Heretical is a game that wasn’t on my radar at all until TSA’s Reviews Editor, Dom, put me onto it, and I thought, “Oh yeah, that looks cool!” It’s one that I hadn’t noticed, despite the fact that it’s so specifically built for me that Steam not recommending it to me is a total failing of the system designed to promote games to me. Seriously people, what are we doing if this doesn’t end up on my recommended games list?
My Steam-related woes aside, Heretical is an action roguelike with some seriously Soulsy vibes in both setting and the feel of combat. Death is everywhere, one of the NPCs is a skeleton with an eldritch horror for legs that’s praying a lot, and everyone is sad. This game is incredibly hard, and while progression is constant, it’s not immediately obvious. Each character you can play as has their own stats and a special skill, along with equipment preferences.
Combat is generally just you attacking, using an alternate weapon, or dodging, and all of your skills will be going off as you go. Some of those will be on a timer, some will be a set number of attacks, and some might be passive buffs. You can upgrade those as you level up, and along with that, new equipment drops constantly, so you get to pick between what you have and what you’ve picked up, with the loser of that competition immediately turning into gold.
It’s all very simple theoretically, but the reality is that you’re making builds that need to work together with each skill coming together as one, and ideally matching your character as well. You also get stat points to spend which you permanently unlock, and can apply at the beginning of each run to each character. That’s a lot of fun, because you can try out different builds pretty comfortably.
Combat isn’t complex, but it is a lot of fun, with most enemies being more than capable of ruining a run in an instant, especially as things get harder the longer a run goes on. For every 50 kills you manage, the difficulty goes up, and you get some special currencies to spend on shrines that will give you buffs and debuffs, but you can usually work off the debuffs. It makes for a constant stream of risk and reward, and while getting stronger is nearly always a good thing, it sure can come back to bite you in the butt if your build can’t keep up.
On top of all of that though, you get prophecies to complete. Each of these is a mission of sorts which will unlock something. Some of those are new skill slots, new skills, new characters, new items, and just about anything else. It means that every run, even the failed ones, often end up leading you towards something a little bit cooler. Not only that, but while it is a roguelike, the world itself is pretty set in stone. Bosses are always in the same place, and your progression speeds up as you learn the layout, but also as you unlock new shortcuts by kicking down ladders, or killing a boss enough times to permanently unlock a magical gate or something.
It just feels fantastic, and while it’s undoubtedly very punishing, every little unlock is a joy to achieve, and the enemies are wonderfully varied, and the starting characters feel meaningfully different. It also looks amazing, I really like the music, and I just think that if any of this sounds appealing to you, you should probably play it, because it’s a damn good game.
