Inferno - Beyond the 7th Circle

Overall the game's a solid turn based RPG. The art and music are great albeit the latter slowly got stale over my 50h run. My weird run: RPG's tend to be a genre where I try to experiment with unusual, funny builds rather than going for something that obviously works. In this game I decided to kill Hell itself with fisticuffs so I built around unarmed combat and quite a large chunk of my criticism stems from this decision as in retrospect I don't think the game was designed with someone actually playing this way, especially not on the hard difficulty. The start of the game was great, every single step mattered and being forced to drink dirty water just to survive along with the oppressive atmosphere really hammered in the point of just how screwed I was, unfortunately this feeling doesn't really stick around for long as farming for resources becomes trivial rather quickly and always having food, water and a flint for a campfire becomes a non-issue. So let's talk about the turn order and how it influences everything in an odd way. Instead of buffs/debuffs lasting for a specific time and turns then representing how much both combatants can do in the said amount of time the concept is sorta flipped on its head. For example, if the enemy heals 1% every turn, by increasing your initiative/speed and being able to act multiple times compared to your opponent you're inadvertently boosting said regenerative ability as the heal doesn't care whose turn it is. Furthermore if the enemy hits you 4 times in a row and the first attack inflicts poison you're losing a large chunk of your health to it before you can act. Another example is that if the enemy triggers an on-hit damage buff that lasts 4 turns in a 5-hit combo by the time you can use it it's already expired. Without reworking the entire turn system all this could be fixed by buffs and debuffs only ticking down on their appropriate turns. Enemies healing from regen only during their turn (increase value to compensate the overall healing) and buffs/debuffs only ticking down when appropriate. The upside of having low damage and high speed is that almost every fight ended in a massive boost in blood drops which I later exploited by dropping pianos on all my problems via a maxed out rune spell. The main issue with the build was the aforementioned regen which meant I was simply unable to kill a specific, buffed tree enemy forcing me to grind levels to the point that, once I could overcome its heal I was overpowered and the rest of the game was sorta mindlessly easy. Pros: * I cannot praise the monster art enough. The spider enemy is especially a delightfully screwed up creation and I adore it so, so much. * Incredibly oppressive atmosphere. * The magic system. Although I didn't use many of them in combat, the sheer variety and lots of utility spells probably make a magic build much more fun than what I played. * Huge map with lots of neat secrets although all puzzles were on the easy side. Cons: * The turn order system has issues especially on quicker builds. * Melee combat seems dry compared to spell combat. * Bad balance when it comes to traits. 2% chance on hit for a short damage buff? Really? * Low variety in environments. Either forest or dungeon. * My hand hurts from all the movement you gotta do to cross the giant map, a quick-travel option or more shortcuts would be much appreciated especially considering there's no random encounters while just walking about. Final thoughts: Just play a spell build and you'll have a fun time.

The game favors players that already start the game knowing a lot about it. You are supposed to hit a wall in progression and start again, if you don't know the game in depth previously. There is even a mechanic, "hereditary points", a limited amount of points you get if you reach far enough to benefit a new character, which shows they had it in mind. There is not much space for learning as you go, you better find a strong weapon and good armor fast, or you will find monsters that are too hard to be beaten without spending resources, and since resources are quite limited, it will grind your run until you run out of everything. Anyway, it's not fun, I had my share of hard games, but this one has been too frustrating.

Too much fiddling with menu's and systems. Map reveals too much for my taste as you go too. Can't see myself enjoying this one.

It's good if you're into this type of game. When you start the game is really intimidating but there's a threshold you pass where it's just easy street. Haven't played hard mode or anything but I will if I ever return to it in a couple years. Ignore playtime, I left this one on in the background for a long time.

Take some time to read the manual to make the experience little easier. Good old dungeon crawler for ppl who wants to take it slow and enjoy each bit it

I hate to leave a negative review as it seems many people love this game for valid reasons, but for the sake of other who care about the things I care about in a game.. I like what this game is trying to do. The devs clearly had great intentions. But it has very low production values. In my short playtime I noticed many spelling mistakes and weird UI issues. The writing is not good. It seems to be very poorly optimised, as it runs very sluggishly on my admittedly older Macbook, which smoothly runs many games with far more advanced graphics. All these things prevented me from appreciating its other virtues and made this game an immediate "NO" for me. YMMV, if you're not someone who cares for aesthetics or UI so much you might enjoy this alot.

A fun and challenging dungeon crawler!

This is a very likable old-school dungeon crawler, very difficult but rewarding. The combat is simple but very well-done. My only issues are occasional bugginess, and sometimes loading screens when you go to the pause menu. It's odd because it doesn't seem like the game would be that demanding graphically. Also sometimes it feels like the interface is a bit too minimal where like it would be helpful if you were given more information but mostly this is very fun. Oh, one thing I meant to write that I didn't care for was the lock picking system, this to me was just frustrating and unfun

Very addictive and fun game, Refreshing take a single character RPG. It's has many layers that you wouldn't expect from indie dev for this price.

This game definitely scratched an itch for me searching for a good intersection of Dark Fantasy and Grid based dungeon crawling. There are some improvements that could be made if the Dev ever had a mind to polish this up and include some minor tweaks like slight improvements to the map and puzzles and fixing some spelling errors in the English localization. However what is here is certainly enjoyable and worth the price I payed to play. Looking forward to other projects from this Dev