Heretical

I keep coming back to how deliberately Three Swords Studio laid out its influences. The studio openly names Diablo 2, Hades, and Dark Souls 1 as the creative DNA here, which sounds like a dangerous cocktail. The surprising thing is that Heretical actually earns the comparison on its own terms rather than just wearing those names as a badge. This is an isometric action RPG built around climbing Sanctora Mountain, a plague-rotted kingdom sealed off from the world and ruled by the demigod cult leader Abidan, whose inner circle of Highborn guards every step of the ascent. The world-building is delivered the Souls way: item descriptions, environmental cues, and NPC dialogue fragments that reward the curious and quietly ignore everyone else. If piecing together a lore mosaic sounds exhausting, fair enough. If it sounds appealing, the setting has real texture to it. The loop is orthodox rogue-lite: every death strips your earned XP, items, and skills, but Prophecy Cards - the game's achievement framework - carry over between runs and unlock new playable characters, additional mechanics, and permanent expansions to the skill pool. The Well of Stars lets you deepen character perks between attempts, so progress is always happening even when a run collapses. Each hero carries unique stats and a signature ability, meaning an Elementalist run and a melee-forward character genuinely play differently, though community feedback has noted that the shared skill pool across all unlocked characters can introduce some RNG friction once you have a lot of options in rotation - there is a real chance of an Elementalist being offered nothing but melee skills on a given level-up. That tension between build identity and random draw is the game's sharpest edge, and for some players it will feel like the design's biggest flaw. For others, working around a bad draw is exactly the puzzle. Combat is weighty and somewhat deliberate in pace, which the isometric, fixed-camera presentation amplifies. Early playtest players praised the map design and the way camera angle shifts add cinematic variety to the traversal, though the same fixed camera occasionally obscures doorways and makes navigation awkward. Boss fights are the centerpiece: each guardian has a distinct skill set, and some have drawn criticism for feeling like damage sponges before their patterns open up. The darkness system - a risk-escalation mechanic that stacks pressure as you rack up kills - was reworked post-launch to replace punishing tentacle summons with the Devotee's Burden, a ritual that now asks you to choose between two sets of buffs and drawbacks. That change alone signals a studio paying attention to the room. Two major updates have already shipped since the October 2024 Early Access launch, and a new region and playable character were in the pipeline. For an Early Access title from a small studio, the reception has been genuinely strong. The broader player sentiment is warm, crediting the well-paced unlock system, the atmospheric world, and the constant sense of variety across runs. The friction points are real - the pacing can feel slow in early runs before the unlock tree opens up, and the camera has its stubborn moments - but the foundation underneath is solid, crafted with the kind of intentionality you only find in teams that are also the game's most obsessive players. Heretical is still growing, and that matters. Buying in now means accepting some roughness in exchange for watching something quietly special take shape.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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