Hellpoint

This really is Indie-Souls in space! The game is not perfect, it's clunky and not very impressive in terms of graphics fidelity but they more than make up for it with stellar art direction and level design. The atmosphere is eerie, alien and creepy. From the very first moments you feel lost and it's up to you to travel through the massive space station on your own, with multiple possible paths, having only your thirst for finding out what happened there to push you forward. There's no annoinyg cutscenes or npcs with quests. You interact with the story at your own pace by reading texts and conversations left by the former inhabitants of the station. It's up to you to make sense of it all. I love it! To me this game perfectly captures the spirit of original Dark Souls, letting you loose in the intricatly built alien world and letting you make sense of it.

It's a dark souls clone in a far-future sci-fi setting, mixed with fantasy elements (demons and gods and all that). Sort of similar to the surge in terms of overall quality. The main draw is the combat - that's what defines a souls-like - and it is pretty good here. Somewhere between dark souls 1 and 2 in terms of fluidity and general polish. There's definitely some jank but nothing terrible. Some weapons have bizarre design choices that make them needlessly difficult to use, but you can probably find something decent to suit whatever playstyle you want to pursue. The weapon upgrade system here is also an interesting take on the standard upgrade system. For a few reasons: - You can slot in an upgrade "module" for any weapon. You upgrade the module, not the weapon itself - You can move modules between weapons, making it easy and largely penalty-free to try a new weapon - There are multiple types of modules that scale with different stats, so you can do things like -- Add a strength module to a dagger and get a strength based dagger -- Add a dexterity module to a greatsword for a quality build greatsword. I personally enjoyed this, because the dexterity module includes an ability to increase the speed of the weapon. Definitely overpowered though -- Add an induction module to any weapon to add fire damage However, weapons do still have intrinsic bonuses and "weapon-arts" like in Dark Souls 3 that unlock with continued use, so there is some benefit to keeping with your favorite weapon Hellpoint also includes guns, which operate somewhat similarly to Dark Souls crossbows. A handful of other souls-likes have tried to mix guns and melee in the same combat system, but I think this one is probably the best attempt so far. There are also some platforming sections thrown in. You can mostly ignore them, but they will have some good loot if you want to put in the time. They also have messages left by the developers at the end of these sections, which are pretty amusing 7/10

I simply love all that Hellpoint has to offer. Even the title screen ties into the premise of what this space venture is about. From it's aesthetics to gameplay, everything feels superb. I really don't want to go into any real detail with this review, since the intrigue of finding out what makes this game tick was part of the fun for me, I am truly immersed in this game world, and have not felt like this since Dead Space, and Mass Effect 2. Outstanding job Devs!! 2 Thumbs wayyy up from me. Now back to me enjoying my purchase.

*If I could I would give this so far a 3.5 stars. The game has potential to reach 4.5 stars in my book if the devs play it smart with post launch patches to polish the game and iron out any bugs. Now, Hellpoint is a good soulslike, and for the most part you will enjoy it as long as you don't go in expecting Dark Souls 1 or 3 quality. Combat is good, but the enemies are too easy to stun lock making it a bit too easy The atmosphere of the game is reminiscent of Dead Space, it's creepy, immersive but don't expect much variety of biomes in game, it's metal halls and hallways for the most part. Soundtrack is well....missing for the most part, game mostly has the same eerie tune in the background. Progression is solid, it's basically Dark Souls 1, yeah the game ain't exactly brimming with originality, but hey it works. Actually it does do a few things different, there's more emphasis on platforming and there's random events that bring in more challenge. All in all, the game is very fun despite having a lot of rough edges, a few bugs, game design inconsistencies, at it's very core the game is fun, which just shows that with some polishing up it can easily surpass the Surge 2 and Code Vein.