izigame.me

A very tough to review game, as it is the very epitome of an average game. Not good enough to be universally recommended, but not horrible enough to be reviled either.

Silent Hope is an action JRPG rogue-like dungeon crawler where the goal is to dive into the abyss, traverse through the dungeons, overcoming the bosses to unlock more resources, gears and level up to become stronger so that the next level of challenge can be overcome and have this entire cycle be repeated again until the game is beaten.

So first, the pros: the art style, the little bit of story that the game have and the theme that it is going for, the character designs and the monster designs are very consistent good and nice to look at. The combat are also quite fun, as each of the characters are clearly distinct from one another, each with their own specialities and skill trees that allows for a moderate level of custimization with the builds. The boss fights are the highlight of this game, with a lot of different encounters that are challenging and fun to overcome. The fact that the set up of the story and the theme is incorporate into the gameplay and the base design is an aspect that truly have to be praised. The system that encourages swapping between the different characters in the dungeon to receive and accumulate different buffs are great.

But now, the cons. The progression here is not very good for a rogue-like game. Most rogue-like dungeon crawlers would allow player characters to be strengthen through various different means as they traverse through the dungeon, allowing skilled players to continue to grow stronger as they go through the dungeon and overcome new challenges. Because Silent Hope relies on levels and gear crafting as the primary means of getting the player stronger, it means that regardless of how well the player is doing, there will be a hard stat cap where the player cannot proceed any further because the stat differences makes the enemies so tanky and hit so hard, there is no reason to continue the run. This requirement to retreat and then redo certain parts of the run again with better gears add onto the repetition of the combat encounters in this game, as fighting against mooks and dungeon crawling can become repetitive and boring very quickly.

It is a competent enough game. But the core gameplay loop could have been so much better. A system such as some randomly granted modifiers that is obtained from killing bosses or from completing challenges would be greatly appreciate adding on to the feeling of being rewarded while doing a run and making each attempts unique from one another, doing away with the repetition.

It is not a good game, this is an average game. If you really want to play it, get it on sale.