บทวิจารณ์ล่าสุดโดย Demonite

After a long back and forth, I've decided to give the DLC a positive review, but I have to point out that due to a very frequent gamebreaking glitch I ended up wasting hours of my time and almost quit playing the DLC any further.

The DLC adds 3 areas to the game: "Dominion Baths", "Gehenna Prison" and "The Core". The Prison and Core are fine, although the Core is a bit short compared to the other 2 areas (at least it felt that way). But the Baths are by far the worst part of the DLC and the entire game as a whole. I strongly, urgently recommend that if you buy this DLC, do the Baths last. I did them first and it was a miserable experience because this is where the glitch occured.

Hellpoint as a whole is filled with bugs and glitches, it's generally what holds the game back, but one glitch in particular makes your character completely immobile and none of your inputs register anymore. You can still enter your inventory and move the camera, but you can't move. The only way to resolve this is to reload the game or die. When you reload the game, you respawn at your last breach (bonfire), not wherever you were standing when you quit the game. As far as I could tell, this glitch can occur anytime you dodge through an enemy attack that has the potential to knock you down. Occasionally you will still take damage even though you should have had iframes, but you won't be knocked down. Instead you will become immobile as soon as your dodge animation finishes.

The Dominion Baths feature a green slug type enemy that is capable of causing this glitch to occur extremely frequently. There is also a bigger slug called the "Philomycus Queen" that serves as a boss fight, and she also causes this glitch frequently. You can see where I'm going with this, right? Due to this glitch, you need to kill the boss ASAP or it will be pretty much impossible to defeat, no matter how good you are. So that's why I recommend you do the area last, so you'll be at a high level and deal lots of damage. But it's actually so much worse than you can imagine.

The Queen has an insane amount of health compared to everything else in the Baths, for no reason at all. Google it, you'll find several other people complaining about it (and the glitch). It's not a difficult fight at all, she literally only has 4 attacks, and normally anybody familiar with Souls-likes would be able to kill her first or second try if it wasn't for the glitch and the fight taking so long. But I haven't even mentioned the worst part of it all: the run back to her boss room is BY FAR the worst I have ever seen in any Souls-like. From the nearest breach it will take you over 10 MINUTES to get back, even if you know the path and run past all the enemies. There is an exploit you can abuse to climb a wall that shouldn't be climbable, allowing you to bypass part of the area, but even then it will take you around 4 minutes to run back. This is where I ended up wasting several hours, because it took ages to get to the boss (and at first I didn't know about the exploit for the wall ofc), then it took ages to fight her and it always kept ending in me getting glitched out. Absolutely terrible experience and I can just barely recommend the DLC now.

And you know what the boss drops once you do finally kill her? Nothing. 393 axions (souls), that's it. The trash mobs in the area drop 518 each btw. And there isn't even anything past her boss room either, it just drops you back into a corridor you were in previously. In general there were tons of spaces in the DLC that were just empty and felt like they were missing loot.

So, in conclusion, there is a reason this DLC is so cheap when it goes on sale, and even cheaper when you buy it together with the game in the bundle. And that's probably also the reason it never made it to the Nintendo Switch. The devs are aware of these issues, or at least the immobilization glitch, they responded to people reporting it here on the Steam forums, all the way back in 2022 when the DLC came out. But they never fixed it. The question isn't whether the DLC is worth your money, but whether or not it's worth your time. Again, still giving it a positive review because I enjoyed the other 2 areas, but if the option existed I would give it a neutral review.

Amazing Sekiro-like that deserves more recognition. Not very long, but therefore very polished with difficult, fast paced combat and an immersive Bloodborne aesthetic. In my opinion Sekiro is still a bit harder, but what's great about Thymesia is that you can't just blindly parry spam, you actually have to time it, because the parry animation isn't as quick as in Sekiro. There's a skill that lets you increase the parry window, making it more forgiving, but even then various enemy attack patterns will hit you if you spam and it turns into a gamble, so it's still best to properly time stuff. What you do get is lots of dodge iframes, similar to regular Souls-likes, so in most cases you can decide to either parry or dodge.

There are 3 main areas which you access through a mission system. It actually reminds me of Nioh in that aspect, because you go through remixed versions of the areas again in submissions. The game has a total of 8 bosses, the majority of which are awesome. If you liked Genichiro or Isshin, you'll get more of that type of rapid, parry heavy combat here. But there are also some more traditional Souls bosses or things you'd find in a God of War game.

Another cool thing is that every kind of enemy has a subweapon associated to it, which you can obtain for one-time use by performing a charge attack on them. This gives you this unique experience of being both scared and excited about encountering a new enemy, scared because you don't know how to deal with them yet, but excited because you want to get their subweapons. Besides the subweapons directly gained from enemies, you can also bring your own, permanent versions of them, which you upgrade with materials dropped by the respective enemies (including bosses).

Also, I just have to mention this, some of the negative reviews here are really dumb. One guy refunded the game because the TUTORIAL was linear. Another complained that the game was too easy after he literally studied a guide before playing it so he could 100% it in one day. People also don't seem to take the game's price and indie status into consideration, and basically expect it to be as big as FromSoft titles for some reason. I've even seen objectively false claims like not being able to retrieve your lost souls, which you can do just fine, same as in any other Souls-like you pick them up wherever you died (ofc if you die twice they're gone).

Anyway, don't listen to those clowns and buy the game, it's good. A definite recommendation to anyone who liked Sekiro and wants more. I really hope we get a sequel.

Don't mind the product refunded tag, I did that because sadly my PC is just too old to properly handle the game. I wanted to leave a review though, because the first 110 minutes I played were genuinely very fun and I'm intrigued by the whole character swapping mechanic. Gonna leave a proper review once I upgraded to a better PC and re-bought the game in the future, but for now this just serves as a placeholder since I want to at least help out the devs with a positive review instead of my money. lol

Time for crab!

On the surface a cute little indie Souls-like, but below the waves you'll find a gruesome reminder of what humans have done and continue to do to the planet. For this alone the game had my attention, things hit a little bit deeper when you see the ruins of our own world rather than that of a fantasy world like in Dark Souls.

As far as the gameplay goes, it's really good. Tight and fast paced combat coupled with a vibrant and open map that's fun and rewarding to explore. The equipment and stat system is a bit simplistic, but I think the game is kinda meant to be a bit more accessible, so that's fine. The game of course also features plenty of SoulsBorneRing and SpongeBob references.

At the moment of writing this review I really wish the game had more stuff to do, since I already 100%ed it at merely 22 hours playtime, but the devs are actually currently working on an NG+ mode and a boss rush mode, so I'm very much looking forward to that.

All in all a great game and a definite recommendation, whether you're familiar with Souls-likes or not.

This DLC adds two separate areas to the game, both of which unlock once you unlock the final area of the base game. This makes it the only time in the game where you can actually decide in what order you want to go through areas in, which is a huge plus in my opinion. The DLC also adds various new equipment and three bosses to the game, one for each area and one secret boss.

The first area is a Minecraft themed poison swamp. Every good Souls-like needs one, of course. But you'll be getting poison curing items and a new item that allows you to quickly traverse water very frequently, so it's really not bad at all. Nice area overall, I'd say, with one of the best boss fights in the game.

The second area is my favourite of the two though. It's pretty large and can be divided into three sub-areas: first a small sewer section, then a very vertical area similar to the Gutter from Dark Souls 2 and lastly a gloomy, run-down and corrupted beach resort area. While the boss here is a bit on the easier side, it's pretty cool lore wise.

The secret boss is locked behind a questline from the base game, which seems to be the most common complaint people in other reviews have. I agree that it really was an odd choice, considering that same questline already had 2 boss fights locked behind it, and it's something most players will likely miss on their first playthrough unless they look at a guide. But I also think that's no reason to hate the entire DLC, because it really just is a single boss fight with no additional areas or even items attached to it. In fact, doing the boss actually removes a weapon and armor from your inventory (another odd choice that you don't get them back after beating it). It doesn't unlock a new ending to the game or anything like that either, really it's just some lore and a boss fight.

So in short: really good DLC that adds a lot of content to the game and makes it less linear. If you care about experiencing every bit of it, you will likely need to do more than one playthrough or look up a guide, but the same goes for the base game, so if you didn't mind it there, you shouldn't mind it here.

A love letter to Dark Souls and gaming as a whole. It references Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Bloodborne and Demon's Souls as well as a multitude of other classics such as Minecraft, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania and many more.

For me personally, this is probably one of the games that comes closest to the "feeling" of Dark Souls 1, not counting other FromSoftware games. I don't necessarily mean atmospherically, it's a very different (although still very charming) setting of course, but gameplay wise instead. The world is very interconnected with many paths leading back to previous areas, which you'll need to make use of until you're allowed to teleport between Bonfires (Beacons) later on. I just wish it was larger. There are actually quite a bunch of very distinct areas in the game, with enough complexity so that exploration always stays interesting and just enough Beacons so that it remains dangerous but rewarding to explore. Unfortunately the game doesn't have a lot of boss fights and most of them happen towards the end, so you'll be going through multiple different areas in a row without fighting anything big. And as far as progression goes, the game is also very linear from start to finish, excluding the DLC. That adds some much needed branching pathways to the game, but I'll write a separate review for it on its store page.

There's a decent amount of weapon diversity, with this unique gimmick that equipment in this game wants you to "remember" it, making it stronger. For most items you need to go to a specific location somewhere in the world in order to be able to remember them, and you're given clues as to where that is. It's pretty fun. I also like that no matter what build you go for, even if it's very niche, there are always multiple weapons designed to be used for such a build, meaning you always have some variety. Like, say a build that equally focuses on all 3 main damage stats (strength, dexterity & source), there are 4 weapons for that. You can also infuse weapons like in Dark Souls, so technically most weapons could be used on most builds, just not optimally.

The combat feels pretty good overall, however here is where the game shows its one biggest flaw, which is that the hitboxes of your weapons can be very janky. Every once in a while an attack will completely miss an enemy, even when your weapon's model is physically going through the enemies body, and even when you're standing directly in front of the enemy and are locked on. It sometimes looks like the protagonist isn't the only thing made out of one dimensional sticks. And it happens to all kinds of weapons, from daggers to great clubs, but at least it mostly just happens against human-sized or smaller enemies. Very annoying when you get hit because you were relying on an enemy to die/stagger from your next attack, but then that attack just whiffs for no reason. Eventually you'll just get used to using attacks less prone to missing.

Another, minor critique I have is the performance in some areas. The FPS is pretty inconsistant and one area in particular (Start of Sequence) causes lots of stutters and small freezes, which is really annoying. But it's nothing game breaking.

Anyway, highly recommend anyone who ever enjoyed a Souls-like to at least give the demo a try, it's free after all. If you end up buying the game, your demo character even gets transferred to the full game automatically (although idk if that messes with achievements in some way, I ended up just making a new character to be safe). I'm currently on my 4th character, hunting the last few achievements I have left, and I'm having a great time with it. I can definitely see myself coming back to the game at some point in the future just to make even more characters/builds.

After finally getting all achievements and full map completion, I guess it's time to leave a review. It's a really nice and really huge Metroidvania, you can tell that the devs put a lot of effort into it. It reminds me a bit of Vigil: The Longest Night in a couple of ways, but that game is a Souls-like where as Afterimage is pure Metroidvania.

It's difficult as well (at least on advanced difficulty, dunno about normal), don't be fooled by the easygoing earlygame, things will get a lot tougher as you progress. I think the game expects you to do some level grinding, which I didn't do at all, so at some point I was basically underleveled for every boss I encountered. It got better later in the game though, when you have so many areas to explore that you'll naturally level up a lot. While I kinda wish enemies simply scaled with your level, being underleveled is still better than being overleveled, which happens in some other games of the genre and makes things too boring. Anyway, the boss fights, and there are a lot of them, all felt unique and a good chunk of them very challenging too. Maybe 2-3 of them were cheap/unfair (which could simply be because I was underleveled, or because I didn't realize "subweapon damage" was for magic, not for melee, and my build was completely wrong lol), but the majority of them were cool. There's also a boss rush mode (except it's not a rush, you can select any boss you want to fight) and 3 playable characters which you can use in it.

The overall combat and movement feels really tight and fast paced, which I like. You can choose between 6 main weapon types (sword, greatsword, dual swords, scythe, whip & katana) and various subweapons (magic). There's a skill tree that'll allow you to improve your stats or unlock new weapon skills as you progress. Each main weapon type has a unique moveset which will be expanded on with these skills. Some weapons even come with innate skills unique to them. There are a lot of weapons, with different elements, different special effects and sometimes bonus stats.

Like I said, the game is very huge and there is a ton to explore. The level design (maybe aside from some very obnoxious parkour puzzles) is fantastic. So many secrets everywhere, tiny nooks and crannies you can fit and find items in. And gameplay aside, just atmospherically the game is amazing. Everything is very detailed and pretty, it's pleasant on the eyes. Only downside is that in order to fast travel to any location of your choice, you need a consumable, which will cost you money in the long run. I'll get to why that's a huge problem later.

Something I often see people criticizing about the game is the story and lore, which is a bit confusing. I think it's alright personally, nothing amazing, but gets the job done. What I gathered is that there's some self-proclaimed goddess that didn't actually create the universe, but merely the realm you live in and now she has seemingly abandoned it. The vast majority of powerful characters in this game are women that more or less look alike, which makes me think this goddess was a bit egoistical and full of herself. I'm kinda hoping this gets proven to be right in the sequel, otherwise it'd just be a game with barely any male representation and instead full of waifus, which would be pretty cringy. There are also some translation errors here and there, unfortunately, but it shouldn't get in the way of understanding what anyone is saying in-game. And even though I wouldn't say any of the main characters really grew on me, one of the bad endings was so heartbreaking that it actually made me sad. lol

Now lastly, what I have to criticize about the game: the way money works. Farming money in this game is pretty much impossible, at least not efficiently. The most efficient way will still take you for ever, I think I spent 2-3 hours just farming money towards the end. The intended way of getting money is to break these containers that are spread out throughout the map. But once you have discovered all of them, that's it, they don't come back. The game has an achievement that requires you to buy every single shop item from every single vendor in the entire game. Because I obviously didn't know I'd need a crap ton of money at the end, I always spent the money I gathered throughout my playthrough by buying potions, the aforementioned fast travel consumables and upgrading various weapons I wanted to try out. Don't do this. The fast travel stuff is kinda unavoidable if you don't want to spend a lot of time running around, but you don't really need that many potions. I basically never used potions outside of boss fights and even then I tried my best to avoid using them because it felt a bit cheap (still did it a couple of times). Upgrading weapons should be fine if you don't overdo it like I probably did. God forbid I wanted to have multiple options for every weapon type... Just stick to 2-3 you like and ignore the others, I guess.

Anyway, with all that being said, my conclusion is that it's a really solid game and I hope we get a sequel.

I really enjoyed this DLC. Maybe even more than the base game. I just wish they turned it into its own fully fledged game with more content, rather than just being a DLC. That would've also stopped all those people from complaining about losing their 100% achievement progress.

Anyway, this is basically Castlevania 2 Simon's Quest, but better. It's called Classic 2 since the game already has Classic 1 in it for free, which is basically Castlevania 1, but better. So if you liked Simon's Quest, you will like this too and it's a definite recommendation. If you think Simon's Quest was a flawed game with an interesting concept, you should also check this out, it might fix all of the issues you had with that game. And if you never played Simon's Quest, I think the best way to describe it is as something inbetween a Metroidvania and a Classicvania. Maybe you could call it a Proto-Metroidvania?

In my opinion Dominique's Curse fixes a lot of the issues Simon's Quest has and expands on the entire concept in a good way. It has some much needed QoL added to it, like a menu option to read all clues (NPC dialogue) you've found so far and a map that labels areas. It's not a real video game map, more like a drawing of the overworld that expands as you visit more locations (although proper fan-made maps exist online if you want them, I did end up using one for 100%). There are a lot of areas, all of which feel unique and you have reasons to re-visit them later, with various secrets and items to loot as well as upgrades to buy or unlock. Overall it's a great experience, sometimes a bit frustrating, but never too much. I would say it's absolutely not a requirement for you to have played the old Castlevania games in order to get into and enjoy this one.

This is a very mixed game for me personally, but still something I'd recommend. If you like Castlevania AoS and DoS, you'll like this game too. Just like in those games, you collect souls (called shards here) from monsters to gain abilities. And just like DoS, it's very grindy if you want to upgrade them, which I'm not a fan of. There's a variety of weapons, most of them useless, again just like in AoS & DoS (or PoR, or OoE, or SotN). There are also a ton of unnecessary consumables, again just like in various CV games. Except it's a lot worse in Bloodstained. Not only will your inventory be cluttered with various foods that should all simply be potions, but there is actually a cooking system in this game. It's awful. Exploration is mostly fun, until you can't figure out where you need to go next and have to look it up online, unless you enjoy running in circles for hours, AGAIN something that also happens in a few CV games. I know what this sounds like, but don't get the wrong idea, I actually love Castlevania. I just think a lot of the SotN-style games could be better (CotM is my favourite for a reason) and as such I also think Bloodstained could be better since it just copied those flaws. If you disagree with me that these things are flaws, then by all means, buy this game, you'll probably love it.

Anyway, I do still think that what this game represents, being a spiritual successor to a franchise abandoned by Konami, is very respectable. And it lives up to that. It does have a ton of content too. Various characters you can play as and lots of bonus modes. Including a classic mode (not the DLC, I mean in the base game) that's just an entirely separate game that plays like a Classicvania, which I love (I wish it had achievements though). You can tell the devs put their heart into this game and even if I don't agree with all the design choices I do still value that a lot.

Nice game, doesn't deserve the hate it's getting. It's not Salt & Sanctuary 2, so don't go in expecting it to be. Still mainly a Souls-like with the combat and build making systems being pretty much the same as in Sanctuary, but with a few Hunter-like elements thrown in. Sanctuary might be 2D Dark Souls, but this one isn't 2D Monster Hunter, not at all, so don't go in expecting that either. It's its own thing, a bit experimental I'd say, but it turned out well.


A lot of the issues other people complain about have been fixed with the latest update. Or maybe never existed in the first place? Idk, I only started playing recently. Bosses juggling you around isn't really something that happens. There are a few combo attacks, but they usually deal around the same damage in total as a single normal attack. With some of these reviews I wonder if people even know that you have iframes on rolls, because honestly, they're making it out to be a way bigger deal than it is. The biggest danger is getting stunlocked because multiple enemies attack you at the same time or getting punched off a cliff (although the fall damage is extremely forgiving, you gotta be in free fall for a couple of seconds for it to be lethal). And while multiple enemies can swarm you, they will also fight each other, so just use that to your advantage. 75% of the time enemies will be pre-occupied when you arrive and you can just attack from behind.


As for the gameplay, basically there are 5 different locations, each being a big and open map with various sub-areas that are interconnected like in Sanctuary. But the main locations are disconnected and accessed via a hub, like in Demon's Souls. The exploration is very similar to Sanctuary, with some backtracking to access pathways that require specific tools. There are regular bosses spread throughout each map, but the main combat loop comes from Mage hunts.

The hunts can be divided into 2 parts. First you accept a mission to hunt a specific Mage (there are a total of 21 different types) and proceed to chase it around the map. During this stage the Mage will rarely actively attack you and instead mainly spawn minions. Regular enemies, other Mages and their minions as well as hazeburned enemies (which only spawn while a hunt is active) will all be on the map alongside you and the Mage you're hunting. It's basically a free for all brawl. Once the Mage receives enough damage it will flee to another nearby spot on the map (always an open spot, they never spawn in tight hallways or something, the game has lots of big rooms) and if you repeat this enough times, you'll enter stage 2. The chase phase really isn't too troublesome, there is no time limit and you can even rest at a "bonfire" and restock your "Estus" in the middle of it without losing your progress. In the second stage you'll enter a proper boss fight with the Mage. Once you get close enough to it a health bar will pop up and walls will be erected around the area, so you can't run away or get punched off a platform. This is where the Mage will actively attack you with its full moveset and no longer spawn minions, although if minions or other enemies were present at the beginning of the fight they will stay there (and possibly fight the Mage alongside you). Mages as well as their minions drop materials specific to that kind of Mage, which you use to craft gear, same as in Monster Hunter.

The new DLC adds a 6th area to the game, but outside of a boss rush-style arena (which is an awesome addition) there are no Mages here, it's purely Souls-like in this case. You unlock it pretty early on, but it's kinda divided into 3 sub-areas with big difficulty differences, so I think you're meant to leave it after killing a sub-area boss and returning later once you're stronger. It's not a small DLC either, it has various hidden paths and a total of 4 bosses (one being a secret boss). The setting is probably my favourite in the entire game and it adds to the already very interesting lore.


Honestly, the only complaint I have about the game is the balancing in terms of raw numbers. At some point, roughly halfway through the game, everything seems to be turning into a glass cannon, both the player and the enemies. You start 1-3 hitting all the mobs and a lot of boss/Mage fights are over within less than a minute, whether you win or lose. Which is a shame, because some of them have cool movesets that would be rewarding to learn and master. But in practise you mostly end up killing them before they get use to all of it, or they kill you ofc. If everything did like half damage, the game would be more fun imo. Hopefully a future balancing patch will change this. Other than that, it's a nice game, with unique gameplay and a banger OST (the Mage theme goes hard). I have done 2 complete playthroughs so far and unlocked every achievement, all of which was a fun time. I definitely plan on making more characters in the future for various different builds as well.

I do still prefer Sanctuary and I do still hope that Ska's next game will be more like that again, but I don't think Sacrifice was a waste of a game. I would also like to see it getting a sequel at some point, ideally with better damage balancing and a bigger grind. Perhaps even higher difficulties/ranks, like in Monster Hunter, instead of NG+, since I found a bunch of fights, particularly the Mages, were too easy (but part of that was the damage you deal ofc).