Hellion

Famed RPG Maker kentona has released another throwback to the 8-bit games of yesteryear, and as usual, it is a highly enjoyable experience.

The sleepy little town of Tristram Salidar has been plagued with misfortune ever since an array of dark forces has emerged in the Labyrinth Pit beneath the town’s church temple. Now a number of mysterious warriors have been drawn to the town to challenge the dark forces that have threatened to pervade the entire world. Has the Dark Lord Diablo Zaldach really been resurrected? Assume the role of a mysterious wanderer, explore the dangers of the Pit, find loads and loads of treasure, and unravel the mysteries of your own destiny…

Balance 4/5:

For the most part, the game is superbly balanced and a lot of fun. You are given one of seven classes to play as at the beginning, most being very similar to classes from Diablo II, and each class has a unique array of skills you may learn in any order as long as you have enough skill points, which you gain whenever you level up.

But you needn’t send your hapless hero into the depths of the Pit alone. There are a number of hirelings available in town willing to put themselves into your service. Some will require a fee but others will gladly follow you without pay in order to combat the darkness. The hirelings have a wide array of abilities but you cannot influence their statistics or skills the way you can the main hero. Fortunately, every time you hire one their level is set equal to your hero’s so there is no penalty for experimenting with allies the way there was in Hero’s Realm.

There are a limited number of encounters in the Pit, battles are all non-random and once you kill an enemy it is gone for good. For the most part, however, there are enough battles to keep you entertained without being overwhelmed, and experience comes at a decent clip so you will level frequently. The real perk to the dungeons, however, is all the loot you will find. There are mountains of treasures in the Pit. Mountains. And all of it is randomly generated. Enemies will leave behind certain items such as chests, bags, or books. Opening them gives you a random item or piece of equipment depending on the container. A very clever touch that goes a long way towards satisfying your inner min-maxer as you constantly hunt for the best items around.

The only problem with this is that, eventually, you are virtually guaranteed TO be min/maxed by a certain point just by virtue of the mountains of treasures you will find just by progressing through the game. Thus, by the final third of the game or so, all the challenge in the game virtually disappears since the player’s party will likely just be far too powerful for anything to challenge them. Of course, this only happens if you fight a lot.

Level Design 4/5:

What would be a very standard dungeon crawler is made a lot more entertaining by introducing some D&D style field-based skills into the game. Your character has a wide range of Out-of-Battle skills (OOBs?) with which to interact with your environment. Players can learn to pick locks on doors or chests, decipher runes to gain hints or open magical doors, pickpocket NPCs, Hide to avoid battles or get sneak attacks, disarm traps, detect hidden passages, traps or treasures, persuade NPCs to do favors for you, and more. Players less interested in finesse, or with less skill points to spend, can simply invest in the Bash skill, which can be used to smash down doors, open chests, break traps or force open certain walls (sadly you cannot Bash heads in lieu of persuasion). This adds a lot of satisfaction and payoff to even mundane things like opening a door and makes your journey through the pit a lot more entertaining. You will also encounter some simple puzzle elements within the dungeons, but these are generally not very frustrating.



Unlike Diablo, Hellion is a bit less insular, occasionally you will be required to leave town and venture across the world map to a different locale in search of clues. There are a handful of side areas that exist simply to delve into in search of treasure if you should feel so compelled.

Characters 3/5:

While your hero is for the most part a silent protagonist, you are allowed to influence his/her development a bit through means of an alignment system, which keeps track of your good and evil deeds to an extent. Your alignment affects how a handful of NPCs react to you and whether certain hirelings will be willing to work with you or not, as well as the ending you will get.

Your potential party members do not receive anything in the way of development but are characterized fairly well in their handful of dialogue, by the time they join you, you will have a pretty good idea of what they’re all about. The bad guys are less charmingly villainous than they were in Hero’s Realm but they are at least functional.

Storyline 3.5/5:

If you haven’t caught on by now, the entire storyline is ripped entirely from Diablo. You descend through 16 floor Labyrinth and eventually make your way into Hell itself. In fact, in earlier version you even fought a demon called The Butcher.

Fortunately, the storyline deviates from this formula somewhat in later areas, and manages to become surprisingly dark for a game with 8-bit graphics and barely 300 lines of dialogue. Mostly though, the variety of hirelings and available classes means the game has a great deal of replay value. I could see people doing solo-runs in this game.

Music and Sound 2.5/5:

There were a few problems in this category, namely that most sound effects were simple “boops” and “beeps” but an occasional RTP sound effect is mixed in and sounds really out of place. Aside from this, most songs are midis from various Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy games and work well enough, but the music used for the main hub city is very lighthearted and doesn’t really fit with the dark nature of the game’s later acts.

Overall 4/5:

A very solid dungeon-crawling adventure with a ton of replay value and a lot of really amusing and worthwhile features to enhance the experience. If this was a commercial game you’d get your money’s worth from it, but in this case it’s free so it’s even better. Definitely worth playing through at least once, and one of the few RM games you might enjoy playing through multiple times.