Halls of Torment Steam Review

Halls of Torment is an Auto Shooter, like Vampire Survivors. And like Army of Ruin before it, it improves upon the Vampire Survivors formula in significant ways. But unlike Army of Ruin, they’re still updating Halls of Torments months after release, which is good! So I will review it based on how it is now, and Halls of Torment is good, really drawing parallels with the original Diablo It does this in two ways. First are the visuals and sound design, which seemed to be copied directly from the original Diablo. This allows the game to have its own unique identity among other auto shooters. The second is the fact there is inventory and more involved quests, which involve reading randomly found books.

It is worth showing a video of Halls of Torment, I show two different sections of game play, enjoy:

Halls of Torment: An Auto Action-RPG

When viewing the video, Halls of Torment appears to be another auto-shooter, but there are some big differences here. First, leveling up gives you options to upgrade traits, like action speed and strength, and weapons you already have. Weapons are gained via defeating mini-bosses or picking up banners on the field. Upgrading a weapon to level three allows you to upgrade it a new weapon. Arcane Shards(those shiruiken things), for example, gain the ability to splinter further. There is inventory, which modifies stats or gives you cool abilities, like summoning skeletons. You gain inventory by defeating bosses. However, you cannot keep the inventory until you use a well to send up an item, which you then buy from the well-keeper to permanently unlock it. Most inventory is not shared among characters, so keep that in mind.

Another welcome change to the Formula in Halls of Torment are the quests. Every area and character has their own set of quests to complete. Character quests tend to unlock traits which permanently upgrade the character. You can set a quest to show on the screen to track its progress. But even if you don’t do that, it’ll still complete. Speaking of characters, being a work in progress, the characters are unbalanced. The exterminator, who shoots a permanent stream of fire, owns all. Meanwhile, the cleric is pretty awful, as is the archer. I assume this will get fixed.

Conclusion

Should Halls of Torment get a Must Play? It should, but it won’t, because it is a work in progress. It is very unbalanced and important features, like equipment upgrading, is unlocked far into the game and not well explained at all. There’s a second currency at play with it, and I have no idea how to get it. Potions are unlocked via gathering items, but only if you wear a certain amulet and you get very few items per run. Still, for what Halls of Torment currently is, I’ll give it a recommended with an eight back-end score. Worth it now, warts and all, and will almost certainly be better later.

Overall: Halls of Torment is an auto-shooter that plays like an action RPG. It is a work in progress though, with a long way to go.

Verdict: Recommended

Steam Page