Black Beacon is a mythology sci-fi action RPG from Glohow Holdings Pte. Ltd. and Mingzhou Network Technology. It features a dark and dystopian world on the brink of chaos. In this Black Beacon review, I will share my impressions of the game and provide an honest rating.
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Stylish combat on the surface, but stumbles in the rhythm of its fight
Black Beacon has some seriously cool ideas for its combat, but right now, it’s a bit rough around the edges. Battles are fast and responsive, with real-time dodges, parries, and ultimates — and you can even swap characters mid-fight without breaking the flow, which feels great when you pull it off.
Stage skills that let you break cooldowns add a nice layer of strategy, too. Plus, the isometric camera view makes you feel more like a commander directing a squad than just swinging wildly. That said, the experience can get repetitive fast. Most characters just spam skills until they glow yellow, then you switch and repeat.
Black Beacon: Combat Mechanics (Image via Glohow Holdings Pte. Ltd.)
The lack of time-slow dodge (except for specific chapters) means dodging feels kinda clunky, and dodge cancels are very inconsistent — sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and it’s noticeable during harder content. It could be my mid-spec phone quality, but the home button occasionally just doesn’t work when I need it most.
Charged attacks theoretically cancel some enemy skills (with those yellow-circle cues), but in practice, the window is way too tight and unreliable. Ultimates feel powerful, and they even pause the stage timer, but the cutscenes are unskippable and constant, especially painful with characters like Li Chi, who flood your screen with animations even outside of ults. Combat needs a lot of polish to shine.
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Myth, mystery, yet a meaningful story, if you’re patient enough to read between the lines
Honestly, the story is where Black Beacon surprised me. You’re not some generic chosen hero, you’re a commander for the Tower of Babel, protecting lost artifacts and ancient knowledge. It leans heavily into mythology and philosophy, with the Library of Babel being a major centerpiece.
Black Beacon Storyline (Image via Glohow Holdings Pte. Ltd.)
From meeting mysterious strangers to exploring endless libraries, the lore just hooks you. The missions aren’t just “enter arena, kill mobs, exit” either. You have passages, little puzzles, and no annoying three-star conditions to rush through. Dying doesn’t immediately fail you; you can revive with pocket change, which is a godsend for exploration.
Story pacing can be heavy if you’re just here to smash stuff, but if you love deep worldbuilding, this game delivers hard. Characters are easily one of Black Beacon’s highlights. They’re not just pretty models, they’ve got real emotional depth.
Li Chi in Black Beacon (Image via Glohow Holdings Pte. Ltd.)
Like the Tasny twins, Ninsar and Enki, you can feel their bond through their dialogue and interactions. Voice acting (at least in English) is surprisingly good, and animated cutscenes help bring the world alive. I wanted to learn more about the cast, which doesn’t always happen with mobile games.
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Black Beacon shines in dynamic graphics, although it lacks in performance
Visually, the game looks gorgeous, when it’s not being sabotaged by its tech issues. The isometric view is stylish but sometimes impractical (objects block your view with no transparency options), making some boss fights way harder than they should be.
Black Beacon Story Cutscene (Image via Glohow Holdings Pte. Ltd.)
Music is solid, fitting the atmosphere without being distracting. Some tracks slap during boss fights. Performance though? Oof. It’s rough. Constant FPS drops, menus hanging for seconds at a time, random crashes — it’s borderline unplayable sometimes, even on low settings. My Redmi Note handles most mobile games fine, but Black Beacon seriously struggles. Battery drain is massive, too.
UI that’s as sleek as it is sluggish
The controls could be way better. Besides the dodgy weirdness, the UI is heavy and sluggish. Everything needs a loading screen — even browsing menus feels like a chore. Quest areas are broken into tiny micro-instances, too, meaning you’re smacked with loading screens every few steps.
Black Beacon Settings Menu (Image via Glohow Holdings Pte. Ltd.)
Also, there’s no in-game code redemption. You get kicked out to a browser to redeem coupons. Starting the game with a randomly generated name is fine until you realize their profanity filter blocks some random number combos, which can generate an invalid starting name.
Generous rates and forgiving F2P freedom
Now, onto the gacha and whether or not it’s F2P-friendly. For the rates, the soft pity is at 40 pulls, whereas the hard pity is at 70. This is a very forgiving 70/30 split on limited banners (no 50/50 coin flip nonsense). It’s also pretty generous at first go when you start the game.
You get 30+ standard rolls and 20+ limited ones easily just from starting and rerolling. There’s also a free 5* selector after 30 pulls on the Standard Banner. Not only that, a lot of the 4-Stars are genuinely strong and competitive with 5-Stars.
Black Beacon: The Gacha System/Retrieval Pool (Image via Glohow Holdings Pte. Ltd.)
As for the weapons, a huge middle finger to F2P players! 5-Star weapons have passives, 4-Star weapons don’t, which is ridiculous. You’re forced to roll for 5-Star weapons if you want to “properly” build characters. The gear system in Black Beacon, called Ancient Marks, is one of the better-designed parts of the game.
While there’s still some RNG involved, it’s way more manageable compared to the usual gacha grind. When you get an Ancient Mark, it drops with one random substat. To upgrade it, you fuse duplicate Marks into it, and when you do, the substats from the duplicates also get added to the original piece.
Black Beacon Ancient Marks (Image via Glohow Holdings Pte. Ltd.)
Another great thing is that there’s no stat value range. So if your Mark has, say, +8% Attack, it will always be +8%, no worrying about rolling a higher or lower percentage later. Plus, if you ever fully upgrade a Mark and then decide you don’t need it, dismantling it gives you back all the original pieces you used for the upgrades. You’re not stuck losing progress, which is refreshing.
That said, equipping Ancient Marks can be a little complicated at first. Instead of traditional gear slots (like helmet, boots, etc.), each character has a board shaped like a grid. Marks have different shapes, kind of like puzzle pieces, and you have to fit them onto the grid properly. It can feel a bit overwhelming at the start, but once you get used to it or follow a few community guides, it becomes pretty intuitive.
Final Verdict
So what’s the conclusion in this Black Beacon Review? Black Beacon is an ambitious title with some genuinely creative ideas, but it stumbles in execution. The worldbuilding and story are captivating, and the character writing shows a lot of heart.
Visually, it’s impressive, and the gear system is surprisingly player-friendly for a gacha game. But those strengths are constantly undercut by clunky combat flow, unoptimized performance, and a UI that feels like it’s working against you.
As someone who’s clocked in 15 hours, I can say the game wants to be special. But right now, it’s rough around the edges. The dodge mechanic, repetitive combat loop, and barrage of cutscenes hurt the pacing, while frequent crashes and lag make even the best parts of the game frustrating to experience.
Still, if you’re a fan of myth-heavy stories, stylish character design, and don’t mind putting up with some jank in a new gacha title, there’s a lot here that might click with you. Just know that you’re signing up for a mix of genuinely great ideas and some pretty glaring technical flaws.
Download Black Beacon on PC
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