I’m terrible at these games, so I opted to bump up my health and stamina so I could take more hits and dodge/attack more often. Like Dark Souls, you start out as a basic character, and as you level up and collect experience (Axiom, the equivalent to souls), you can improve whatever stats you wish, based on how you want to play. Green are developer made hints or clues whereas yellow are player made messages, usually pointing out secret areas nearby. You’ll also find green and yellow handprints along walls and surfaces along your journey. There’s also a vast sense of verticality when it comes to the districts as well, full of tons of secrets for you to find. The interconnectedness is quite impressive even if it’s maddening and confusing most of the time. For example, you might defeat a massive boss for it to be hiding a special access keycard that’s used in a different district, or maybe the elevator behind it is how you can now quickly travel from the Observatory hub to other places. Eventually you’ll need to explore it all anyways, but a friend and I chose different paths, leading to very different areas, but eventually you’ll loop around and explore each district regardless of your earlier choices. You’re free to go almost anywhere you want from the beginning, and at times you’re sometimes given a path choice. The level design is also not linear at all. Yes, this becomes frustrating later on when you are looking for somewhere specific you’ve passed before, but any Souls fan should be accustomed to this by now. With a heavy emphasis on exploration, you’ll be spending hours wandering around since you’re never given a map, and will simply need to remember how it all connects. The Irid Novo space station is absolutely massive, broken into a handful of different districts, most of which are interconnected in different and secret ways. I can’t state enough how impressive the level design is in many ways. While I enjoyed the premise and backdrop of Hellpoint, you’ll be much more focused on exploration and its combat while the narrative takes a backseat of importance. With a dark sci-fi setting, Hellpoint is very atmospheric in its level design, though good luck following along with the main narrative, as there’s not really any traditional cutscenes to piece it all together, instead leaving it to you to find tidbits of information of its lore left behind from talking to NPC’s and computer logs, of which you may not come across in your journey. The backdrop of Irid Novo is quite stunning once you’ve put in the hours and fully realize just how big this derelict space station actually is. Something happened to the ships inhabitants, as they’ve all been turned into monsters, so it’s up to you to explore and find as much data as you can to solve what went wrong and how to stop it. There’s been a catastrophic event labelled as The Merge, and now Irid Novo is orbiting around a massive Black Hole. You are simply a vessel named Spawn, created by The Author who wants you to save the space station you are now on, Irid Novo. Surprisingly, developers Cradle Games has crafted a fresh take on the genre, and while some may simply write it off as a sci-fi Dark Souls set in a derelict space station, there’s quite a few mechanics that they’ve changed and has more focused on exploration and secrets, arguably for the better and a smoother overall experience. Also, I incorrectly assumed this was going to simply be another knockoff Souls-like, as there has been many since Dark Souls defined the brutally difficult genre. I like them, but I eventually become so frustrated I give up after a while. For starters, I’m absolutely terrible at Souls-like games. I’ll admit, I wasn’t keen taking Hellpoint on before I started playing.
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