Return to Hellgate
A 2026 retrospective and review of Hellgate London Steam edition
Let me start by saying that I have been a fan of Hellgate London since it's launch in 2007. Like many, I was a huge fan of Diablo 2 and when the developers at Blizzard North left to start Flashship Studios with the promise of creating a spiritual successor to Diablo, I was sold. Keep in mind at that time Blizzard Studios had no plans for a Diablo 3 so for many this was the pivot. The ascetic was there, the epic cinematic cut scenes, the gothic setting, tone, it was all there. I registered early for multiplayer and I had scraped together just enough money to purchase a new PC with barely the minimum specs required just so I wouldn't miss out on the all the action. Ironically, I still use the same PC tower case from that build back in 2007 to this day (with some considerable updates of course). And yes, I still own my original copy along with a collectors edition and the official guide.
Since that time I have spent hundreds of hours of gameplay spanning from the original Flagship Studios version to Global, Revival and 2038 with multiple playthroughs and characters. When I decided to return to the world in of Hellgate London in 2026 I didn't intend it would be with the Steam version as I already owned multiple copies. Sadly, I could not get the original to work correctly no matter what I methods I tried. So I broke down and purchased yet another copy of this game and installed it for the umpteenth time. What I experienced was a dose of nostalgia mixed with that bittersweet feeling you get when your let someone borrow something you really enjoy, but they don't return it for a long time and when it's finally returned your grateful to have it back, but it's not in the same condition as you remembered.
This is the case for me anyway when it comes to Hellgate London Steam edition. There are some good takeaways and some not so good ones. First off, the game is stable. No bugs that I have noticed thus far. I have only crashed once. I have only experienced some slow loading screens in liverpool station. There are some huge quality of life improvements in this version via merchants. Skill and stat retrainers are now available for only 1000 palladium. This is huge as in the original your could only acquire through farming end game bosses for a chance for one to drop, meaning any skill or stat you made was effectively permanent until then. This allows for the flexibility to play with different skills without locking your character into one build or worse and ineffective one. In addition, every 24 hours there a daily quest at Greenwich Station that generates allowing any character you login to get a 1 hour auto dismantler and 5 resurrection scrolls, which might not seem like a lot until you see what the merchants charge for them at stations. Great if you are running multiple characters as you can just log in and save up on characters you aren't immediately using.
Also if you happen to be a returning player like me and you have some old single player save files hanging around they will work. That said you may notice some characters look different (mine did). Most notable improvement to the gameplay is the messenger from hell mini boss spawns that appear after the kill limit has been reached in each map. if there are enough trash mobs you can easily spawn them multiple times making resource farming a lot faster. Lastly, both enemy and map respawn rates are much faster in this version. You can literally walk up one side of a map destroying everything in your path and when you double back enemies, boxes and explosives are already refreshing.
As for some of my mixed opinions, this is not the Hellgate I remember fondly. There have been some major changes to the campaign from the original. Most notable is the removal of a considerable amount of content and the changing of map layout. From the removal of chapter bosses and mini games to NPC voices and faces being swapped, there is a stark difference between the two versions. And while the exclusion of some campaign content is welcome as a fair amount of it was rather disjointed and usually was a part of the game everyone just wanted to skip over, other cut or changed content left me feeling like the original soul of the game is just not there, dysfunctional as it may have been.
As for the bad, well there are a few as well. Firstly, no multiplayer option. While I understand server support for a 20 year game isn't likely, it would have been nice to still have access to some of my endgame characters again. I was also disappointed to find that there is no nightmare and hell campaign replay. Just a linear game. And of course there is the matter of no direct 10 support so graphics are locked at 32bit. And Finally, who's idea was is to use a inventory menu image for the game's banner image. It looks stupid. Why wouldn't you just use the original logo, or any of the great artwork or literally any else. For the love of God, if nothing else you can at least fix that!
In closing, if your reading this and your thinking of playing Hellgate London for the first time in 2026, this the first game that started the "looter shooter" genre. It is a perfectly good retro arpg and the with a slow, but strangely satisfying grind.
And if you are a returning fan like me and can't get the original to work or just want a taste of that sweet yet tedious farm for better gear you can do what I did and download this remnant or you can go to www.lunacygames.com and bother Bill Roper on when Hellgate Redemption is releasing.
"Remember the Dead, But Fight for the Living".
