Unfortunately, couldn't stomach this until even the "end" of the main story.
Silent Hope draws you in with an artstyle much like Bravely Default, a interesting fairy-tale-like premise, and easy-to-understand combat in a roguelike dungeon. I played this at a PAX event and had been looking forward to trying it, and bought it on Switch. It was indefinitely shelved because the convenience of PC play pretty much killed my desire to drag the Switch out of its bag. Later on, I found out it had released on PC and decided to buy it at a very big discount and wanted to give it a try.
However, once I got my hands on it again, I started drawing uncomfortable parallels with Cuisineer, another cutesy game with a simple combat style revolving around gathering resources. I will say at the least, Silent Hope does better than Cuisineer at respecting your time: I never felt I had a drought of resources, collecting resources was as simple as a single attack, I only just recently discovered the bag can even get full (meaning the bag is big enough that I never noticed), and upgrades to your equipment is simple and actually has an impact more than a single stat point.
The problem comes in with some more fundamental aspects.
Map design. Maps are randomly generated and have multiple elevations to navigate, with some traps to avoid/exploit.
Problem 1: only ramps can get you between levels. It would make sense if you could drop down from a higher level to a lower one (provided a gate isn't blocking your way) but this isn't the case. Every level is a maze in the worst way, often requiring lengthy detours to get to a lower or higher area, all the while enemies with projectiles can take potshots at you.
Problem 2: multiple dead ends. This is super lazy. You can tell all these dead ends are meant to be the possible connectors for floor layouts, but instead of cutting them off, they're left with a little blockade at the end. Multiple times I've been fooled into backtracking to a dead end because the fog of war on the minimap didn't fully show it was a dead end, even though I'd seen it earlier and just forgot, not uncovering it on the map because I didn't walk directly into it the first time.
Problem 3: trap design. It starts fairly simple with some explosive kegs you can light to do damage to enemies at the risk you yourself get caught, but starting at the ice zone, they get stupid: snowballs that home in on you, getting bigger as they travel and plowing through everything until falling off a ledge, and worse, lava traps with unclear timers blocking critical routes through a dungeon you have to be constantly wary of.
I actually gave up on playing through this game in the lava zone, zone 4. The new lava traps combine with enemy design that starts to get unfair. Very tanky enemies with explosive ammo and kiting enemies that have quick projectiles. The enemy designs also repeat a lot in this game, and this zone brings back some of the more annoying enemies from earlier in the game.
Now lets talk about our heroes and combat. There are 7 characters to play as, each with a starting movepool of three different moves. Later, you unlock two classes for each character, with more stats and the ability to mix and match moves from different jobs. I didn't make it far enough to get the third job for anyone, as that requires getting to the postgame, which effectively means that a third of everyone's moveset isn't even available for the main playthrough. This is unfortunate as many characters' movesets just are not great. I'll briefly go over my experience with each character.
Wanderer: The worst melee. Has moves that can interrupt enemy attacks, but not powerful enough to kill anything quickly, which is a problem. Also starts with a defensive buff move as one of his first skills, which is just an entire waste of a slot.
Warrior: Slow melee class with wide hits. Very effective when outnumbered, really shines once you get an upgraded class with a spin attack. Has a high HP pool and can take a hit, but standard attacks can feel clunky and way too slow.
Rogue: Fragile, but incredibly mobile hit and run melee character. Probably my favorite class, has a unique blink/dodge that can move through enemies to get out of bad situations. A lot of her moves also blink through enemies allowing for quick repositioning. Probably the best base moveset, with Sneak Attack being my favorite move in the game (from her first upgraded class).
Archer: Bow and arrow ranged playstyle. Very standard moveset to start with. The scattershot fired point-blank is probably only second to Rogue's sneak attack for damage, though less risky. Gets way more fun with his Bomber class upgrade to rain bombs on enemies from across the map. Second favorite class, probably the most survivable.
Farmer: Gimmick melee class. Only barely more fun than Wanderer, has a slow charge that knocks enemies too far back to follow up, a poison butterfly with a windup that will get you killed and a confusion status that doesn't last long enough to have enemies fight each other, and a gacha vegetable buff with random unreliable effects. Range class upgrade adds better moves, but more boring.
Fighter: Melee class, shortest range, highest DPS. Good for bossing or fighting anything one-on-one. Suffers when dealing with multiple enemies, but gets better all-around when unlocking her upgraded class, gaining an uppercut with decent AOE and a ranged hadoken that does massive single target damage. Her starting speed buff can be upgraded to have 100% uptime at max. The parry on the upgraded class will get you killed.
Caster: Magic/ranged class. Has a black hole meant to help with a lot of enemies, but the explosion spell doesn't do enough damage, so you're likely to get surrounded after the first shot if you don't kite. Gets slightly more interesting with his class upgrade spell that gives rotating orbs that linger a long time, but he's so slow at everything you have to start casting a mile away to not get punched in the face.
I don't particularly have anything else that's big enough to talk about at length, but I'll rattle off a few other things that bothered me:
- Workstation menu starts at the top every time, making me scan through the list 5 times to produce 5 of the same material. No option to reassign materials to the production list, list doesn't remember last position.
- Workstations require you to babysit them: when a craft finishes in the dungeon, a workstation won't produce anymore until you manually leave the dungeon and reassign crafts.
- No option to review current workstation progress from the dungeon.
- Some stat bonuses are laughably small. What the hell am I supposed to do with "-2.1% dodge cooldown"? The dodge has a second cooldown already. Most food also gives laughably small buffs so they're not worth using.
- Swap-out stat bonuses are granted for swapping characters mid-run, but this requires you to spend way too many resources gearing up every character, and also slowing down their experience progression. Also, said stat bonuses aren't even clearly labeled outside of checking a crystal and only display the stat your current character will provide.
- Only three moves can be assigned to a character at a time. This makes gameplay stale. Left trigger is entirely unused and could have allowed more options at once (like hold Ltrigger + button for attack).
- For christ's sake why are you giving me challenge objectives to use a move I haven't learned? Yes, I can reassign my points to learn the move and use it, even in the dungeon. No, I don't want to have to remake my build twice for this stupid challenge. There's a reason I'm not using it.
tl;dr: This game feels like it was designed to be a mobile game. Charming artstyle and premise, shallow gameplay loop, grindy progression structure. If you ever decide to play this game, forget a Pokemon "keep the team even" approach, pick a character you like and bet it all on the starter.
