Halls of Torment Review Summary

Diverse characters and build variety: The game offers a diverse range of characters, each with unique abilities, playstyles, and upgrade paths. This, combined with a wide variety of items and equipment, allows for extensive build customization and experimentation. Players can create unique and powerful builds, encouraging replayability and strategic thinking.

Engaging progression and unlockables: The game features engaging progression systems, including meta-progression, character upgrades, and unlockables. This creates a rewarding gameplay loop where players feel a constant sense of improvement and discovery, motivating them to keep playing and experimenting with different builds and characters. The game avoids feeling like a grind by providing meaningful rewards and a clear sense of achievement after each run.

Addictive and highly replayable: The game is described as highly addictive and engaging, with a simple yet satisfying gameplay loop that keeps players coming back for more. The combination of challenging gameplay, rewarding progression, and diverse content creates a "just one more run" feeling that can lead to hours of playtime.

Great for short play sessions: The game is well-suited for short play sessions, with runs typically lasting around 30 minutes. This makes it easy to pick up and play for a quick burst of fun, while still offering enough depth and progression to keep players engaged over longer periods. The game is also praised for its accessibility and suitability for portable devices like the Steam Deck.

Great value and developer support: The game is praised for its excellent value for money, with many reviewers noting that it offers a substantial amount of content for a low price. The developers are also commended for their continued support of the game, with frequent updates and new content being added after release. This demonstrates a commitment to quality and provides players with a sense of ongoing value.

Grindy, unbalanced difficulty curve: The game suffers from a steep difficulty curve, requiring excessive grinding to progress, especially in the early game. This is exacerbated by a lack of clear explanations of game mechanics, leading to player frustration. Some reviewers also found the game too easy after a certain point, with gameplay becoming repetitive and boring.

Repetitive gameplay, limited content: The game becomes repetitive due to limited content, including a small number of levels, enemy types, and skills. This leads to a lack of replayability and a feeling of monotony, especially in the late game.

Unclear stats and upgrades: The game lacks sufficient explanation of stats, skills, and upgrade paths, making it difficult for players to understand how they work and how to optimize their builds. This lack of clarity extends to tooltips and in-game systems, leading to confusion and frustration.

Inferior to Vampire Survivors: The game is unfavorably compared to Vampire Survivors, citing a lack of content variety, less engaging weapon/ability selection, and a less intuitive number-crunching system. Reviewers feel it doesn't innovate enough on the established formula.

Lacks polish, feels generic: The game lacks polish and feels unfinished, with missing quality-of-life features, a weak storyline, and unclear guidance for progression. Some reviewers also noted the game feels generic and doesn't stand out in the crowded survivor genre.

Combines Vampire Survivors, Diablo elements: The game blends elements from 'bullet heaven' games like Vampire Survivors with Diablo-style gameplay, visuals, and loot grinding. Players survive against hordes of enemies, level up, and acquire equipment. The game offers both auto-attack and manual aim options.

Survive, level up, acquire items: Core gameplay involves surviving enemy waves for a set time, leveling up, and acquiring items/skills from bosses. Players can transfer items between runs using a well system, allowing for strategic choices and build planning. Maps also contain optional objectives that make the boss easier.

Active dodging, varied enemy abilities: The game requires players to actively dodge projectiles and learn boss attack patterns. Bosses and elite mobs have a variety of abilities that change how you deal with them. Enemy AI is basic, with most mobs simply walking towards the player.

Extensive meta-progression, build variety: The game features extensive meta-progression, including unlocking new heroes, skills, and items. Players can experiment with different builds by combining equipment and skills, focusing on elemental damage, defense, or minion enhancements. Leveling up primarily enhances character stats and weapons.

Customizable, scaling difficulty options: The game offers scaling difficulty through modes like Agony and artifacts, which buff enemies and grant more XP. Endgame content includes reroll mechanics and the Vault, providing challenges and scaling stats indefinitely. These systems allow players to customize the difficulty and rewards.

Excellent performance on various systems: The game generally exhibits excellent performance, running smoothly on various systems, including the Steam Deck. Many players report consistently high frame rates and long battery life on the Deck. Some reviewers specifically praise the game's optimization.

Windowing and crashing issues: Some players have reported issues with the game's windowing, particularly on multi-monitor setups, where the game may open with a portion of the screen cut off or anchored in the wrong location. There are also reports of crashes and severe FPS drops in later stages.

Low system requirements: The game has low system requirements and a minimal storage footprint of only 1.5 GB. This makes it accessible to players with older or less powerful hardware.

Unclear launch option purposes: The game has three different launch options, but their purpose related to hardware usage is not immediately clear, requiring external research to understand their function.

Direction keys sometimes stick: Some players have reported that direction keys sometimes stick, potentially due to keyboard incompatibility. This issue can be temporarily resolved by remapping the key bindings.

Great for genre enthusiasts: A common sentiment is that the game is highly recommended for fans of the 'survivor' or 'bullet heaven' genre, particularly those who enjoy games like Vampire Survivors and Diablo. Reviewers often highlight its addictive nature and engaging gameplay.

Strongly recommended overall: Many reviewers express strong positive feelings towards the game, recommending it without hesitation. They emphasize its engaging nature, fun gameplay, and overall quality, making it a must-try for many players.

Hopes for future content: Reviewers are enthusiastic about the game's future, expressing hope for continued updates, DLC, and further development. They are eager to support the developers and see the game expand with more content.

Mixed feelings, minor issues: Some reviewers express mixed feelings or note specific issues, such as a lack of explanations or potential for repetitiveness. However, these concerns are often tempered by the game's low price or addictive qualities.

Receives high review scores: The game receives high ratings from many reviewers, with several giving it perfect scores (10/10) or near-perfect scores (9/10). This indicates a very positive overall experience and high satisfaction among players.

Continued development planned: The developers have announced paid DLC, indicating continued development and support for the game beyond its initial release. This suggests that players can expect new content and features in the future.

Balance tuned periodically: The developers periodically adjust the game's balance, but some overpowered elements tend to persist. This suggests that while efforts are made to maintain fairness, certain strategies or items may consistently provide an advantage.