HellSlave II: Judgement of the Archon Preview

I never played the original HellSlave, nor had I heard of it prior to being offered a chance to give the sequel a look. After getting through an early demo of HellSlave II: Judgment of the Archon, though, I am a tad disappointed in myself for never giving this a shot prior. HellSlave II isn’t perfect by any means, but I found myself more enthralled in the combat and build-crafting loop here than I have been in any game like it for a long time.

I was struggling to decide how I felt right out of the gate. The art style is gorgeous, and the story beats and worldbuilding were interesting enough to draw me in, but the combat was slow, tedious, and lacking in interesting decision-making. This is a common thing with many RPGs in the early game, so I decided to just roll with it, and it pretty quickly picked up. Combat is the core of HellSlave II, and it’s decently unique. It’s technically a turn-based RPG, but the turns don’t work the way they typically do.

Rather than individual turns, combat flows on a time-scale. Different actions have a fatigue cost, which dictates how long until you can take another action, dictated by the in-game time-scale. Certain abilities may have low fatigue costs, meaning you could take multiple actions before an enemy does, while others might be high in fatigue, but potentially have a low recharge, which is a cooldown also dictated by the combat timer.

Certain abilities have low fatigue costs, allowing you to take multiple actions before an enemy acts. Others may have high fatigue costs but feature a low recharge cost—a cooldown period governed by the combat timer.

Everything abides by this timer, including status effects and cooldowns. This makes the empty space between turns interesting and opens up a plethora of choices, which very quickly ramp up once you get past the opening hurdle. You level up pretty quickly and begin to obtain a bunch of new abilities and gear.

Gear is equally important as levelling up. Each piece of equipment comes with a plethora of passive effects, both defensive and offensive, and you will be absolutely peppered with new pieces, typically getting multiple per fight. This helps with the feeling of consistent growth, and despite a lot of it being garbage, there are so many different effects that most pieces of gear have potential. On top of that, the rarity and effects contribute more to your strength than just the raw level, meaning you aren’t just rotating out gear every five minutes because the numbers are bigger; synergy is important, and it helps contribute to this game's best aspect.

I rarely fall in love with the power progression of a game quite the way I have here. I started focusing on a specific build, gathered some gear and then, holy shit, it all clicked. It strikes an incredibly difficult balance, keeping the player feeling powerful without making the game too easy. My build was strong, but the enemies were nearly on equal footing, so everything retained a strong sense of threat.

I do have a couple of minor gripes with HellSlave II, though. The story, while interesting at its core, struggles with some writing issues. I didn’t care for the characters at all, and much of the dialogue felt a little stiff. Alongside this, the sidequests were pretty one-note (which may just be a case of the demo being so early on in the game), and the exploration was lacklustre. Clearing the maps felt like something I should be doing and was rewarding enough on a progression level, but I didn’t ever stumble into anything actually interesting in the world itself.

My gripes with HellSlave II are minor, and I had a genuine blast during my time with the demo. I urge you all to give the demo a try, and maybe I’ll take a step back and play the first while I wait for the full version.