The last few weeks I’ve been battling the summer heat with a damn sledgehammer, thanks to Helm of Sorrow, a new indie fighting game from Johnny Dale Lonack and published by Thorrnet Publishing. The principle is quite simple: the knights will fight. Helm of Sorrow is all about heavy, metal clad warriors fighting, slicing and skewering with other pieces of metal.
The game evokes the frantic action of Nidhogg, but with the more down-to-earth courage and the “realistic” fight of For honor and Mordhau. And it’s a lot of fun – up to a point sharp.
Helm of Sorrow nails its artistic direction, and if you’re a fan of knightly weapons and armor, there’s a lot to love here. The game eschews fantasy aspects in favor of historical designs, so other medieval history nerds can have fun dressing their knights in their favorite period styles. Excellent lighting and shadow effects highlight the reflection of the steel and the menacing silhouettes of the armored figures.
Even armored knights only take a few hits, creating tense clashes.
The weapons are also modeled on real life examples (although the historical use of a spiked flail is questionable, we can apply the rule of cool here). When parried, the weapons clash, clash, and clash with satisfying animations reminiscent of historical fencing illustrations or modern HEMA practice.
The art of the blade and the club
Grievhelm’s combat revolves around a position-based system. To attack or defend, you must adopt a low, high, or medium guard stance, which allows you to launch attacks from that angle and defend against it. The objective of combat is to watch your enemy’s guard and strike where they don’t expect it.
Does anyone order the shish kebab?
Spacing and timing are also essential – different weapons have different effective speeds and ranges. The armaments include three types of swords (long sword, weapon sword, zweihander), mace, ax, spear, war hammer and flail.
With this distribution of weapons, running and jumping attacks, and a “push” movement that gives you some distance control, you can get a lot out of it. Grievhelm’s three positions. If you’re feeling arrogant, there’s even a dedicated button to give a battle cry.
‘Tis but a wound of flesh
The pushes and parries feel good and realistic, but it’s a shame that can’t be said about some of the hits that actually connect. Where should connect, anyway. Weapon hitboxes, especially for non-swords, can feel a bit offbeat, leading to some situations where knights transfer unnecessarily.
He must have had insane hypertension …
The physics can also be quite twisted. Sometimes you’ll hit an opponent to send them flying through the air like a blood-powered rocket. Don’t get me wrong, it is is pretty fun, but it’s more Monty Python and the Holy Grail than realistic style Helm of Sorrow seems to go for.
In the arena
The different environments present a nice variety of attractive scenery, from forests to castles, crypts, battlefields and more. There’s even a menacing eclipse arena that looks like a scream at Dark Souls 3. The levels are attractive and serve more than just decoration, with a lot of environmental hazards you can plan a strategy against. Many have areas that obscure your view, which is painful in soloing but offers some potential for setting up your own pitfalls in competitive play.
More fun are the obstacles and traps that complicate the battle without deciding it, such as knocking down a chandelier to trip a charging opponent, or forcing them to retreat into a searing ruin. These environmental features add a nice touch of cinematic drama to the fights that would otherwise be two tin pots playing rock-paper-scissors.
Tin Can Team Fights
The countryside can be frustrating, but the meat of Helm of Sorrow‘s the gameplay is in the ‘encounter’ menu. Here you can organize fights according to different conditions: simple skirmish, wave attacks and Nidhogg– tug of war matches in which you have to fight your way through reappeared opponents to reach the end of the level. Free fights for all and in teams are also possible.
The game is definitely the most fun with a few friends for couch multiplayer, testing your mettle against each other and trying out all the different weapons, scenarios and arenas. Up to four players at a time can participate in Helm of Sorrow – this also applies to the campaign. The countryside mode offers a format with a kind of progressive arc, but it is not without problems.
The roguelike knight
Helm of Sorrow is heavy on the armor, light on the story. But there is a campaign mode where you will find a narrative concept brought up in the form of storytelling between fights. It’s a network of random scenario nodes that provide certain bonus consumables upon victory, or additional weapons and armor.
Griefhelm’s dynamic campaign allows you to make a few choices, but luck plays a big part.
There are roguelike aspects to setup: you start with just your basic longsword, three lives, and no armor. Lose all your lives and you have to start over from the beginning. A particular victory advantage can preserve equipment for future campaigns, to make it a little less painful. But it’s up to luck to decide where and when these perks appear, or even if any of your desired gear will appear.
Unfortunately, the campaign suffers a bit too much from the RNG, frequently spawning bumpy difficulty spikes and redundant rewards (like weapons and armor you’ve already permanently unlocked). The “mount” advantage, which puts you on horseback, is so poorly implemented that it is more of a handicap.
Sorrow
Despite all its good sides, Helm of Sorrow‘s the name may come back to bite him. It can be a very, very frustrating game. Even after getting good, the enjoyable combat is plagued by boring elements that seem completely out of the player’s control.
While I love to be a knight of hard knocks Dark souls Games, Helm of Sorrow often comes across as downright unfair, especially in the countryside. Weapon hitboxes force you to memorize the distances at which your weapons start to pass through enemies, rather than just using your eyes.
Needs a little polishing
The lingering impression of Helm of Sorrow is that of a fun, shiny toy that loses its edge relatively quickly. The campaign does not seem balanced for a satisfying single player experience. Meet mode is great fun with friends, but wears out after a lot of bot battles. As you might expect, it was not easy to find opponents online before the release. However, Helm of Sorrow should benefit from the kind of community feedback that would emerge from a competitive scene.
Despite its flaws, Helm of Sorrow shows the promise. Johnny Dale Lonack and his team are on to something here and have expressed a desire to support the game after launch with additional content. I would be interested to see how it goes. Helm of Sorrow is a good freelance scrapper who gets away with honor. However, his ability to achieve greatness remains to be proven on the pitch.
Griefhelm has a few story rhythms, but it’s more about swords than words.
Hi, I’m best-game-reviews.com, a website about games and helping players get the information they need. We always provide the most complete and up-to-date news as well as share tips and tricks for playing some of the games. Thank you for reading this article
from best-game-reviews.com https://ift.tt/3CKGVsV
via best-game-reviews.com
0 Yorumlar