It is the same with every single Souls–Borne, Sekiro and Souls-like game. You have to delve into your own head like it is Psychonauts and play the minigame of Find and Replace. One minute your Estus is called “Ashen flasks,” your souls are “Blood echoes,” and every big monster is followed by several swear words and insults. I, like many others, truly enjoy the genre-mashing sub-genre that is the Souls-like. It is A collection of 80s and 90s difficulty requiring a guide or a wiki (that they didn’t have), Metroidvania map design, and a bit of action and exploration-based adventure.

However, they aren’t easy games to get into or understand straight away, they are purposefully obtuse in every which way. The progenitor of the cult-like fandom for the FromSoft games and their imitators all aim for the one thing, and 99 percent of the time fall millimeters short of its yardstick. Yes, with more of the games that you play, you will enjoy them evermore, but what sets the benchmark is deeply entrenched with lore and is the fantastically designed Dark Souls of 2011. You can make the perfect copy, all but one tiny scuff in the paintwork, and Souls and Souls-like fans will demonize you for it.

This time it was Canadian developer Cradle Games and American indie game publisher TinyBuild’s turn to step up to the altar of sacrifice. In development since 2017, the developer’s sci-fi Souls-like RPG, Hellpoint, finally released after a recent delay. Well, kind of. As far as we knew, the game was set to release on all platforms at the same time, though it turns out Switch users will have to wait a little longer. I can see why, as the performance on the Xbox One is about as stable as your nan in the eye of a hurricane, during an earthquake, trying to protect her fine china from a raging bull. In closed off hallways, grand halls, and stairways, it can sit somewhere between 30 and 60 frames per second. That’s fine.

Looking out into space, the cavernous void that surrounds us and engulfs us as we fall through it, proves to be a bit of a challenge. These graphical issues weren’t enough to lead me to make a cheaty, sweary, run to Twitter and shower the developer in death threats for the hardware issue, as I’m sure some twitchy coffee addled cult-like fanatic has done. Instead, it drops to somewhere around a rather annoying 20 or so frames per second. I’d hate to say “playable,” but it isn’t an immediate exclamation of “unplayable;” There is more that could be done with optimization, that’s all.

As you’d expect with a Souls inspired game set in space, there is a very strong hint at a plot. You, a human-made of Borg components, explores a decrepit and ruined space station named Irid Nova. The station is sat on the edge of a black hole orbiting something that is inherently impossible to orbit. All is well and good in the creepy lore, though it feels rather off. Not in a good way either, not in a sense that you feel strange watching Alien or playing Dead Space, but rather void of anything you’re meant to feel.

Irid Nova was once home to a race of religious zealots that were almost 1984 levels of theocratic and dogmatic: “believe what you are told, don’t question it.” Instead of the world collapsing, and gods with several genitals for a face fighting the undead/unkindled or eating Uranus out from someone taking a walk in Victorian London, there isn’t much beyond what is there on the face of it. It is quite literally what would happen if the Krill were in space for many millennia. Madness sets in once you realize other viewpoints. Well, that and the space horrors.

The thing about a Souls-like trying to tell a story is that they keep trying to do it. That’s not the point, actions speak louder than words, thus gameplay is where you’re going to learn the most about a Souls-like. Having several hundred points for me to read useless messages on isn’t adding to the experience, the world design and gameplay brings that feeling. The problem is, Hellpoint isn’t entirely there either.

On the Xbox One and the footage I’ve seen of the PC port, textures are flat and Irid Nova is a mismatch of everything sci-fi. The first area you go into, for example, is quite flat, but I don’t mind the rather restrictive nature of the hallways and the larger grand halls. The second area, the Arcology section, opens up into a large city-like backdrop that’s a mix of both Kamino and Mustafar from Battlefront II. At first it sounds nice, but it is once again lifeless in a way it shouldn’t be.

Across many of the walls, there is a foreign language asking for help from the cosmic horrors. Yet still, there is this unease of lifelessness among the open and closed off sections as you cut through the default shriveled up humanoids. What proved to be a little more Souls-esque was the humongous priests that will rip your insides out if you don’t repent your sin of getting up this morning. While the area bosses are a mix of fantasy, anime, and downright deviant art; I’m not saying I want another Dark Souls 2 of dudes in armor, but something a bit less supernatural.

At least two of the bosses are just robots. Now if I wanted to be slit up by an angry toaster, I’d go back to The Surge 2. I’m here because I wanted something a bit more sci-fi. To pick apart the bosses for a minute, they work as something heavy to erect a big wall around and bash head-first into. Yet, for some reason, I also can’t be bothered with them after the first try. I’d rather run off and grind souls – I mean Axions.

Not to run off to the “Well, it is different, therefore it is worse in every way,” the standard enemies called Victims don’t respawn when you go back to your bonfires/lanterns/space vaginas. It seems they work on a clock, only spawning in after a select amount of time. That’s fine when I’m trying to gun it back to a boss, but it is a pain in Uranus if you’re looking to grind like Santa on a stripper’s pole in July. Die or load the game back up, and you’ll find every enemy back in their place ready to sing “Xanadu.” Sadly though, that takes longer and is rather boring. I don’t get what it is meant to improve or add to.

I moderately welcome the estus change, as it brings the blood ethos of Bloodborne into your offense. Attack more and your estus charges, much like the idea of attacking more to get blood on you and you’ll lose less health from the previous incoming attack. Yet, they don’t refill at all at your space vagina/bonfire things, that is unless you die, of course. It takes and it gives in both respects, but for the most part, it is more of what we’ve seen in other games.

What we don’t usually see in Souls-likes is the option to change difficulty, as the collective mind of the cult would defecate and erupt every blood vessel they have in anger. It doesn’t improve or devalue the experience as far as I’m concerned, it is just an option on the side. Though I do like it as it could mean someone like Alexx or Lisa might enjoy something with an intentionally high barrier for entry, only held up by smuggest erosive specs of humanity that moan when something lets others enjoy something too. Meanwhile, I can turn up the difficulty, get more souls to level up, and get a little stiffer combing Irid Nova all night long. Intermittently into the early hours of the morning, I’m going blind.

In conclusion: Hellpoint is a fine Souls-like with some interesting ideas pulled out of it, but it is another one for the pile of disinterred corpses from the altar. It is a little buggy, a little lacking in reasonable performance, and a little ugly, and it won’t be lighting fires in underpants. It will annoy the “hA7dc0r3 gAym372” because it isn’t a one-for-one remake of Dark Souls, and even then they’d complain, it’s just fine though lacking a real reason to play it. It is enough to pull yourself blind for a couple of hours, but nothing spectacular I’d call everyone to join in on.

An Xbox One review copy of Hellpoint was provided by tinyBuild for this review.

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Hellpoint

$34.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Enough of a Souls-lite to enjoy a little.
• Interesting takes on some Souls-like mechanics.
• A difficulty option.

Cons

• An attempt to tell a rather dull story.
• Rather poor visual quality.
• Awful performance in wide open areas looking out to space.