Hell Clock

I wanted to recommend this game, but unfortunately I cannot. As someone who loves both Roguelikes and ARPGs, the moment I learned of this game I rushed to buy it and give it a try, and at first it was everything I hoped for. But the more you play it, the more its flaws stick out. (As of writing this review I've unlocked every achievement and cleared half of Nightmare difficulty) [h3]Cons:[/h3] [list] [*][b]Layouts have 0 randomization[/b] - This is honestly pretty shocking, considering that stage randomization is a staple of BOTH genres. Since the entire premise of the game is playing the dungeon over and over again, this gets boring exceptionally fast. [*][b]Blessed Gear fights every other system[/b] - For those not familiar with the game, Blessed Gear is what you equip to your character and lasts between runs, basically the core of ARPG progression. The problem is that you have no inventory for it, so whenever a piece of gear drops, you have to decide on the spot to equip it or to ...

Got baited by a promising demo and bought the game day one just to find out this was early access in disguise with devs having no clue what to do with their product past chapter 2. More than half of the skills are completely non-viable, without life leech game is barely playable, multitude of stats have nearly no impact on anything, trinkets is hands down worst design decision ever, choice of upgrades you get during the run doesn't really dictate how your run will go - you just take same stuff every time. By the time I got to so called "endgame", which also completely nukes your progress prior to this, I felt like I need to be paid to continue playing it. Check back in a year to see if something improved or better don't.

Decent game, builds are pretty unique and the "backpack" type character build is pretty neat. All around i will say it's a decent game with one glaring issue that keeps me from booting it up or I'm instantly reminded of after the first run and stop playing every time. The bosses have WAAAAYYYYY too much hp and are just not fun to fight. The actual fight mechanics aren't bad, but after needing to cycle through their attack cycles literally 50+ times over 20-30 minutes to kill the boss, it's just not fun and makes me turn it off. I just don't have it in me to grind out a boss for 20+ minutes. They could tune the boss HP down by 75% and it would still take a bit to kill the bosses.

I feel like Hell Clock is a bit confused on what it really wants to be. It kind of wants to be an ARPG, but the loot isn't satisfying enough to really have that "one more run" feel - most of the relics you find will quickly be duplicates and upgrades cost a lot of currency with only few minor improvements. It also wants to be a roguelike, but floor layouts aren't randomized, so the game quickly devolves into running the same floors over and over and over again, and you don't really feel that much stronger between runs unless you are lucky that blessed gear drops that increases your damage massively. Most enemies are dead the moment you look at them, until you hit a floor that suddenly makes them into bullet sponges; and maybe, with a bit of luck and a few hours later, you can get past that floor and repeat the process. The setting is unique for sure, but the game is just very slow and boring, which even the developers addressed by adding a new game mode - but that requires starting ...

HellClock walks the line between a Rogue-lite and PoE but brings the downsides of trying to be both at the same time. You cannot clear a run on a single go because the game expects you to return from quests to progress your character and unlock things which gets boring because you are fighting the same bosses just quicker but your skill combinations are limited. If you were to play Binding of isaac, you are always excited with that combination of items you will find and with knowledge of the game you can find secrets and learn meta. In a game like PoE you are always progressing forward with your skill tree and gear, not having to go back to start and restart because of some time gate. In both games you keep getting stronger to move past the damage curve but in Hellclock you are a slave to it.

SPIN TO WIN literally the only skill you need and the most fun skill in the game are one in the same. Hold down a single button and soar through the hellscape like god intended

This game has a lot going for it, Hades meets Diablo. That said, it has some work to do in explaining systems still. The devs have added a lot but i still dont know what skill speed means over attack speed. I dont know how to aquire more constellation points or what completion bonus means, small gripes once they iron evertything out its a solid 10/10, right now 8/10

Game becomes literally unplayable when you start trying to climb hell levels. You're going to wind up with 1 fps at best. I'm running this on a 9800x3d and a 5080. Optimization is straight trash.

I initially played through the first two acts using a summoner build with the Old Bell skill. It was powerful, fun, and I breezed through content. As more skills unlocked, I decided to experiment with something new. That’s when the balance issues became apparent. I equipped a new skill, supported it with relevant relics, updated my blessings, and reset my constellations. Despite that, the damage was negligible. Thinking I’d made a mistake, I asked for help on Discord. I was told that to make the build viable, I’d need to invest 10–20 more hours grinding during the campaign—with no guarantee it would even work. That level of grinding is unacceptable to me. I’ve never needed a perfect or hyper-optimized build to complete the campaign in games like Grim Dawn, Last Epoch, or Path of Exile. As an ARPG, this game invites those comparisons. I left a review explaining that this level of investment shouldn’t be necessary just to experiment during the campaign. In response, the...

The game at its core is good, it has a fun gameplay loop, the clock mechanic adds tension to you runs, the skills are fun and responsive, overall a great experience. The story bit is clearly not the main part of the game, altho i appreciated it and made me actually dig into Brazil's history to learn more about the events mentionned. BUT (ofc theres a but..) at the time of writing this (august 24th 2025), performances are such an issue, with a high end pc, no matter the settings, my game just randomly dips from 240-300 fps to 20, until it randomly goes back up, and sadly, im more often near 20fps than 200.. From what i read it is being worked on, but its still the biggest issue of this game from what i experiences. Another thing that can be an issue is that endgame is still very new and still in beta, current endgame consist of 3 campain difficulties (that does get harder as you do, like you really feel the jump from one to another) and an ascension mode, that kinda take inspiration ...