No wonder they gave it for free.....

[Nihil]

....I usually support indie devs. But this is more of a passion project than a valuable product on the market.
Disclaimer: I don't like Dark Souls, and any of the typical souls like games. Only similar games in the genre i could like or even love, was Remnant and The Surge. And maybe Sekiro.
And there is one thing this game made waaaay better than Dark Souls, is the controls and movement. Finally not clunky not slow as hell.

But everything else is just a pain in the ass and bad design
- Pitch black dark areas with suddenly missing platforms or floors so you fall to your death in a souls like where managing and keeping your currency is key? WTF
- Tight corridors with enemies so big, they block your path, not even able to dodge behind/next to them? So you can't even outmaneuver them?
- Enemies suddenly appearing fro thin air? (I'm a seasoned player. I know when enemies will appear when i'm about to enter a room or area. And from where. But there are usually doors/wents ect for that to spawn them in. But when a 2m big humanoid enemy spawn onto a ledge without any entrance to that area in a room you already cleared, when you enter a room and try to back off for better fighting position is just bullsh**
- Some "combo" movements are not interruptable or are even unavoidable. If I press jump and click for a slam, why does my character doing a slash after it without me wanting it to do that? No infusion no mod in the weapons, just the shield and the hatchet. This extra move suddenly appeared from thin air.
- Coop is basically unplayable and abusable as hell. Why?
*Only host can interract with anything
* In case of Hell/Black Hole hours, event room appear. If host enters, and only he/she can enter, you as a guest are locked out from entering
* If you joined a game and die, you can be revived. If host dies, game over & reload
*Upon dying, only host looses the Axions (slous/currency) You as someone who joined, are keeping everything. Why would i ever host a game after this? I will just join random people's game to farm levels. Well i would if i would keep playing
*In such tight corridors having character collision with such huge hitboxes is a design fail.

And i could go on.
I hope the devs got some valuable experience creating this game and will use it to create a much better game in the future. Because creativity is there and talent too. But they are lucking in experience. I hope them all the best and hope will see new games from them. But i also feel sorry for anyone who payed any money for this game.

[Cypeq]

Don't be sorry for others, I paid full price and got a lot of enjoyment out of it.

[SunfireKnight86]

"I don't like games like Dark Souls and was surprised I didn't like this game like Dark Souls."

[Nihil]

Originally posted by SunfireKnight86:

"I don't like games like Dark Souls and was surprised I didn't like this game like Dark Souls."

Did you even read the thread? Doubt..

[Antishyr]

Thank you for your feedback.

[Darkdiver]

Git Gud.

Quit blaming a good game for your own ineptitude. A lot of the things you are complaining about are complaints you could make about Dark Souls too. So again, either Git Gud or Souls-likes aren't for you.

And don't feel sorry for me, I paid full price and would do the same again, worth every penny!

[Riker]

Played 7hrs of the game on PC, around the same on Xbox. Tried so much to like it but it's just terrible.

Played and finished all the Souls games bar Bloodborne, Lords of the Fallen, The Surge 1 and 2, Sekiro and this is easily the worst by far.

[Paradox101]

Really, the complaints are more about how incompetent you are playing a game with this proposal.
It's not a problem, it's how the game purports to be.

It's not constructive criticism, it's just a child's crying. As you put it right, it's not your style of play. Goodbye

I believe I know about the game's shortcomings. As colleagues put it, I would buy again, even with their imperfections

And finally, it's an indie game. Adjust your expectations for the game.

They're comparing it to games with much bigger budgets.

Kids ; )

[Cypeq]

Comparing any indie soul-like to the From Soft. games is baffling.
One there is a budget gap.
Two there is experience gap From soft core team makes games for over 20 years now.
Three they started the genre, and they were already making 4-5th game of this kind while first soul-likes started cropping up.
Even if souls are highly praised, gameplay design in my opinion was never really that well polished until DS3. Sekiro is different but core game play mechanics work even better there, shows how already impressive studio, can still improve with every iteration.

How many iterations do indies get before they get compared to the giant?

One would think people getting into soul like community would have a bigger tolerance to some level of Jank, unless they honestly believe souls 1 was a perfection in gameplay? Or do you come fresh from DS3 experience which had tens of millions of dollars in budget and expect same things out of teams that on a good day had 10th of that budget and none of that dev. experience.
It's weird approach to me when I read you pissed that game spawn an enemy where you don't expect it. While Dark Souls does that to player countless times, surprise you and kills you with no remorse for your feelings, and not always by enemy hands but environment as well.

Be more realistic in your expectations.

[Riker]

Originally posted by Cypeq:

Comparing any indie soul-like to the From Soft. games is baffling.
One there is a budget gap.
Two there is experience gap From soft core team makes games for over 20 years now.
Three they started the genre, and they were already making 4-5th game of this kind while first soul-likes started cropping up.
Even if souls are highly praised, gameplay design in my opinion was never really that well polished until DS3. Sekiro is different but core game play mechanics work even better there, shows how already impressive studio, can still improve with every iteration.

How many iterations do indies get before they get compared to the giant?

One would think people getting into soul like community would have a bigger tolerance to some level of Jank, unless they honestly believe souls 1 was a perfection in gameplay? Or do you come fresh from DS3 experience which had tens of millions of dollars in budget and expect same things out of teams that on a good day had 10th of that budget and none of that dev. experience.
It's weird approach to me when I read you pissed that game spawn an enemy where you don't expect it. While Dark Souls does that to player countless times, surprise you and kills you with no remorse for your feelings, and not always by enemy hands but environment as well.

Be more realistic in your expectations.

Here's the thing though, with so many games in the genre, other devs have the opportunity to learn from them. Take a game like Lords of the Fallen for example. It took the combat from Souls but made it feel like you were actually swinging a massive weapon around. The game was still kinda meh overall but gave them a solid foundation to build upon with The Surge series. Every Souls-like takes Dark Souls series as a base and then improves upon it. Cradle Games obviously didn't get that memo and chose to regress instead of innovate.

There's 2D Souls-likes that even smash Hellpoint into the ground. Games like Salt & Sanctuary and Momodora: Reverie In The Moonlight, so your argument about budget simply isn't an argument. While not 2D I'll also throw Mortal Shell in there. Again, a FAR better game than Hellpoint.

If you can't deliver on your vision, then adjust your vision to fit your budget. There's a reason Hellpoint was pretty much trashed everywhere. As a Souls-like, its a bad game. It does *some* things well but everything else drags it down. It could have been a solid 7...However it's probably 3.5 or a 4.

[Cypeq]

All you're saying is developers should scale down to make better games, that surely is true to some extent, but honestly I want 3D soul likes, not something that mimics mechanics in 2D and it's easier to deliver it's never the same and honestly can't be compared.
Mortal Shell is better some aspects and visually but is heavily scaled down, having only few hours of game on offer.... it's done before it begins. It has it's own big flaws, including invulnerability system which covers up fact of this game combat mechanics simply don't work at all in multi opponent fights.
Personally I found salt and sanctuary pretty bad, with floaty unreliable hit boxes... and 2D combat is exponentially easier to do right than 3D and they don't do it right in my opinion. Plus the terrible platforming.

Hellpoint is flawed but ultimately it delivers closest gameplay experience to Darks Souls game ever done so far, and at fraction of the price.
While lords of the fallen was a first game of deck13 and tried that but ultimately failed to deliver gameplay that fully works like souls. Where that game failed, Hellpoint delivered, although never to the level of Dark Souls and as much as you call it regression, I'd say the effort it's worth half or less the asking price. I think you get a lot more than what you pay for.

btw. Talking about deck13 2nd game Surge 1 took original take on souls-like gameplay and personally it's my favorite soul like till now. Innovating so much this game avoids being a clone and gets benefit of not being simply labeled as being worse than souls.

P.S. you didn't bring up Dead Cells, which is by far one of the best interpretation of high risk/high reward reactive gameplay done in 2D. If that's game you missed so far, give it a look. It has much more to offer than some soulsy mechanics.

[Peapy]

Got this for free, played through coop, and experienced none of these issues.

-There is a flashlight you can use. It uses energy but it's not a problem if you don's spam any energy abilities. Recklessness will lead to your death, rushing through is not advised.

-The tight corridors/large enemies is just another challenge. Playing through the game, the level design is fair. Again, you can't just rush through without a care.

-I haven't experienced enemies appearing out of thin air, but they do come out of breaches during some events. That's the closest thing i can think of, aside from them jumping down or rushing to you when unaware.

-Haven't experienced this issue either. What weapon is doing that?

-I'm unsure how you mean it is unplayable, as I've played through twice so far, exclusively co-op, and about an eighth the way through solo. As for abusable, the only instance i can think of is after reviving a co-op partner and them having two heals back, but if you need to rely on that then something is wrong.

-Haven't had an instance in co-oping where the co-op player couldn't join in on events. If anything it sounds like your game was bugged, but a simple re-log should fix it.

Again, I got this for free. It's unfortunate you had these issues, but most are avoidable. I'd buy this game in a heartbeat if I had to. Probably going to buy it on steam for convenience anyways.

[Moon Troll]

"*Upon dying, only host looses the Axions (slous/currency) You as someone who joined, are keeping everything. Why would i ever host a game after this? I will just join random people's game to farm levels. Well i would if i would keep playing"
*cough* literally any Souls game with coop *cough*

[MikeC]

Originally posted by Moon Troll:

"*Upon dying, only host looses the Axions (slous/currency) You as someone who joined, are keeping everything. Why would i ever host a game after this? I will just join random people's game to farm levels. Well i would if i would keep playing"
*cough* literally any Souls game with coop *cough*

That's like designing a car based on the Yugo and deciding that "Detonating during a read end collision" is one of the features you must bring over into your design. Many features Hellpoint strike me as "well Dark Souls did it, so we gotta do it too".

[Nihil]

Originally posted by MikeC:

Originally posted by Moon Troll:

"*Upon dying, only host looses the Axions (slous/currency) You as someone who joined, are keeping everything. Why would i ever host a game after this? I will just join random people's game to farm levels. Well i would if i would keep playing"
*cough* literally any Souls game with coop *cough*

That's like designing a car based on the Yugo and deciding that "Detonating during a read end collision" is one of the features you must bring over into your design. Many features Hellpoint strike me as "well Dark Souls did it, so we gotta do it too".

Kudos here. Couldn't say it better. :D (How i loved and hated the Yugos) :D

But yeah i was already prepared mentally for the blindfolded souls fans to storm in with the usual arguments.
It's the same like going in to a Warhammer game forum and asking for a none-turn based WH 40K game finally to be developed. :D Or to a Sea of Thieves game forum and asking for PvE servers. :D I can only blame myself if i go into a cage full with hyenas with sausages hanging from my neck. :D

[Cypeq]

Originally posted by Nihilus:

It's the same like going in to a Warhammer game forum and asking for a none-turn based WH 40K game finally to be developed. :D

Isn't that majority of WH40k games that were released?
Kinda shows your broken perception of reality... and some need to be edgy everywhere you go.