Battle Shapers Dash, punch and shoot the towers down

Every Overlord you beat gives up a Core, and every Core changes how you play. One might let you stay airborne nearly forever, another makes your dashes spawn damage, another reflects incoming shots back at the machines that fired them. Stack Cores with abilities, perks and talents, and two runs can look nothing alike: one keeps you glued to the walls, the other turns you into a crit machine that never touches the ground. Ada's oversized arm does its part too, punching robots into terrain and each other when the guns need a rest. The powers you steal from your enemies are the whole point: the city's rulers built these tools, and now you take them apart and wear them.

The weapon system rewards tinkering. Salvage modifiers from gear you don't want and slot them into the weapons you do, so a shotgun you found on floor one can grow into something unrecognizable by the time you reach an Overlord. Weapons come with their own perks, fire, shock and vibration effects stack on enemies, and swapping to your sidearm reloads it automatically, which keeps the shooting flowing when a magazine runs dry. Between fights you can seed each tower with your own traps, power-ups and hacks, tipping the next battle before it starts. Fair warning: as you grow stronger, the journey ahead grows harder right along with you.