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Digital-Red gives an excellent homage to Diablo in this Nokia-published N-Gage dungeon crawler. The game is incredibly similar to Diablo, in that you’ll find hack-and-slash gameplay mixed in with a few role-playing elements and magic added in. The game is certainly one of the most enjoyable N-Gage releases thus far.
In Requiem of Hell, you can play as either a male of female character – Troy or Linda, respectively – as you are revived by a fairy named Gigi. Gigi revived you because the evil King Dalu has escaped and wants to cause irreparable damage to the world. Obviously, your good-willed character cannot allow this to happen. As you progress, you learn from Gigi that your character was a brave fighter, great enough to make sure that King Dalu gets what he deserves. The interaction between the character and Gigi is amusing, sometimes because of their sassy relationship but other times because of the poorly translated dialogue.
Thankfully, the gameplay remained unscathed between its journey across the shores. The gameplay is very reminiscent of Diablo, so you’ll frequently be fighting, in real time, countless enemies with a variety of weapons. These enemies are pretty varied, so you’ll find everything from demoned-dogs to creepy sand-creatures are you travel around the game. The enemies are aggressive and will certainly come at you with no mercy, providing some fun gameplay. The different weapons you can pick up have different strength and abilities, so it is entirely possible to have a weapon that can paralyze the enemy. The game balances this out with weapons that break when used too often, forcing you to have a real strategy as opposed to simply using one super-powerful weapon continually. Along the way, the game includes a light experience system for the characters but nothing too extensive.
Aside from the extensive single player campaign, Requiem of Hell includes a fully functional cooperative multiplayer mode for two players. The game is a rare example of a key, Nokia-published title without N-Gage Arena support, though. Since cooperative play over the GPRS connection would probably not be possible, the exclusion of online rankings doesn’t bother much.
The game is certainly pretty. The different characters you’ll find in the game have respectable, sprite-based character models which animate rather well. The game throws many enemies onscreen at the same time and the N-Gage handles the action like a true champ. The different environments don’t have the same attention to detail but don’t distract from the visuals. Actually, the best part of the visuals is the colorful spell effects which light up the otherwise dim environments and are used frequently.
The game’s audio holds up well. Although the sound effects are nothing special, they are compelling and recreate the onscreen action well. The grief-stricken soundtrack is a bit repetitive but fits the game very well.
Requiem of Hell is an extremely competent action-RPG on N-Gage with enjoyable hack-and-slash action complete with an assuring presentation. Digital-Red crafted great gameplay, and Nokia should have spent a bit more time localizing the game’s dialogue, but as is, Requiem of Hell is one of the better N-Gage titles. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Nov 29, 2004
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