From then on zones, while still having their own challenges, would perhaps have one or two combat encounters that felt threatening and otherwise I could just go in swinging. Once I’d gotten through that area, the rest of the game felt like a breeze. While there is one issue of making such a challenging zone so early in that it can turn players off early, I was hit with the other end of the problem. It was frustrating, difficult, varied, and mixed with strategy and rapid decision making- in other words, enjoyable and exactly what I want from this style of game. That quickly close the distance preventing you from separating them, and your first encounter with one of the most deadly foes in the game taking place in a cramped hallway with nowhere to retreat to. Areas with large packs of foes with large health bars, multiple rooms that close you in with a boss like foe and plenty of adds, enemies I went to a place called Port Issoudun, not realizing that this was perhaps one of the two hardest zones in the game. When I started playing, from the central safe hub in the game there are two options to go to, and I picked wrong. Though at a certain point fairly early on you may find even basic strategy stops being needed unless you come across a room with a horde of foes. The locking in of animations for both yourself and foes means almost every enemy in the game can be dealt with the same way- for melee, lunge in and get off a few blows once their animation finishes then back out, and for casters just strafe. Melee monsters usually swivel even mid swing making dodging around them futile, even if you can get behind them the cleave of several attacks is almost 360, while casters tend to have the opposite problem, locked into long animations once they start casting. Monsters feel very similar after a while, while there’s perhaps a few dozen types of them, many are so similar it really feels at most there’s only a few, and even then the strategy for handling them tends to be fairly basic. ![]() After the second zone I had enough basic crafting mats to make every item in the game, and there does not seem to be a way to turn this abundance into axioms (which are your souls for levelling up your character and weapon modules). There’s so few gear types that you end up finding the same weapons or armours in different zones as static drops that sadly don’t organize in your inventory so even getting rid of every thespian hook means finding them scattered in the dismantling menu. Those limitations are further stretched over the maps, items, abilities and monsters you face. ![]() ![]() With a set of weapons I felt very limited in the number of things I could do, there’s no parry, if you want to kick something down you need your left hand empty and a specific right hand weapon. One thing that immediately becomes clear as different in the game is the controller layout, it lacks the ability to hold down a button for a different effect for most items- for example, rather than dodge roll being circle, and run being holding circle, they have them mapped to different buttons entirely. The main compelling aspects of the game thus fall to combat and exploration, both with their flaws and bright spots. The story is quite minimal, even for a Souls game, and it is not necessary for playing the game to read into the vague snippets provided so if you’re just looking to get into the action and start surviving through an abandoned space station where various demons and undead robots are trying to kill you be relieved that there is not much conversation- though the bit there is tends to be vaguely tied to some secrets and extra bosses. This is not the first space souls I have played, and while Hellpoint is definitely rough around the edges and a bit clunky, it manages to feel unique enough, much as Dead Space did in a market saturated with zombies. I’m sure there will come a point where the market is so saturated with soulslikes that they start to feel like the new ‘everything must have zombies’ fad, but we’re still in the larval state since perhaps wisely people waited for From to decide to finish Dark Souls before they all threw their hats in.
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