Dante’s Inferno is loosely based on the epic poem of the same name. The same general concept is there except instead of a poet jumping into Hell to rescue his beloved it is a Crusader. I can understand the need to make this change for this kind of title. Does Dante’s Inferno reach epic heights or does it fall down to the pits of Hell?
While playing Dante’s Inferno all I could really think of is how much like God of War this title is, and of course, to me that is a good thing. I started my delve through Hell on the normal difficulty setting and was able to make it through the first couple levels with little trouble… well that is until I got to the boss of Lust. The boss fight was very difficult on normal, so much so that I got frustrated and turned the difficulty down to the easy setting. Then when doing that same fight I only took a tiny bit of damage and that boss became a cake walk. I am not sure why there is such a huge gap between the two difficulty levels but it definitely feels like my perfect match for the difficulty of Dante’s Inferno would be somewhere between easy and normal. I am curious to try the 2nd play-through of the game on normal difficulty as you keep all your powers from your previous play-through. Perhaps with all the added abilities and powers I can make short work of the normal difficulty setting.
Dante’s Inferno is not a long game by any means, I believe start to finish took me roughly 8 hours. But even after beating it I find myself wanting to play through this epic again. The combat is superbly done and the farther you get through the game the more complex combat gets as you learn enemy weaknesses and new enemies require you to re-strategize your attack. By far the worst level in the game is the 8th circle as it is a monotonous set of challenge rooms that seem to go on forever. One of the other aspects of Dante’s Inferno I disliked was the mini-game for absolving notable figures. Luckily if you find the 3 Beatrice stones then you no longer have to play the mini-game. All 3 stones are fairly early in the game too although one of them is a considerable pain to get as you have to jump just right to reach the ledge.
The graphics in Dante’s Inferno are absolutely beautiful. The environments are disturbing and eerie, and the character models are detailed. The combat animations are fluid and really add to the gameplay. The sound in this game consists of mostly eerie music, and the cries of the damned. There isn’t a lot of variation on this throughout the game, but this is to be expected.
Dante’s Inferno’s controls are intuitive and easy to get used to. I believe it is impossible to max out both holy and unholy in one play-through of the game, so the replayability is there to give the user a chance to max out both sides of the tree. However, I may just wait for the prequel episode and the St. Lucia expansion in hopes that I can max out my trees in those. The concept of relics is really nice and add a lot to the feel of the game. They are basically items you find throughout Hell that provide special abilities when equipped. As you kill more and more enemies these relics get more powerful.
Final Verdict
Overall, if you like God of War you most likely will like Dante’s Inferno as well. Just don’t be shy about putting the game on easy until you level up your character some.
Score
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