Hedon Bloodrite

+ Weapon are satisfying + World look beautiful + Mechanics melt together nice to create enjoying experience + Maps are easy to navigate without being primitive - Some enemies can be annoying to deal with Need to own for anyone enjoying retro FPS

I hate to admit that I echo the sentiments from negative reviews for this game on Steam. The combat is fun, but there's too much emphasis on backtracking and key-hunting through the unintuitive levels. really wanted to enjoy the game more, but I had to fiddle quite a bit to be able to see ledges and geometry properly among the dull-gray rock textures on the levels. I finished two levels, and it's impossible for me to follow the narrative because all the text is crammed near the bottom of your screen in a tiny font that just overlaps and bunches together if I try to scale it with the console. I even reached out to the dev on Discord on this, but I received kind of a non answer and said console command. Even then, the font is pretty hard to read if I'm being completely honest. Ultimately I wish I read the negative Steam reviews more closely before getting excited about what looked like a cool art style combat and the big tiddy protagonist.

Haven't found anything negative to comment at all. The setting is interesting and well thought out, with interesting factions and characters. It's an extremely inventive take on traditional High-Fantasy. Sound design is spot-on, from music to weapon and sound effects, it really helps to bring every aspect of the world to life. I don't usually go in for retro-graphics, but Hedon looks wonderful, from the lighting to the Arx Fatalis-esque level design. Combat is quick and tactile, every weapon feels powerful and enemies gib in viscerally pleading fashion. There's enough down-time between combat encounters to explore and solve the odd puzzle, which helps to expand the lore of the world. The game's only quite short, but with promise of more content to come AND for less than a tenner, it's a bargain. Plus, a second play through on maximum difficulty changes enemy and pickup placements and replaces your arsenal with melee weapons, which really does lead to a different experience. I can't wait for more content.

Its a curious thing that so many people have found success or at least fairly rewarding results with the more modern conveniences of the GZdoom engine in the last ten or fifteen years or so, but that doesn't mean it always yields the best results. Vertical-ity had always been the devil's bane to poor Doom and Doom 2, but now that we have the ability.. its spent instead on making enormous levels wider and more empty. Don't get me wrong, the nuts and bolts of something like Hedon work- but the levels do not. As engrossing as it is to find yourself wandering back and forth wondering what oddly specific part of the map you didn't find exactly everything you need to progress for a solid fourty-five minutes is, its also quite frustrating to say the least. Its very curious that as good looking as Hedon can be, the actual style of the pixel-art in question is rather bland, even amateurish to the point of looking bad at times or goofy. The sound effects are also a bit middling, but the actual combat can be satisfying, but also overwhelming as the AI is ultimately still awful and absolutely has to swarm you to create any sense of challenge. I got stuck several times on very long and huge levels that weren't well made. I don't really care how many doom mods people praise, this one certainly isn;t a diamond in the rough, and its in fact not much fun to actually play. The first level is extremely labyrinthine and since so many areas look practically identical (once again rather odd for a modern Doom mod) its easy to get mixed up. Theirs also not much feedback besides random enemies spawning or the very obnoxious sound of air blowing signalling that their is perhaps another room next to you that is hidden. Time spent trying to finish levels often yielded easter eggs or secret rooms that already deviate you from the task at hand- as well as making the map even larger. Not enough focus or interesting things happening in this one.

I was recommended this game through discord by several friends. At the end of this game, I really liked the story and the gameplay! In the meantime, i feel that this game can be deserved and recommended for other people looking for the feeling of Quake and Doom in one. I look forward to other episodes and new levels!