Hellpoint

I was certain Hellpoint was from a Russian studio. I guess its aesthetic brought to mind eurojank from Eastern Europe. To my surprise, Cradle Games, the developer of this third person soulslike action roleplaying game, is instead based in Québec, Canada. GOG gave away the game for free at some point but I also bought its Blue Sun DLC because I like my games whole.

Low budget cosmic scifi horror action

Hellpoint's story is vague. Some entity called the Author wakes your spawn guy up for a data collection mission. Data is collected by finding notes and killing bosses and the like. You actually get a pretty good understanding of the setting when reading every note you come across. Once you hit 100% (and have killed the key bosses, I think), you can return to the Author finish the game. There's a lot more to do, though, especially if you're going to explore every place or even just going for the best ending.

The game takes place on Irid Novo, a space station orbiting a black hole. Clearly there's very advanced technology involved for it to not get sucked in. Artificial gravity is a thing and it's a bit silly how it applies even when you're walking outside. Falling off a ledge will mean falling space-station-down, not towards the black hole.

There's sort of a day cycle: twice a cycle during an accretion hour during Irid Novo collects power from the black hole somehow. During the hours, you can find somewhat tougher enemies prowling around, and certain arena encounters can be entered. There's also a black hole hour, which is needed with some other actions to enter even more optional areas. Hellpoint loves secrets and it's really easy to miss secret doors even when you know how the secret door hiding wall tiles look like. The game has redundant loot: quite often you'll find a gear piece you already have. I don't like that; it takes away from the joy of exploration.

Irid Novo is a large place and Blue Sun adds even more locations. It can get hard to remember where you wanted to return later and how to get there. There is fast travel between breaches (the game's bonfires) but most of them you have to synchronize first using a limited resource. There might be enough synchronizers for every breach in the game if you search everywhere but at least in early game it's better to avoid syncing every one you come across. You might want to avoid doing that even with abundant synchronizers lest the fast travel location list gets bloated with similar looking names.

Expect jank

I set my expectations low before starting the game to not be surprised by jank and low budget stuff. Hellpoint definitely has those: mostly it comes to play in queued actions making (the plentiful) platforming a highly precarious activity. Trying to panic jump or roll before landing will make your character do that after landing, when it might have turned out to be unnecessary.

The queued action can be annoying in combat too. Having hit attack while out of stamina, makes the attack happen when you have stamina. With a slow-ass weapon, you can get locked into a long-ass animation you really didn't need at that point. It's fairly easy to avoid that from happening by using measured attack rotations, though, and also by the fact that you can interrupt attack animations with other actions.

Character stat system has few small gotchas one should be aware of -- and I'm surprised Cradle Games haven't fixed them. The game calculates your level and the axiom (currency) cost to level up from the sum of your current stats. The problem is that your worn items' possible stat bonuses get included into that. Thus you should always take off any item with bonuses before leveling up lest you want to pay premium for no reason.

The problem extents to wearing gear. A piece of gear might not be colored in red in your inventory due to you hitting its stat requirements thanks to a bonus from a worn item. However, you won't get the gear's full effect applied unless you hit the requirements with your base stats. One might encounter this problem with the EVA suit that requires 3 Cognition, a stat your might have neglected due to not planning to use firearms. You might be using a Cognitive Module to hit that stat requirement like I did -- only to discover that the suit is actually doing nothing to protect you from the radiation and vacuum outside the station.

Funnily enough, when I discovered that, I had already fought a certain boss who deals a lot of radiation damage. I had been wearing the suit (at least visually) against the damage but I guess I killed the boss practically naked as far as stats were concerned. Also, the EVA suit resembles the ones in Alien a whole lot -- probably intentionally.

Use of weapons

I followed suggestions by some reddit user on which weapons to use to make Hellpoint a smoother experience. It wasn't a detailed step-by-step guide but I was able to find the suggested Thespian Hook pretty easily. I ended up using it through most of the game because the ultimate weapon I had fixated on, Ferula of the Prodigal Spawn, I didn't acquire until very late. But it then served me through the DLC at whose end I got a new weapon, Great Terror.

The Thespian Hook is a simple, hard-hitting sword. It gets no special attacks with more familiarity, just more damage. When single-wielding it, your off-hand attack is an overhead chop with long reach. I really liked that but it got replaced when I eventually started using a Hedron of Light in my off-hand. The hedrons' ultimate ability, Homing Salvo, is a great way to dump your energy into a high damage attack. It's especially great if you can restore your energy right away.

In Hellpoint your energy and your healing item recharge when hitting enemies in melee. The Ferula of Prodigal Spawn is a somewhat clunky weapon but it has an awesome sprint attack that makes the staff spin vertically in front of you, delivering multiple hits. The Ferula also has a passive that increase effectiveness of the recharging mechanic. With an additional accessory to boost it even further, you can launch a salvo, do a sprint attack to restore your energy, and then repeat the combo endlessly. It's very effective.

Hellpoint ended in a sour note because the final fight's skybox/lighting didn't properly load and the arena was pitch black. There's supposed to be a galactic vista on the background (the floor being invisible). Restarting the game might have helped but I was able to beat the fight even so (though it was definitely the hardest one in the game). I bet it was some Unity engine issue.

Do I, really?