the move on the other side of the map, I’ve cleared the most annoying part of the dungeon.
The time-bending ways of Lysfanga have become familiar to me by the time my session is almost over. There are a number of new enemy types, including a flying creature that explodes once its health is depleted low enough, making it an excellent improvised bomb. In between dungeons, I also explore Lysfanga’s beautiful world. In contrast to Hades, Lysfanga features an isometric character that follows close behind her. As a result, I can move her around using only a single joystick, resulting in a fast and fluid experience that still feels like entering a storybook.
What kind of game is Lysfanga: The Time-Shift Warrior? This game is hard to place, but its unique blend of rogue and tactics sets it apart. Despite a fleeting but extremely fun demo session, I was introduced to the basics of being a time-altering, one-woman frenzy of blades and fists, and it whet my appetite for more. While Quantic Dream hasn’t announced a release date, with early 2024 as a rough ballpark, it’s comforting to know I might not have to wait too long.
