Rising Hell Reviews

I don't have anything constructive to say. I didn't find the talents/perks to be interesting and the combat was unintuitive.

I like playing roguelikes, and I mean I REALLY like playing roguelikes, i've played gungeon, astrogues, astral ascent, downwell, and about a dozen others. Take this in consideration, since I normally don't give bad reviews on games, but I felt strongly enough to write this out. I'm going to be blunt, the game just isn't fun, and on top of that its far too expensive and short to warrant anyone wasting their money and time on this. I beat the game in under 3 hours, and by the end of it I was saying to myself "thats it"? Mind you, this wasn't an "Aw I wish there was more of this great product!" it was a "I was waiting for the good part to hit me, and it never came, I feel cheated". Being specific, the gameplay loop is not engaging and the combat is awful. Most hits I took didn't feel earned, and when I wasn't actively in a boss fight, the climbing got so repetative I was getting bored out of my mind. Your uppercut attack almost always instantly kills whatever you're hitting, and if it doesn't, you're left taking your time in whats meant to be a fast paced experience. In both cases you're not having fun, in one you're just climbing without any real interference from enemies since they're so weak, and in the other you're slowly killing everything just for some extra red orbs (the currency). All of this wouldn't be bad, I kid you not, I've played games with worse combat, like TUNIC, a puzzle game with dark souls level boss difficulty, and I LOVED that game. The problem was that this game has so little gameplay to it, and an awful and inonclusive ending. Minor and major spoilers ahead if you care at all [spoiler] In this game, you're playing as someone in hell, but in this version of hell, Lucifer is trapped in a root that grew into a massive spire above the earth, that's why you're climbing upwards. You are then told by this trickster to slay 4 archdemons. This is a neat concept, and I was expecting this to go somewhere. You then go through 3 levels, 3 minibosses, and 4 bosses. This was very jarring, since there is no 4th layer you just go straight from the 3rd to the final boss, making me feel cheated out of an entire layer of content. once you beat the boss, you get a cutscene revealing that all along you just wanted your freedom from this place, but the trickster lied, now YOU'RE an arch demon. Then you get a cutscene dedicated to the specific character you're playing, revealing minor lore, and what they plan to do next. This is INCREDIBLY unsatisfying. So none of the characters kill the trickster for lying to them? lucifer being trapped in a root at the top of the tower is just NEVER mentioned again or has anything done with it? There was no lore, or information given to me about any of the characters I was playing until the end, why should I even care about them? the ending dedicated to the phantasma made NO sense at all, since it was all dumped on me right at the end. I kid you not, I went browsing the internet afterwards JUST TO BE SURE that I didn't miss anything, since the grimoire was filled out, and I was sure I had to be missing SOMETHING that would progress the game further, and nope, nothing.[/spoiler] Listen, just play Downwell. its like 4$, and its infinitely better than this game, the lore is introduced better the the player, its more challenging, mechanics are more interesting, and its very stylized. Downwell is basically the exact same as rising hell, except you go downwards instead of upwards, cheaper and its better in every way imagineable. play that game instead, your welcome, I feel like i've done my due diligence in this review.