The game's original name: Infernax
Platform: PS4/Xbox One/Switch/PC
Hell's Souls is a new game brought on Valentine's Day this year by the "Berzerk Studio", the development team of the critically acclaimed bullet screen game Just Shapes & Beats a few years ago. It's a horizontal platform action game that meets the standards of fine art, music, and level design and operation, inspired by Konami's Castlevania 2: Simon's Curse, but everything is optimized better and better, making up for the poor experience of this old game.
In addition to doing a good job, this seemingly retro, traditional game surface hides a rather bright moral branching system. The tasks and choices undertaken by the player in the process will affect the moral tendencies of the protagonist and directly determine the fate of the individual NPC and the entire camp. This system will make the experience of story and side content quite different every time you play, making the game worth trying out for multiple weeks.
▲Due to a bug in the store, the ticket jumped for half a day
Players who have experienced the FC era are a little tired of traditional level-breaking action games. Therefore, during this period, works with semi-open processes and rich systems, such as "Re-Fighting The Devil", "Galactic Warrior" and "Adventure Island 4", gradually began to become popular.
Only "Castlevania 2", which is similar in nature to them, belongs to the more embarrassing one. Most people have played the original generation that was translated as "Divine Whip", and when you get the cassette of Castlevania 2, you can mostly conclude at a glance that it is the sequel to "Divine Whip". Castlevania 2 feels great at first sight, it has a "God Whip" system and graphics, a large map where you can walk around, you can buy items and weapons, and even a day and night concept.
Unfortunately, after a while of getting started, you will find that everything in this game is a bit bad. The difficulty design is unbalanced, the judgment is weird, and the process rhythm and guidance are also chaotic. Even veteran players who have experienced the influence of that era are not happy at all. So most of the time it didn't stay in anyone's hands for long, and it was quickly replaced by another game.
▲Due to design problems, it is not fun to play
Even so, it remains in the memory of many people – especially some european and American antique indie game developers. In many of the "Galaxy City Like" indie games launched in recent years, you can see the Easter egg of the tribute to "Castlevania 2"; and the "Hell's Soul" introduced today can be seen in all aspects of deliberately using a seemingly non-existent method to restore the texture of this game.
Of course, the content of Hell's Souls is completely original. But if you've played both games, you're bound to feel the extremely strong connection between the two. Essentially, this is a modern version that retains all of Castlevania 2's features and re-optimizes and refines it in all its aspects, making up for its regrets and making it truly fun.
You can still pretend he's Simon. Belmont. It's just that the protagonist is more flexible and more comprehensive, and replaces the whip with other weapons.
Modern players are familiar with this semi-open structure of the process, and the horizontal platform action game commonly known as "Galaxy City" has long been familiar. However, There are still some differences between Hell's Souls and the traditional Galaxy City game, such as the scene is not closed, there are more outdoor traditional level content, and still retain the trap pit where people will fall to their deaths.
▲ There is actually a certain difference from the standard Galaxy City
In addition, the game has multiple plane levels, and characters can enter some buildings. For example, the main line is to solve the boss in several castles independent of the large map. And it's also the same as its predecessors, with NPCs living in villages, with more RPG gameplay.
A premium antique Galaxy City indie game – this is the simplest superficial introduction to Hell's Souls. But after the game completed its stated goals, the production team buried another element that rarely appears in similar games, that is, the moral branch system that runs through the entire game branch and affects the process change and even the ending.
Hell's Souls is set during the Crusades, when the protagonist returns to his fiefdom as a party lord and discovers that it has been occupied by demons, and embarks on a series of adventures. The goal of the player's main level is to kill the ancient demons located in the 5 castles on the map, break the seal of the final boss location and destroy it.
However, there are many branches in the game's flow, as well as a moral indicator of good and evil that fluctuates with player choices. All of these tasks that you decide on in the game have a real impact, making an NPC or even an entire village end up different. In addition, there are two factions of good and evil in the game, which will determine their trust level according to your moral value, and further unlock their corresponding branches.
▲The branch choice is easy to understand, and the effect is also very intuitive
It should be emphasized that because the process of this game is not long, it is not like the RPG with the same mechanism that can "brush" the moral value. What kind of person you want to be this week is best carried out to the end – it is obvious that a hypocrite who has already fallen at heart is unlikely to give his life for others, and how can a strong-willed knight be treacherous because of the temptation of profit.
This unexpectedly makes such a classic, pure pixel horizontal version of the ACT have a rather emotional role-playing experience. The impact of the game branch is quite obvious, and it is more intuitive and profound than some games that claim to focus on the dilemma of human nature and morality. Each week, depending on the player's direction of play, can give a very stable and non-detached protagonist image, and give you a very different ending development from before.
I have to mention the super unfolding of the "true ending", which must be upturned by players who have experienced the glory days of Konami as a company.
▲ Be sure to try the real ending (at least cloud it)
In the end I simply put it bluntly. This small team of two or three people, with the help of like-minded players in the community and the enthusiasm of many years of perseverance, can make the tribute to "Hell's Souls"; and a large company, with a lot of money and originally has exclusive copyright and existing materials, makes it difficult to believe that they have the ability to make half the level of fan works, and it is quite embarrassing to think about it carefully.
bright spot:
The degree of completion is high, and the standard experience of the game type is excellent
The influence of branch selection is obvious, and the story expression is good
A variety of hidden classes and cheat codes, play elastic
flaw:
Classic difficulty frustration is intense, and key ethical systems are hidden, potentially confusing for players who are unprepared for a week