Another option to the roguelike genre

This is a exclusively single-player game, that allows the player to choose a class and advance through the Nordic realms fighting against various enemies and Jotunns, the famous giants of this mythology, bringing simple and intuitive mechanics, reminiscent of several games in terms of how it handles the distribution of the interface and combat organization, such as Hades and Vampire Survivors.

Exploring the story and gameplay

Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel doesn't present a very dense or even complex story, basically, what is presented to us as context is a narration in a small cinematic when opening the game for the first time that provides some information and lets the player know that the available heroes to play are warriors who need to face trials to "escape from the clutches of darkness and become legends."

That being said, from this brief introduction we are already introduced to the available classes, some of them unlockable as we play and in general are very simple classes, being: barbarian, two magic classes (Seeress and Flame Sister), and ranger.

Despite the simplicity of the classes, what makes the game more complex are the blessings we receive as we level up during the arenas, these blessings are granted by the Norse gods and we can build a customized build, combining abilities from two or more gods, in addition to being able to choose abilities from the talent tree corresponding to our chosen class, in the same way.

Outside of matches, each class has its own talent tree, which improves stats, unlocks new ability possibilities, and so on. Honestly, it's a very complete system full of possibilities.

The frenetic combat and its challenges

This game is definitely an interesting addition to the saturated roguelike genre, following mainly the footsteps of Hades and Vampire Survivors, as mentioned earlier, Jotunnslayer brings its own identity and interpretation of the genre into practice, bringing graphics that seek a bit more realism and more elaborate 3D models, giving it a fresh look that attracts new players, but this doesn't exempt it from having its defects and flaws.

It's important to note that the game's difficulty is relative, there is a difficulty selector before entering the arenas, which are unlocked by having won on the previous difficulty, for example, for the difficult difficulty to be unlocked, it is necessary that the medium difficulty has already been overcome, which makes the difficulty punishment another very relative point, since in the lower difficulties you can easily steamroll everything in your path and allows you to test builds more calmly.

For this review, we played on several difficulties to explore the difficulty progression that the game offers and so far it seemed like a balanced experience, I think it's important to emphasize that we had access to a test version of the game, which may differ from the official release version.

An important point to address is the character's interaction with the phase events and how, for now, it seems a bit too rough. Let's go, as soon as we spawn we can walk freely through the arena and interact with circles that start challenges that must be completed in time, so that we can summon the Jotuun before time runs out, in addition to being able to collect gold, food to restore life, and even chase golden birds that drop rewards, in the style of Diablo III with its goblins.

These circles I mentioned are a mixture of 3D and 2D models and the rewards that fall on the ground also follow the same graphic style, what caught my attention in a negative way is how the chosen arts and models used differ greatly from the game's graphic style, giving the impression that they were made hastily. Again, it is a test build that may be different from what the team prepared for the official release.

The combat has styles that the game allows you to choose, in terms of being manual or automatic, for the review we preferred to leave the standard mode that the game suggested, which consists of automatic attacks and autocast abilities, but with special abilities being used via player command. Overall, it was an interesting experience, the blessings of the gods add a lot to your gameplay and it's possible to build very varied builds. However, the issue of animations and models differing from the graphic engine is also present here, giving even more the impression of being made hastily.  

A good release that needs polishing

Playing Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel was a good experience, the dynamism to build a custom build and the combat in general make the game very fun to play, despite its limitations. As mentioned earlier, the combination of graphic styles is a negative factor that needs a little more care, another important detail is the attack animations and character running/movement, they still give a very artificial feeling and need to be reviewed.

The game, in general, is easy to play, especially in mechanical terms, it has some relevant tutorials, but the overall experience is very interesting and has a lot of potential, the setting of the realms and the historical and mythological aspects are very well represented and, with the difficulty scaling, the game can be balanced at the player's discretion, a very positive point to appeal to different audiences.

The game is localized in several languages, it doesn't have any dubbing, except for cinematics, it's a factor that personally displeases me, but I hope that with a successful release, it will be possible to cover more languages.

The game's performance is good, as it has good optimization and is not too demanding on system resources, despite the graphic defects it's a game that manages to bring a sense of modernity, in addition to having support features to help with increasing the frame rate, such as upscaling technologies (XeSS, DLSS, and FSR3).

A project that deserves a chance

My personal experience with Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel was good in most aspects, with the setting and combat being its highlights in my gameplay. Of course, there are still points to be optimized and polished, but it's already a very fun game that is very easy to play for hours on end. Anyway, the game as a whole brought me good hours of fun.

The key mapping is very intuitive, it's easy to get the hang of it and it fulfills its function well, the game's audio is very good and has a very thematic and well-crafted soundtrack, overall, it's a game that I would recommend to the general public, it has its charm and I believe that the community that will form around it will help a lot in the overall development of the project.

The game offers a good quality of life, with a complete interface, as well as good settings and customization options for controls, graphics, and audio.

For this review, the game was experienced on PC, using the Steam platform. I thank Grindstone for granting the early access key.