By James Liu
After months of inactivity from February onwards due to being ousted as a pedophile and in general acting extremely immaturely for a game developer, EpicCritical has returned to develop Critical Strike after deleting all social media and claiming to never return once the game is complete. I’ll be keeping up with this dumpster fire of a game that I can’t stop playing despite hating with almost every fiber of my being, starting with a review of all the classes that have been released since the initial return up until now!
But first, what is Critical Strike about? Critical Strike is a class based battle royale game in which you and seven other players use skills tied to certain classes to fight until there’s one person left standing. Classes have four skills tied to the left mouse button, Q, E, and F. Use your skills to deal damage, survive, and win! With that extremely brief description over with, it’s review time!
First, Blaster. Blaster is a ranged class that is focused on damage and not much else. No special effects, just damage and projectiles with one move that’s partially for mobility but mainly offense. Seeing as this was the first of two classes released with Critical Strike’s return, it makes a bit of sense that these new classes would be a bit more basic in design. If you can’t aim, there’s a move that marks players and allows another move to auto target marked players as well. It’s a strong class that can pump out the damage it needs, but a bit basic. If you’d like to try out the game after reading this article, Blaster is by far the easiest to use for new players out of the bunch I will be mentioning.
Next, Destroyer. The second of the two new classes released upon returning, Destroyer is a little more complex but not nearly as complicated as some of the latest classes. Destroyer is centered around creating rubble from the ground and swinging it at opponents for some ranged gameplay in a fairly short ranged class. The rocks are strong, but really hard to aim properly. Only one move creates rocks while another launches them, so the class can be fairly predictable most of the time. Regardless, a cool concept that could use a little more work to really become viable.
In the next update, Gambler was added. Gambler is centered around paying money in a sort of in-game power meter, dealing damage to gain more money and finishing off enemies by putting it all on the line for one final burst of massive damage. The class is pretty fair and rewards high skill and resource management, as using most skills at the wrong time is easily lethal by wasting money to the point where you can’t recover. However, by carefully aiming your shots and building up cash, Gambler can easily take down enemies with enough accuracy. There is one move that is based on luck for more damage and ranges from 5-20 in increments of 5, which can be annoying when you’re on the receiving end of a lucky Gambler attack. Overall, very fun and challenging class that rewards attention and accuracy.
The next update featured three classes, and the first I’ll cover is Necromancer. Necromancer is just really weird. You have a similar power system to Gambler using souls instead of money, but instead of generating and paying souls on almost every move, you only gain souls from one move and need to use souls for all other moves. This leaves you defenseless and lacking even the most basic flexibility of any other class. While you do gain two souls for every death that happens, in the most competitive elimination game mode it’s basically random if you’re not killing people yourself. Necromancer seems like it has potential, but by design it’s extremely weak without its specials being available most of the time.
Next up is Monk. Monk is a very unique class that can only effectively use three out of four moves at a time in two modes. One move switches modes, one is a general attack for both modes, and the other two alternate based on your mode. Monk is somewhat complex, but still fairly easy to get results with after learning how to optimize the mode switches to use all your skills at once. Monk also has a weird system of standing still to generate temporary health that decays over time, but in my experience it’s useless over movement and unpredictability in a real fight. Overall, it’s a good class that takes a little time to practice and can do wonders in the hands of a skilled player.
The final class from this update is Controller. Controller has a small drone that shoots at a target in front of your player that moves with you. You can use your moves offensively, defensively, or to move around the drone to fire at different angles. A very tricky and unique class that can easily mix up everyone and punishes inattentiveness for both the player and enemy, the biggest weakness and strength of a Controller player is losing focus and forgetting where the drone is going to shoot from. Positioning and good awareness of the terrain around you will decide whether a Controller player will destroy enemies or get themselves destroyed. Controller is one of the most fun and unique classes in the game, requiring extremely good positioning, awareness, and probably the highest skill ceiling of all the classes in the game.
In the latest update featuring new classes, we got three classes, of which I’ll start with Admiral. Admiral is a pretty interesting class that feels like it has potential in the right hands. It has an overheating mechanic that will stop you from attacking and slow you down if you use too many moves at once, but that’s mainly due to one move potentially being active infinitely without it. It has a move that doesn’t increase heat and get you closer to overheating, but it has a weird travel path and dealing with that seems like the key to playing Admiral well, minimizing vulnerability while cooling down from heating. Admiral also has two strong projectile moves, and, overall, Admiral can easily have strong ranged power, but it isn’t a very straightforward class to play. Admiral has potential to be a fun and strong class, but it has to deal with a very cumbersome heat system that makes you your own enemy at times.
Next up, we have Ravager. Ravager has an ammo system where you consume ammo by using certain skills and reload by waiting without attacking for a few seconds. The wait isn’t too brutal and one move allows you to have a bit more health while you wait for a reload. Ravager has some good combo potential at close range as well as a decent amount of power at mid and longer ranges. Its biggest weakness is probably a lack of synergy allowing it to really capitalize in one area. Mixing up your gameplay at all sorts of ranges seems like the key to winning as Ravager. Overall, the class feels a bit weird with a lot of different moves for different jobs thrown together at once, but it could have potential by maximizing each move individually rather than by trying to chain combo moves.
Finally, Musketeer. Musketeer is absolutely an expert class that requires accuracy in every shot you take. Musketeer’s gimmick is that it fires one bullet per weapon fairly slowly and has to reload weapons rather than individual ammo. These guns that are reloaded float in the air and you must pick them up to be able to attack. A very visually appealing concept and a fairly fun gameplay concept. Proper usage requires careful timing and positioning to make sure your guns are in a place to access them easily and safely. The guns fire a bit slowly, but they have good damage and range in exchange. Musketeer can either be played slowly and carefully or quickly and riskily by firing off all your guns as soon as possible, but then waiting to reload while completely exposed, and is able to switch rapidly between these two gameplay styles with each reload. A very appealing class for anyone who enjoys both careful and risky gameplay at once.
After finishing this article initially, a day or two later a new update gets released that introduces three more new classes! I’m going to cry! First off, Dancer! Dancer is a heavily combo based class that builds up combo stacks through special moves. With enough combo stacks, you can finish with a powerful burst that’s pretty much guaranteed to kill. This is a pretty complicated class that requires a lot of skill to use right. It has high mobility and unpredictability when using all its movement options along with high damage by hitting extremely specific combos. A relief for players tired of cheap gimmicks, this class just combos hard and rewards skilled players with great damage and mobility.
Next up, we have Ruler. Ruler is probably the weirdest class in the game. Period. Its main gimmick is gaining lots of height to unlock high damage skills while having a pretty weak kit while grounded. The class suffers most from the fact that aiming down is inaccurate by design when players are mainly moving along two dimensions. If I shoot a super duper ultra powerful long lasting laser forward at a target that’s right in front of me, they can only move left or right to dodge; jumping will just have them end up back in the laser. If I shoot the same laser down, jumping is still a bad idea but now you can move in four directions to avoid the laser rather than two. On top of that, there’s no point in trying to hit an airborne target with most classes since many of them cannot aim up or down; all you can do is run and avoid attacks anyways. In exchange, its moves have very high damage if you can manage to get them to connect, but, for the above reasons stated, that’s going to be a near impossible task. Overall, Ruler is a very ambitious concept I really wish could work well but is flawed by design.
Finally, we have Charger. I think I’ve found a class I hate even more than Trickster for being overpowered. Charger’s gimmick is supposed to be that it charges up a strong melee attack, but everything else about its kit is far more powerful than that. It has a suplex that stuns opponents and is extremely easy to hit by literally just running into them. Next, what could be better to use after a stun than a giant barrage of punches for lots of damage while your opponent can’t move? It’s a really stupid combo that doesn’t even need to use the class’s signature move in order to dish out really high damage with almost no brain power involved. Its signature strong hit also has a really long start up time and is as easy to avoid as walking backwards, so there’s not much of a reason to use it unless your other moves are on cooldown. Despite being named after one move, Charger has almost no reason to use it when the rest of its moves are just way better in every way.
Alright, that’s it for everything new so far! Overall, the new classes are mostly pretty interesting. There’s also been an update that added in new skins, but no new classes recently, so I skipped over talking about that. I’ll be writing whenever a new class or group of classes gets released and I’ve tested it a bit, so be on the lookout for more of my ramblings about a semi-obscure Roblox game.
