If you like jumping and dashing through levels and don't mind retrying tough challenges a few times, this might be the game for you: the progression of your movement abilities is satisfying, falling off the level isn't too punishing, you can still get in a lot of places earlier than you probably should if you're clever and persistent, the void levels (the real challenges the game has to offer) aren't too demanding outside a handful of optional late-game ones (and the whole post-game Void of Sorrows stuff, but that's to be expected), and the camera does a great job for the most part (again, outside of the post-game stuff). If you're here because of the "Action" and "Adventure" tags on the store page or expected a Soulslike, this isn't the game for you: combat, story, quests, inventory, all that stuff is there but it's nothing special. With that said, even if you like the platforming I would suggest stopping after the main story ends: the post-game void levels love to combine insta-kill surfaces, bad camera angles, tight timings, and scarce checkpoints, there's a couple of them with cool ideas but they're not worth slogging through the rest.
Starting the intro tutorial, I notice the game is looking a lot blurrier than the main menu: I quit to the main menu and now that's blurry too, checking the options I see the game has decided to switch from 1440p to 576p. I fix that, and go through the tutorial. After completing the intro tutorial and starting the run, I quickly find the first object I can interact with, a building called Tower of Knowledge. I press the interact key, what appears to be a loading screen pops up, and after a while I return to the game in the same exact spot in front of the Tower of Knowledge, nothing seems to have changed. I go on, and "fight" some monsters: I spam attacks while they flail around incoherently, no skill required, I'm not even sure if those monsters had any hitboxes considering their appendages clearly made contact with my player sprite on multiple occasions yet caused no damage. Eventually find a second object I can interact with, a Hermit walking in the background. I press the interact key, he says "Weird", I press the key to advance the dialogue, what appears to be a loading screen pops up, and after a while I return to the game in the same exact spot in front of the Hermit, nothing seems to have changed. I go on, I "fight" a different monster that grabs me (I think) and prevents me from moving while I spam attacks, and after defeating it I'm still unable to move, seemingly stuck in its corpse. Ah, and during all of this the "beautiful AI assisted art style" advertised on the store page is covered by an extremely thick blue filter, which makes it hard to see anything and cannot be disabled via any option: however, the filter is disabled when you're in the pause menu, because reasons. This wouldn't even be good as a free tech demo to showcase the AI-generated monsters, the asking price of 20 dollars is delusional.
Don't be tricked by the stylized graphics and UI: the actual game is a bad novel with a tacked on "exploration" game that's barely interactive, incredibly repetitive and slow, and ultimately boils down to "find next type of key, open next type of door, proceed down predetermined path, rinse and repeat". Yes, the game about exploring an alien ocean is in fact a highly linear adventure: the store page claiming you can "Freely dive into an expansive section of seafloor" is misleading at best.
The game expects you to play for dozens and dozens of hours, but after 1-2 hours you've already seen pretty much everything it has to offer. For example, there are 12 types of secondary weapons, with memorable entries such as "homing missile", "homing missile that does more damage to shields and less to armor", and "homing missile that does more damage to armor and less to shields": in practice, there are 4 meaningfully different types of secondary weapons, and everything else could be reduced to a random gear bonus. Primary weapon and ships are a bit less homogenous, but it's mostly because some options there are simply terrible and never worth using. Another example, puzzles: the first time you find a stray power node you'll be curious to see what machine it will activate, the hundredth time you will think about uninstalling. Even if you could ignore the Diablo-like mechanics and just rush the main story without engaging with the padding, what do you get? Mediocre combat with enemies that ALWAYS rush you, even sniper drones get in your face instead of keeping a sane distance, unless you're further away than 2.5 km then you can hit them with cruise missiles and railgun shots and they won't even notice they're being attacked.
Less than 3 hours in, and I'm softlocked: one of the many dungeon rooms that require you to kill all enemies to unlock a door didn't work properly, so now the one and only way forward is permanently blocked. Leaving and reentering the dungeon did not fix things, restarting the game didn't help either: also, there aren't multiple save slots, so I can't roll back to a previous save and my only options are to restart the whole game from the beginning or give up.
While the core gameplay is fun, there are many small issues that work together to annoy you at every step. To begin with, scrollwheel input is FUBAR and you should rebind the weapon switch keys to something else: I've even tested the game with a spare mouse to make sure it wasn't a hardware problem, the game sometimes doesn't register scrolls and sometimes doubles them. Then, the secrets: at the beginning they are usually hidden behind reasonably distinct walls, but later on the wall textures get too samey and the bullet decals too plentiful so you're better off wall humping and spamming the interaction key. Lighting is another problem: the game is far too dark by default, the light spell is a trap (can't attack when using it, in a game where you could walk into an ambush at every corner), and one of the best spells in the game (the shield) puts an obnoxious dark blue overlay on top of the action. Encounter design is also questionable: far too many times the game teleports enemies in right outside your line of sight to try and create ambushes, bosses are just big damage sponges while the smaller enemies helping them are the real threat, and many late-game enemies with rocket launchers will explode themselves when trying to shoot you. Finally, hit detection is meh: you'll hit enemies waiting underground by shooting above them, and a lot of destructible props look thin but have deceptively large hitboxes.
I pirated this game to check if it was any good, played through a large chunk of it in one sitting, and bought it full price immediately after. Remember when you played Demon's Souls/Dark Souls for the first time? That feeling of relief when you found a bonfire right as your supplies were running low, and that feeling of dread when you could simply sense how the area right ahead was hiding some terrible danger? Those feelings that hundreds of soulslikes (and quite a few FromSoft games) are completely incapable of evoking? Tunic pulls it off, and that's just the beginning. The world is a lot more open than it seems, you're guided down one of the easier paths but you're free to explore and you can fight the three main mid-game bosses in whatever order you like. Player progression is incredible, consumable items are all useful no matter how far into the game you are, combat is challenging yet fair, graphics are adorable and contain quite a few subtle hints... As for the secrets and puzzles, the less I spoil the better. Final warning: this game is HARD and that's what makes it fun, if you use guides or turn yourself invincible or look up puzzle solutions you'll be disappointed.
Let's start with the good: the levels. There are quite a few of them, they're big, they all look great and fairly distinct, they have complex layouts with plenty of shortcuts and secrets and intelligent bonfire placements... I've beaten the final boss, explored quite a bit off the main path, and I'm sure I haven't even seen half of what the game has to offer. In this area, I think Hellpoint is superior even to the original Dark Souls. Why isn't this a 5/5, then? Unfortunately, because pretty much everything else isn't very good. The game has a fair amount of platforming, but the controls aren't good, your character will easily get stuck into slopes (let alone more complex geometry), falls go from "zero damage" to "instant death" within a handful of meters, and there's plenty of death pits to fall down into. By comparison, the combat is no threat at all: when fighting the final boss my greatest concern was that my attacks brought me dangerously close to the edge of the arena, that's how easy things are. The combat is stiff, the enemies are too predictable and manageable, the bosses are mostly bigger versions of normal enemies (save for a handful of main story bosses), item management is a massive chore, some weapons don't seem to work properly... There are great ideas here and there (the Black Hole doors, the Underworld, the slight variations in enemy placement as you revisit levels...), but they're usually half baked. Despite all these negatives, I don't regret playing through Hellpoint, and I'm curious to see what the devs will do next.
This is a game where you kill zombies, smash things to pieces, and use those pieces to build yourself better equipment. The game runs flawlessly, looks nice, and as far as I can tell is almost entirely bug-free. The beginning is also really fun, with a strong sense of progression as you upgrade your equipment to smash tougher and tougher obstacles, face stronger and stronger enemies, open up shortcuts, expand your options, and look forward to the next discovery. Then the pacing stops: you are the second and third best weapons in the game (ignoring post-game stuff) within a couple hours, similar situation for all other kinds of item. Some of the controls are bad: you can equip 4 main weapons but only cycle them one by one, same for your consumables, planting seeds is finnicky... You'll also see underutilized content: explosive barrels in the environment and are really cool, but you can't have your own explosive for demolition (grenades are a sad joke). Even worse, one of your early (and weak) weapons has the ability to hit multiple obstacles at once, which helps with clearing out multiple weak obstacles quickly, but no other weapon you'll ever see has such an ability, and of course both post-game weapons have it. Speaking of those, when exploring you might find the a secret project to help with reconstruction after the apocalypse: if you collect an enormous amount of resources to help, you'll get access to... a locked indestructible door protecting the best weapon in the game, and the key is near the end of the lengthy main quest. For the other post-game weapon you just need to complete all activities of a certain kind to get to it, but some of those activities are inaccessible until you progress almost to the end of the main quest. If the game paced the existing content properly, it would be a 4/5: as it stands, the last 10% of content is stretched over 90% of the game, and that's just not fun.
The bulk of the game's content is locked unless you're online: mind you, that's single player content.
