Your first Halls of torment run starts with a basic warrior, but new classes are quickly unlocked, each with their own weapons and gameplay rhythms. My favorite ended up being the exterminator class, which uses a flamethrower to simply turn everything around him into a wall of flames. If that's not your speed, you can choose from defensive shield bearers with extremely slow attacks, melee axe bearers who swing quickly with wild abandon, ranged archers who can deal damage from afar, magic users who make heavy use of area-of-effect spells, a class with a semi-autonomous dog that goes after nearby enemies, and more.
Diablobut also not Diablo
Just by looking at it Halls of torment screenshots, it's easy to see the heavy visual influence the game owes to the old school's grainy, isometric sprites Diablo. That retro, nostalgic appeal also extends to small details like the menu system and low-fi voiceovers for NPCs, which comes across as a deliberate but cheap design choice.
The game's old-school sprites also make it easier for your graphics card to handle literally hundreds of moving objects and flashy attack effects on screen at once. Despite this, at the end of the more difficult dungeons, my relatively advanced system started to struggle to maintain a consistent frame rate.
One of the less hectic moments in the game, to be honest.
Hunting for carrots
One of the less hectic moments in the game, to be honest.
Hunting for carrots
One of the more interesting maps takes place on a long bridge.
Hunting for carrots
One of the more interesting maps takes place on a long bridge.
Hunting for carrots
One of the less hectic moments in the game, to be honest.
Hunting for carrots
One of the more interesting maps takes place on a long bridge.
Hunting for carrots
The visual madness of all these old-school sprites can get a bit overwhelming, especially when some of your own summon attacks are difficult to distinguish from enemy threats at a glance. Overall, though, using different colors makes it easy enough to quickly evaluate a screen full of information and extrapolate what it will look like in the next few seconds. I especially appreciated the large, purple lines and circles that telegraph where projectile attacks will appear just before they do.
