Hellpoint is an upcoming third-person action RPG by Cradle Games. It is coming on steam, Xbox and PS4 on July 30, and later this year on Nintendo switch.
Below are some of the points raised by Click4Gameplay as the gamer behind the youtube channel with nearly 40K subscribers shared his first impressions after a couple of hours of playing the game. It's a good thing that he made the review spoiler-free as much as possible.
Hellpoint Setting
Hellpoint is set on a space station called Irid Novo, and it has a decent presentation in the beginning. If you like space settings combined with some light horror elements, you'll probably enjoy what Hellpoint has to offer. However it doesn't bother you a lot with the story because right after the first cut scene you're good to go. Quite honestly this is to be expected in a game that's inspired by dark souls.
That being said, it's not like Hellpoint doesn't have an interesting premise. This space station is orbiting a black hole in real-time, and this will affect your gameplay in a couple of ways. The reason why the space station got flooded with monsters is the catastrophic event called the merge, and you're basically on a mission to find out what happened.
You don't get to customize your character, which is a bit disappointing actually, and you don't get to choose any class in the beginning. You just get a simple weapon and a shield, and you're good to go.
The controls are obviously really important when it comes to source like games, and we're glad to say that Hellpoint developers did an excellent job when it comes to this.
Controlling your character feels responsive and precise, at least in the early stage of the game.
It's highly recommended that you play Hellpoint with the controller. There'd be no problem though playing it with your mouse and keyboard. Everything seems to work fine withy Xbox one controller
Read also: Succubus Demo: Tear a Fetus Out of a Woman and 4 Other Demonic Abilities You Need to Score [Review]
Hellpoint Gameplay
The gameplay feels a bit smoother than from the demo which was to be expected. One thing that is needed to point out when it comes to the controls is the dedicated drum button. Some may find it annoying how souls-like games don't have a dedicated jump button for some odd reason.
Well in Hellpoint, you can jump by pressing only one button. It feels a bit janky, but almost all RPGs are struggling with jumping animations. While this seems nothing new to some, wait after you start the game. You will find a breach which basically works really similar to the bonfire in dark souls series.
You can level up your character by spending axions. The currency in Hellpoint connects the bridge to others so you can travel between them, and you can even increase or decrease the strength of enemies in the universe. This sounds really interesting, but how it actually works remain uncertain.
Now, the UI design is quite simple, where you could feel like this could be a lot better. While it does fit the dark theme of the game visually, it feels uninspired and really simplistic. Not to mention the overall size of the menus, it's way too small. Of course, this is not a huge deal-breaker, but it's definitely worth mentioning.
Hellpoint Combat and Level Design
As per the combat and the level design, you won't have a lot of different enemies to fight in the first area, but just enough so you can get a good idea of how the combat works
The combat is obviously stamina-based. But you also have a mana bar that you use for special attacks later in the game. These unique weapon attacks will undoubtedly be a big part of your build. You have light and heavy attacks on different buttons. Hitboxes feel decent. So far, we didn't experience anything crazy and broken
Mini-bosses, and bosses are a different story. That's yet to be tested, but you can still find some elite enemies and the difficulty spike is quite noticeable. You may have to gather some axions and level up your character to kill an enemy.
As mentioned earlier, the black hole will affect the gameplay. You may see a couple of new enemies. The black hole can also modify enemy stats and positions and trigger some dynamic effects. It's a pretty cool feature
When it comes to the level design, it looks quite better now than in the demo. You have a lot of shortcuts and interconnected areas. Exploration feels great, and you can find some extra loot and secrets if you are curious enough.
There's a lot of verticalities involved, but it's not overdone. And you won't feel lost the atmosphere In health point. It is incredible, which makes the exploration feel a lot better.
It can be really creepy, especially when you're exploring some area for the first time, and you don't know the enemy placement. That's definitely a strong reason to play this game
Why Play The Game?
Speaking about strong reasons to play this game, Hellpoint has a co-op feature and even a split-screen co-op. It works similar to dark souls. You can place a sign on the ground and expect some company. You can also write messages, but you can only use signs which is kind of confusing.
Bottom line, the final stage of the game feels a lot better than the demo. Cradle Games definitely made some great progress.
Watch the full video here:
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