The 7th Circle - Endless Nightmare

I'm a sucker for Horror RPGs and there's no denying that this fits the bill. It's well-made but, ultimately, I can't see any player base that I'd actually recommend the game to. On the bright side, 7th Circle absolutely nails the themes. The monster design, the story line, the concepts of death and growth, the use of alter egos all have potential. The game knows what it's trying to be and everything reinforces the mood. Potions are mixed out of the brains and livers of your fallen foes, lost souls offer quests, demons will trade for power, waiting to long floods the dungeon with "The red tide" and blood sacrifice is the metagame. But The 7th Circle is extremely old-school in all the wrong ways. You teleport from square to square instead of animate, you need to manually type in magic words, the UI is clunky, and the level design is pretty underwhelming for the size of the levels. It's playable, but there's a learning curve and it helps to be experienced in the 80s dungeon crawl. Past that, the combat system is unique, but ultimately fell flat for me. It reminds me alot of a 1v1 fighting game where you control distance, balance your stamina, attack and defend tactically and try to drive up a combo count. It has alot of mechanics and complexity, but in-action it all feels shallow and random. - It's not usual for either you or the enemy to take 10 turns in a row. Supposedly, this has to do with equipment weight and stamina, but it just feels random. - You can only see 2 moves ahead, so you can't really prepare for long attack strings. - Combo's require you to hit the enemy multiple times (Random based on the above) without missing (Pure random) while also requiring the enemy to miss (Pure random). If you get lucky enough to get a 5 or 10 hit combo, suddenly the rest of the fight is easier with stat bonuses. If not, expect to trade blows and lose health. The combat system isn't bad, but it feels more complicated than it needs to be. Specifically, it's like the tried to add alot of mechanics to create depth but instead just made it messier. The game does have a unique take on death, where you'll earn XP (For this run) and Blood (For future runs). The blood you collect will allow you to unlock bonuses on all future runs. Each fallen hero also provides one bonus to their immediate successor allowing you to start with boosted stats, or better rewards. This means that the deaths should provide continual movement forward. I'm absolutely glad that I've played The 7th Circle. But, the flaws definitely hold the game back. There's definitely an audience for this, but it's not for most players.

I usually love dungeon crawlers, but this one did not catch my attention at all. The combat system is boring and unpredictable and combat is pretty much all you get besides a boring board game mini-game (if only you didn't have to roll every move, which only really make it take longer). There are traps, which are really only waves of monsters you need to fight. So combat is pretty much all you get. The turn seems to be completely random, so it's impossible to plan anything, which doesn't help. It's a grind game, I like some of those, but the core need to be interesting. I didn't really see any puzzle, but I only got as far as the boss of the 1st level. I couldn't find the interest of going any further as I was massively bored. Because the combat is mostly what you get and it's uninteresting and unpredictable. On the plus side it's cheap, so you don't have much to lose if you thing you might be interested.

- Incredibly grindy. - Combat is uninteresting, enemies have few distinguishing characteristics. - Traps and clever maze-type things are infrequent and never necessary. - The "story" feels unrelated to the gameplay. It's super-creepy, but it doesn't really matter. I played through this because I really like Wizardry-type games, and this game has potential, but is poorly-designed and not that deep. I'm hopeful that the sequel features improvement in the above.

This is a simple and straightforward but compelling first-person dungeon crawler RPG for fans of the genre with a horror aesthetic. The setting and plot are unique--you play as fragments of an insane man's subconscious as he lies delirious in a pool of his own blood after a suicide attempt. Your goal is to fight his inner demons to unlock his repressed memories and discover what drove him to the edge. The game has a great aesthetic and a fun improve-skills-as-you-use-them character building system, but what really sets it apart from other games of the genre is its permadeath/metaprogression mechanic. The 7th Circle is designed to be played in multiple runs, with each successive character getting a little stronger and/or inheriting perks and items from previous ones. It rewards experimentation with different builds and playstyles and there's lots of well-designed dungeons to explore and content to find. The 7th Circle isn't without its flaws though. Pacing and balance is a little off--despite the permadeath mechanic, most characters will be nigh-unstoppable after a couple of dungeon levels, making the rest of the game something of a formality. Opting to play on higher difficulty levels doesn't help much as its major effect is to draw out battles and make them more tedious than actually harder. There's also very little to distinguish enemy types outside of their base stats and a handful of passive effects, as none have any sort of special attacks to speak of. The translation is also a little clunky. Still, despite these flaws it's quite an entertaining game and impressive when you consider it's a one-man project. It's definitely worth buying if you're a fan of the genre.

Really interesting and pretty darn cool - it's got the psychological horror atmosphere of The Suffering, but gameplay wise reminds me almost of Etrian Odyssey. Instead of going back to town to heal up at the inn and craft new gear, you go as far as you can, die, and then get to heal up and upgrade. Thus, the most valuable resource in the game is knowledge - knowledge of the map (what you've managed to map is saved through deaths), knowledge of what enemies can do, knowledge of spells (cast via a syllable system where you can discover new spells without actually finding a formula for them ala Ultima Underworld or Arx Fatalis), knowledge of where traps are placed, and more. It would have been nice to see a tiny bit more persistence though - for instance, I wish gates that are subquests in themselves to open would remain open on your next life. This is something Etrian consistently gets right - your reward for risking it all and potentially pushing beyond your limits isn't only gear, it's unlocking shortcuts through the labyrinth which mean you get to avoid doing the same thing over and over. Maybe 7th Circle will eventually reveal a shortcut system like this, but I haven't seen one yet. The dungeon itself is also not particularly varied in its graphics or architecture. It would have been nice to see more types of walls and floors and more variations in the types you see. Exactly identical brick walls are disorienting in a bad way, and it all kind of blends together. All in all I think it's worth the price and, more importantly, the time. There's enough story and mystery to pique your interest, and the pursuit of the next little bit of narration to try and figure out what's going on is always a good hook.

The gameplay is boring, repetitive, it's a very simple slogfest of going through the same combat moves over and over and over again. No strategy, no tactics, no challenge, barely any exploration or discovery. I had hoped this would change but there is no change at all from the first to the fourth level at least, which is when all interest seeps away even if you are patient and play this on the side while doing something else. A pity, because the CRPG elements underneath would be sound and the visual monster design is quite good.

This game was totally worth the $1.14 I paid. It gets a bit repetitive and I'm losing the will to continue playing. I got good value of about 4h play for that low price, I say buy it on sale.

A hidden gem. A lot of very interesting and unique mechanics. The main problem with the game is the rogue-lite elements: they seem foreign to the dungeon crawler concept (especially since all the levels are hand-crafted and not random). There's a little catch here: the rogue-lite thing seems to be there just to sweeten the permadeath pill a bit; there's no evident problem in beating the game in one go. The story is captivating so far, the enemies look great. The skill leveling system is very satisfying. And based on the entries in the compendium, the game is huuuuge. 6 hours in, and I think it's like 10 % or something. On the current sale of 90 % off it's basically a steal.

A pretty simple, but fun and addictive horror dungeon crawler. I'm a big fan of the "body horror" designs of the enemies, and the music is great, too.

oh baby its a winner