Hellpoint Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

Hellpoint Switch NSP Free Download Dark Souls crossed with Dead Space? Bloodborne set within the bowels of a great big derelict space station? Yes. Yes please, we like this, we want this, sign us up! Cradle Games’ Hellpoint has got a great premise, a fantastically atmospheric setting and gameplay that unashamedly pilfers ideas and mechanics from FromSoftware’s superb back catalogue while adding a few little twists and tricks of its own. It should be a success, it should an easy recommendation – especially for Soulslike fans – however, a Switch port that massively downgrades graphics while introducing some pretty serious technical issues results in a sci-fi action-adventure that feels like it’s bitten off quite a bit more than it can chew – on Nintendo’s hybrid console, at least. ROMSLAB.COM BEST SWITCH GAMES

Hellpoint Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

The story here, in true Soulslike fashion, is a cryptic thing that you’ll need to piece together haphazardly as you traverse the innards of the Irid Novo, the enormous derelict space station onto which your character is birthed at the beginning of the game. The general gist though, if we’ve managed to pull the sparse shreds of evidence together in any way properly, is that you’ve been created by a mysterious AI known as The Author, who requires that you “collect data” by fighting hordes of hellish space demons in order to save the Novo, which is currently orbiting perilously close to a supermassive black hole in the aftermath of a cataclysmic event known as The Merge. Your standard day out in space, basically.

Dark Souls crossed with Dead Space?

Bloodborne set within the bowels of a great big derelict space station? Yes. Yes please, we like this, we want this, sign us up! Cradle Games’ Hellpoint has got a great premise, a fantastically atmospheric setting and gameplay that unashamedly pilfers ideas and mechanics from FromSoftware’s superb back catalogue while adding a few little twists and tricks of its own. It should be a success, it should an easy recommendation – especially for Soulslike fans – however, a Switch port that massively downgrades graphics while introducing some pretty serious technical issues results in a sci-fi action-adventure that feels like it’s bitten off quite a bit more than it can chew – on Nintendo’s hybrid console, at least. Filament Switch NSP

Hellpoint Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

The story here, in true Soulslike fashion, is a cryptic thing that you’ll need to piece together haphazardly as you traverse the innards of the Irid Novo, the enormous derelict space station onto which your character is birthed at the beginning of the game. The general gist though, if we’ve managed to pull the sparse shreds of evidence together in any way properly, is that you’ve been created by a mysterious AI known as The Author, who requires that you “collect data” by fighting hordes of hellish space demons in order to save the Novo, which is currently orbiting perilously close to a supermassive black hole in the aftermath of a cataclysmic event known as The Merge. Your standard day out in space, basically.

As you discover breach points scattered around the Irid Novo,

You can also raise or lower the difficulty of the surrounding area in order to either make things slightly easier or line yourself up for greater rewards by battling tougher foes – something it took us an age to figure out how to do due to the cryptic nature of just about everything going on here. All of the weapons and armour you find as you venture deeper into the space station can be upgraded and fitted with various modules that increase their capabilities, and you can even collect blueprints in order to create your own gear using precious resources gathered on your journey. Alongside all of this, and dependant on the position of the nearby super black hole in relation to the space station itself. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition Switch NSP

Hellpoint Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

As indicated by a pretty confusing icon in the top left-hand corner of the screen – hellpoints will open up in certain areas, spewing out hordes of tough enemies that drop high-level rewards, weapons and armour. This mechanic, in particular, is really cool but, for some reason – most likely a rather foolhardy adherence to genre expectations – it’s also very badly explained, to the point you may in fact miss its existence or meaning completely and spend the entire game wondering what on earth that diagram in the top corner of your screen is actually pertaining to. There’s plenty to like here overall and, having played more technically proficient versions of this one on more powerful hardware, it’s actually a reasonably solid Soulslike effort, all things told.

A handful of ill-explained mechanics aside,

However, the general exploration and combat here is pretty solid stuff. Enemy variety may not be massively impressive, but they do provide a decent challenge overall and there’s enough variety in locations that the act of pushing steadily forward through areas, slowly discovering secrets and picking up little bits of lore and all manner of strange items as you go, has the capacity to be almost as enjoyable here as it was in the games that have so very obviously provided much of Hellpoint’s inspiration. As for the Irid Novo itself, much like any other derelict space station we’ve ever encountered in a video-game, it’s immediately the star of the show here. Final Fantasy IX Switch NSP

Hellpoint Switch NSP Free Download Romslab

Cradle Games has very obviously expended a great deal of effort into this labyrinthian nightmare of corridors and it’s resulted in a setting that we wanted to explore every nook and cranny of; one that we wanted to push further into no matter how many times we perished along the way. It does suffer somewhat from a lack of direction, there’s no map to help you find your way and some areas are real mazes that it takes quite a while to get a handle on, but it’s just so atmospheric, even with the huge graphical downgrade that’s occurred to get this one running on Switch, that it still manages to impress. If only Hellpoint had made it to Switch in a better technical state than it has done, it really would have been pretty easy to recommend to fans of tough, Dark Souls-style action RPGs.

Add-ons (DLC): Hellpoint Switch NSP