Black Beacon is an action RPG set in an alternate Earth where legends are part of a rapidly changing reality. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.

Black Beacon Review Overview

What is Black Beacon?

Black Beacon is a mobile action RPG set in an alternate version of Earth, where players take on the role of the Seer, who serves as the Head Librarian of the Library of Babel. The game emphasizes fast-paced, combo-driven combat that rewards maintaining offensive momentum. Players can link together ranged attacks, mobility abilities, and grapples, with special mechanics that occasionally let them bypass typical energy or cooldown constraints.

The game adopts an isometric camera angle, providing a strategic view of the battlefield. It includes many genre staples such as character switching, a variety of skills, and ultimate abilities. Characters are obtained through a gacha system, which includes standard, event-based, limited-time, and weapon-focused banners.

Black Beacon features:
　⚫︎　Isometric view as its default perspective
　⚫︎　Puzzle-based character builds
　⚫︎　Added strategy to action combat
　⚫︎　Story based on myths, legends, and literature
　⚫︎　RPG progression
　⚫︎　Daily quests and achievements

For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Black Beacon's gameplay and story.

Black Beacon Official Website
App Store			Google Play
Price	Free-to-Play

Black Beacon Pros & Cons

Pros	Cons
The Game’s World is Fascinating Unique Advantages to an Isometric View Rather Generous Gacha and Economy Combat Is Satisfyingly Weighty Ancient Mark System Feels More Meaningful Than Equipment	The Story Follows a Weird Narrative Arc Isometric View is Limiting Inconsistent Character Designs No Controller Support

Black Beacon Overall Score - 84/100

Black Beacon offers a compelling story with rich lore and mysterious themes, despite its uneven storytelling. The gameplay, polished to shine and full of features, does give a mixed experience thanks to its isometric view, though. It kind of feels like a strategy game made by someone who’s used to creating action games—a weird combination that somehow works well enough to give it a very real chance at greatness.

Black Beacon Story - 9/10

There’s an amazing story waiting to be discovered here. Populated by intriguing characters and a theme that’s essentially a cavernous rabbit hole of various legends, ideas, and imaginary articles, it’s the kind of story that can pull you in through curiosity alone. Unfortunately, though, it does suffer from somewhat erratic storytelling.

Black Beacon Gameplay - 8/10

While Black Beacon’s combat is certainly a refined version of what you can find in many older mobile games, its default isometric view unfortunately delivers a mix of pros and cons that may make or break the game for some people. Other than that, the gameplay is relatively straightforward, despite the abundance of mechanics and a rather impressive glossary of terms to familiarize yourself with.

Black Beacon Visuals - 9/10

The game might not have an abundance of CG cinematics and animated cutscenes, sure. But it more than makes up for it with taste. Black Beacon is populated by characters with an incredible fashion sense, its visual effects are flashy and satisfying, and the animations are extremely cool without looking incredibly impractical. The thing is, though—just as with the gameplay—the isometric view brings a mix of ups and downs to the experience, and the character designs do feel a bit out of place.

Black Beacon Audio - 8/10

Black Beacon’s voice acting might be the most notable thing about the audio experience. It’s wonderfully executed, after all, even if it does come off as rather inappropriate for certain characters at times. The sound effects are quite beefy, too, with enough punch to make combat just as satisfying to experience through your ears as it is with your eyes. Unfortunately, the music does kind of need work, as practically none of the tracks are memorable enough to really stick.

Black Beacon Value for Money - 8/10

The gacha system in Black Beacon may not be the most generous, but it’s certainly up there among the less egregious ones. It combines an above-average economy with low hard and soft pity counters, allowing players to quickly rack up their pulls to get the characters they want. Limited banners also feature a 70–30 chance.

Black Beacon Review: Cosmic Brilliance With Human Flaws

Punishing: Gray Raven is my favorite mobile action game of all time. Hence, when I heard that some former PGR developers were creating another action title (obviously this one), I was immediately sold.

I’ve played my fair share of these—ranging from Punishing: Gray Raven (obviously), Honkai Impact 3rd, Aether Gazer, etc.—and I’ve even been "competitive" in whatever form some of them support. And with those credentials under my name, I can confidently say that Black Beacon has what it takes to really push the genre’s fans to, at the very least, roughly the same heights as the developers’ previous title.

What is Black Beacon, anyway? Well, if my repeated comparisons to Punishing: Gray Raven haven’t given you an idea yet—or if you had no idea what I was talking about in the first place—then alright. Black Beacon is a mobile action RPG where you field up to three characters in isometric, real-time combat. Each character possesses a couple of active skills, an ultimate skill, and a set of passive abilities that shape their playstyle. Character swapping plays a key role during fights, as roles interact with each other in a way that allows for combos executed by switching the character on the field.

A lot of its excitement comes from these character swap-driven combos, as well as the skill required to pull off successful dodges and parries. However, unlike other mobile action games, Black Beacon also takes advantage of its isometric POV by adding strategic elements to its combat, such as skills you can aim at extremely specific places on the map.

However—

Its Isometric View Delivers a Mixed Experience

Mobile action RPGs tend to use an over-the-shoulder (OTS) perspective due to its effective balance between engagement and spatial awareness. Black Beacon, on the other hand, uses an isometric perspective—a relatively uncommon choice, though not without precedent. Lineage 2: Revolution, for example, had it back in the year King’s Raid was released.

If you recognize those two games, I’m so sorry. Time hasn’t been kind.

Anyway, Black Beacon’s isometric POV has its advantages—as well as its fair share of drawbacks. For the sake of not boring my dear readers, though, I’ll only go over the ones I perceive as the most significant.

First up, the pros, with the most obvious being the isometric view’s strategic edge over OTS. Being able to see everything around you is a perk in most cases, as it doesn’t force you to grow eyes in the back of your head to maintain 360-degree awareness. This, in turn, allows you to better manage your positioning during combat—a massive advantage in Black Beacon, given how many skills require extremely precise, almost MOBA-like targeting.

On the other hand, not being able to view your character up close by default pulls you out of the experience just as much as the camera is pulled up into the sky. Gone are the cool angles that can elevate even mundane actions, like running toward the next empty corridor or puzzle section; a tragic loss that not even its short animated clips for ultimate skills can solve.

More practically, the distance from the camera to the ground—and even more so, the distance between your face and your phone’s small screen—makes it notably difficult to see what enemies are doing unless their windups are as wide as someone playing golf. As a result, dodging becomes more of a rhythm minigame thanks to the yellow and red flashes enemies emit before attacking, and less an exercise in pattern recognition.

Look, I’m not saying the default OTS POV is the perfect choice for every action game. I’m just saying that, depending on your preferences, you might experience Black Beacon in a more positive or negative light because of this. Personally, though, I think the developers made the right call, considering the game’s more tactical approach to combat.

A Fascinating World in a Whiplash-Inducing Story

Black Beacon’s story is perhaps its greatest strength—at least when it comes to the unique things it brings to the table. You wake up in a wasteland with no memories and a sharply dressed stranger handing you a key. No explanations—just a cryptic line about your fate and a massive structure looming in the distance. With nowhere else to go, you head toward it. That’s when the story begins.

The structure? A library. But not just any library—the Library of Babel, a monument of infinite halls and impossible knowledge, inspired by Borges’ vision. You meet its caretakers, the Eme-an, and inherit the title of the library’s keeper. Alongside them, you navigate the library’s politics and the creeping threats it barely contains—both from within and without.

From ancient relics to cosmic oddities like the "God of the Sun," a copper orb that could end the world, your job is to keep the balance. The game dives deep into philosophy, legends, and myth—Eudoxus’ Method of Exhaustion, the World Turtle, and more. But it never drags. Lore and plot are so seamlessly interwoven that it all just feels natural, even with the game’s obsession with the convoluted and unknown.

On top of that, Black Beacon makes excellent use of the extremes of humanity in its characters. Their personalities—borderline inhuman at first glance—start to feel startlingly real once you spend time with them, even if they never fully break out of the molds they were designed for.

My favorite example? The Tasny twins. Early on, you foresee the destruction of the world (or more like the library, at least). To stop it, you need help from Ninsar and Enki, twin siblings and former administrators of the library from a past era. Both are extraordinary geniuses, differing only in how they adapted to their gifts.

Apart, they’re bizarre. Ninsar idles her days away with art, while Enki invents absurd contraptions for reasons only he understands. Together, though, they’re just siblings trying to support each other in strange, touching ways, culminating in a weirdly emotional conclusion to their arcs.

Unfortunately, it’s not all "oohs and ahhs." Black Beacon suffers from an erratic narrative structure, where instead of the usual rises and falls of engagement, you get extended periods of climax followed by strangely short—or bafflingly long—sections of rising action. And just when you expect a denouement, you're thrown straight into another escalation. It’s all over the place.

That structure hurts the pacing. The story starts to feel like a mash of rushed events wrapped in a plodding arc. It even hits some very sensitive beats—like a certain character’s betrayal—that lack proper foreshadowing. And if you think that you’ll get answers from the side stories, don’t worry; you won’t.

The Fashion Police of… Where Exactly?

Character designs are very important. Obvious, right? I mean, you should be spending most of your time looking at things you’re interested in—regardless of what they are.

Shout out to my fellow Minecraft players who like to stare at blocks all day.

That said, Black Beacon definitely deserves a lot of credit in this regard. I mean, just look at the Eme-an faction, adorned in their sharp uniforms hemmed with golden inscriptions that belie their wisdom.

While some might point out the almost excessive use of muted colors and recurring designs and say, "they look pretty dull and boring," I’d argue the opposite. They’re wearing uniforms, after all, so of course there’s going to be overlap in their clothing. However, each character has managed to personalize their appearance to such an extent that their personalities and themes are visible even in their silhouettes. Zero, for example, has a ramrod-straight posture and a symmetrical design to accentuate her disciplined nature. Meanwhile, Ereshan’s loose hair, choice of shorts instead of the usual inverted pleat skirts, and imposing demeanor scream tomboy.

What I find even more impressive are the little details that might slip past a casual observer. Back to the Eme-an: there’s actually a minor visual cue that helps differentiate the older generation—Nanna and Enki—from the younger ones, like Zero and Ereshan. The older characters tend to wear white over black, while the younger ones tend to wear black over white.

On the other hand, the designs do suffer from being a bit… misplaced. That is, many characters’ aesthetics don’t quite fit the era or culture they’re supposed to belong to. Take Xin, the game’s resident high-speed glass cannon. She’s supposedly from Qian County in Shaanxi Province, but her clothes look like she pulled them out of a Forever 21 or Garage during a summer trip to Florida. Sure, there’s design overlap these days—especially between her region and everywhere else—but the fact that you wouldn’t be able to guess her origin without reading her name or backstory is kind of a problem.

Maybe it’s just part of the overall aesthetic they’re aiming for? No idea. It does look great, though, so it’s not exactly offensive.

Where's My Controller Support?

Anyone who’s had the unique experience of playing Punishing: Gray Raven knows the frustration of diving into an action RPG with excellent mechanics—only to realize it doesn’t support controllers due to how it's designed. After all, I don’t think there’s a gamepad out there with eight conveniently placed, ergonomically friendly buttons that can all be freely remapped. This is because of the game’s unique "Ping System," which allows three skills to have three different versions depending on how many pings you match during combat—with up to eight pings displayed at any given time.

On the other hand, we have Black Beacon: a mobile action game with controls simple enough that even a cheap controller could handle it. Yet, the game lacks native support for controllers here at launch.

For reference, this doesn’t just prevent you from playing it while reclining in a wickedly lazy position that would make the unemployed jealous—it also kills the closest thing we could’ve gotten to a PC-like experience. You know, streaming the game to a TV and playing it with a controller. Surely, they're just planning to put a PC version out later in the year? The cope is real, I know.

Alternatively, you could just assume the gamer position™: eyes half your face’s width away from a giant monitor, back slouched until your bones creak.

Is Black Beacon Worth It?

It’s Definitely Worth Following

Black Beacon faces some seriously stiff competition in the world of mobile action RPGs. Mechanically speaking, I’m fairly confident it can hold its own. But with Zenless Zone Zero and Wuthering Waves battling for first place and plenty of other titles vying for the spots below them, it's an uphill battle for any of these newer games to carve out a place for themselves. That said, showing up late to the party isn’t necessarily a huge disadvantage—ZZZ and WuWa are barely a year old themselves at this point.

It definitely brings a few things here that make it stand out from the others. However, at launch, it’s missing a few key features that many players expect these days—most notably, a PC version and native controller support. In my opinion, these are the most important things it needs to address if it wants a real shot at standing alongside its peers. More accessibility generally means more players, means more momentum.

Beyond that, there are a few more tweaks that could be implemented, but this is understandably just the launch phase. If they're able to maneuver their development around well in the coming months, Black Beacon has the potential to become another big name within the mobile game community.

Black Beacon Official Website
App Store			Google Play
Price	Free-to-Play

Black Beacon FAQ

Which character should I pull for in Black Beacon?

Definitely try to get Florence. She deals incredible damage in short, rapid bursts and doesn’t require much support in order to function.

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Black Beacon Product Information

Title	Black Beacon
Release Date	April 10, 2025
Developer	MINGZHOU Technology Co., Ltd.
Publisher	Glohow Holdings Pte. Ltd.
Supported Platforms	Mobile
Genre	Action, RPG
Number of Players	1
ESRB Rating	TBR
Official Website	Black Beacon Website

Alfonso Majarucon

Writer of things from game, anime and manga reviews to news and webnovels. Hopelessly addicted to story-driven games, especially cross-platform ones. Favorite games include Punishing Gray Raven, Arknights, Limbus Company, Elden Ring, Touhou, Soul Nomad and the Disgaea series (except 3 and 6). Avid..