Silent Hope is a new action RPG developed by Marvelous(XSEED). Read our full review to learn all our thoughts about the game and if it’s worth your time and money.
Silent Hope Review Overview
Silent Hope Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Fun and Fleshed out Heroes System |
Enemy Design is All Over the Place Subpar Environmental Design Minimal Damage Feedback |
Silent Hope Overall - 76/100
Silent Hope is fun, with surprisingly fleshed out play styles across the seven playable heroes. The adequate story, alluring art direction, and amicable music makes this a simple but enjoyable game, albeit with a few missing quality-of-life improvements. However, it pulls its punches for the majority of the game, lacking enough enemy variants and engaging environments. With its best content in the late stages of the main story and in the post game content, you’ll have to invest a large number of hours to get the most out of Silent Hope.
Silent Hope Story - 7/10
The story of Silent Hope serves as the driving force behind the game. It purposefully takes a backseat for the gameplay to breathe, only progressing by having bits and pieces of the mystery being slowly revealed. For a dungeon crawler action RPG, this way of storytelling serves to highlight both the game and the story itself. It nails the fairy tale-esque nature of the story by initially seeming bubbly and lighthearted, but over time revealing some darker, more mature themes.
Silent Hope Gameplay - 7/10
Silent Hope has a variety of unique play styles that differ from hero to hero, and learning the skills and classes for each character is very fulfilling. However, much of the gameplay is marred by a lack of enemy variety, as most enemies share the same common attack patterns, leading to tedious and repetitive combat. The majority of the procedural levels suffer from the same issue, acting as mere scenery changes with shallow environmental hazards, and thus ending up being insignificant to the gameplay. These two points by themselves could be glanced over, but the combination leads to a dulling of excitement in both exploration and combat over time.
Silent Hope Visuals - 7/10
In the modern age of high fidelity, Silent Hope’s visuals might appear outdated, but its art direction is consistently charming through and through. The chibi models of the characters are cute but vicious, the environments of all biomes are well decorated, and the combat VFXs are nice and snappy. The artstyle might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the game has visual polish and plenty of desirability to go all around.
Silent Hope Audio - 8/10
Contrary to the title of the game, it isn’t totally silent, but filled with a lot of appreciable music. Each biome’s track perfectly fits the environmental theme and heightens immersion. The boss encounters turn grand and intense as the fights start and rage on. The SFX all around, from exploration to combat, and even the menus, all sound perfect. The cracking sound of defeating enemies in rapid succession is just absolutely music to my ears.
Silent Hope Value for Money - 9/10
There is plenty to enjoy in Silent Hope, being priced at $39.99. Cycling through the seven different characters, leveling them up, and getting better gear all provide an adequate amount of content. After the main story, the game reveals a new plotline and tons of excellent new content; so much so that it essentially feels like a sequel of the game. But to reach this point, you’ll have to finish up the main plotline, and more importantly, not get burnt out from the repetitiveness of the grind.
Silent Hope Review: A Drawn-Out Crescendo
Pros of Silent Hope
| Things Silent Hope Got Right |
|---|
|
Fun and Fleshed out Heroes System |
Fun and Fleshed out Heroes System
The seven playable heroes of Silent Hope are undoubtedly its most polished aspect. All of the characters’ skill sets are so widely different from one another. From rapid-fire punches, to quick clean cuts, or to sluggishly powerful strikes; switching from hero to hero essentially transforms the game. Even their dodges are noticeably different from each other, ranging from simple rolls with low cooldowns to instant teleports with longer cooldowns. Each hero has their own branching classes that can be obtained after leveling up, which further unlocks more skills, and even changes their outfits!
Then, with RPGs always come the stat screens. Each hero is carefully balanced according to their playstyle, whether physical or magical, fast or slow, melee or ranged. Switching a hero to another class will also change stats. Some stat changes are direct upgrades, while some outright modify the builds to suit the newly unlocked skills.
Last but not least, Silent Hope enables you to switch heroes in and out in the middle of runs, through the use of a giant Crystal scattered across floors. This allows players to prepare and plan runs beforehand with differently equipped heroes in accordance to the different types of enemies. Suddenly find yourself in a biome filled with enemies susceptible to magical attacks? Switch out your physical attacker and call in your mage immediately. You’re also given a random buff for every swap. The swap buffs stack as well, incentivizing multiple swaps per run, most notably on floors where there are multiple Crystals available!
It’s surprising how fun the character system is… which makes the next section a bit of a bummer.
Cons of Silent Hope
| Things That Silent Hope Can Improve |
|---|
|
Enemy Design is All Over the Place Subpar Environmental Design Minimal Damage Feedback |
Enemy Design is All Over the Place
Silent Hope’s characters and combat are good, but it lacks the enemies to make it great. After completing the first biome, I was excited to see what other types of enemies would appear. I had suspected the initial biome to be some sort of tutorial to ease players into the feel of the game, due to how simple the enemies attacked. However, as I continued further onto the next biomes, I suddenly realized I’ve been fighting the same enemies over and over again; that they were just given different character models and stats.
Imagine landing in a new dungeon, excited to take on new foes! Then, you see this cool looking giant mech in the distance. You apprehensively approach it, wary of how destructive their attacks might be. It spots you, looms over you, and just… punches forward, very slowly. Would you believe me if I said this happens with so many of the cool looking creatures the game introduces throughout its dungeons? The disappointment built up so much to the point where I stopped bothering to look at the enemy models and just attacked blindly. There was no fear of danger or getting in over my head because I knew I could just… slowly walk out of the way.
Though I did experience some combinations of enemies that were actually a thrilling experience, with all of their simple yet varied attacks coming at you all at once. I found myself dodging projectiles and having to avoid AOE (area of effect) attacks, all the while being chased by agile attackers. Unfortunately, I only experienced that a handful of times. Not only that, it was a situation I had gotten myself into after kiting them towards a single location and engaging all at the same time. I had to make my own fun, because the game wasn’t going to make the enemies fun.
This lack of enemy variety leads to a game design that depends on mere stat changes and enemy numbers to increase difficulty. The challenges just started becoming "How many enemies should we put here to make it harder?" making the difficulty feel contrived. It becomes less of a matter of how to properly utilize the skill set your character has, but more on what level they are and what gear they have. It seems to be the core difficulty scaling the game is presenting, and by mid-game, prevents requiring any skill to fight common mobs. Silent Hope has good characters, but it doesn’t have many good enemies. And for fights, it takes two to tango.
To its credit, the game starts to innovate during the latter stages of the main story, and even more significantly in the post-game. Enemies with unique attack patterns finally entered the fray, and suddenly I was getting hit with more attacks and status effects that required me to be engaged in the battle more carefully and to dodge more precisely. Enemies no longer appeared in hordes, but they were still enough to cause me Game Over after Game Over.
As I went through the post-game content and repeatedly died to common enemies, I still found myself having fun. It wasn’t because my gear was underleveled that I perished, but rather on things like how I positioned myself in the battlefield. That kind of death is much more reasonable, and, really, is a mark of a good game. The developers clearly held back and placed their most challenging foes in the latter stages. I just wish this level of challenge was there consistently from early to mid-game as well.
What DOES stay consistent throughout the game, however, are all the memorable bosses. They have totally different movesets and patterns that actually engage the player to be tactical in battle, forcing them to avoid and react to their unique attacks accordingly. They were truly a joy to fight. However, these compelling boss fights are so thinly spread out across multiple biomes, padded with floors of the same enemies over and over again, that it becomes a drag to get to them.
While on the topic of biomes being padded with floors…
Subpar Environmental Design
The game features varying biomes with procedurally generated levels, but they don’t really have much impact over anything besides changes in scenery. Sure, there’s a snow biome and a volcano biome, but they’re more akin to themes rather than actual environments that influence gameplay. There was a clear attempt to innovate by having some hazards that spawn here and there. All biomes had random explosive barrels that seemed like an afterthought. Though setting them off would be helpful in the early game, they do a set amount of damage, so they barely made a scratch as the game progressed.
The snow biome had homing snowballs that caused damage, while the volcano biome had craters that temporarily spewed out fire. They were ultimately inconsequential however, as the snowballs were slow and difficult to control and lead to enemies, while the craters were stationary and enemies would just move out of the way. As tools for the player, they’re weak and unreliable against enemies. As environmental hazards, avoiding them would barely be an inconvenience, and would just be unnecessary time wasted on waiting them out.
Nevertheless, much like the enemies, the environment design gets better ONLY when you reach much further into the game. The best implementation of these hazards that I wish had been replicated to earlier biomes was in the castle, where you could trigger pressure plates to activate cannons. The pressure plates were strategically placed in the middle of combat zones, so it was inevitable that you or an enemy were to step on it. It added another layer of complexity, as you needed to either use the cannons but not get hit, or prevent the enemies from activating them. Unfortunately, that was the best the castle could do, and it knew that. Cannons were placed at every floor, and eventually, like most of the other things in this game, the novelty, ingenuity, and fun of it all were worn out.
These problems could usually be forgiven as it’s the essence of a dungeon-crawler to focus on completing levels and advancing to the next floor. But with these insignificant location "changes," afterthought hazards, topped off with repetitive enemies, make it so that there isn’t much to look forward to from these randomized floors and biomes. They contribute nothing to innovating the well-worn cycle of "Defeat all enemies, gather loot, and get to the gate at the end!"
It neutralizes the supposed excitement over the "Engaging Exploration" that the game promises.
Minimal Damage Feedback
The game barely helps to inform you when you get hurt. There were multiple instances where I would be battling through a horde of enemies, only to not realize I was taking damage until I was knocked out. Though the player model momentarily flashes and pops out a red number for any damage taken, these get lost within the visual clutter of the combat. An ideal remedy would be to have the screen borders subtly flash red when taking damage. This basic implementation is already widely present in most action games to quickly inform the player that they’ve taken damage.
There is an option to turn on a floating health bar above the player’s character, which is curiously turned off by default. Though the bar helps a bit, I still often found it getting lost in the shuffle while battling in large groups of enemies. You can see it in the image above, where there’ll be so much clutter onscreen that it becomes difficult to keep an eye on it.
The game also fails to properly inform the player when they are in critical condition. At the start of a run, the player gets two health potions. If the player has potions remaining but gets their health depleted, they will automatically consume one to survive. However, the amount healed by the potion is halved. This motivates players to watch their health at all times and be aware of when they’re in critical condition to take a potion so as to avoid the healing penalty. However, when in low health, the game does nothing to tell you.
They only begin to show a visual cue of a dark aura surrounding the screen when the player is in critical condition with zero potions left. I can see the line of thought of why it was implemented this way, but having the visual indicators during all instances of low health is an obvious quality-of-life feature that should come standard.
These two factors of limited information have caused me a few too many knock-outs and restarts, as I was rarely able to recognize that I was taking damage and was at low health during combat.
Is Silent Hope Worth It?
Yes, But Only If You Enjoy The Grind
For just $39.99, Silent Hope has an adequate amount of content and good enough gameplay. However, the bulk of it would be mindlessly dispatching similar batches of enemies over and over again to level up and get better gear. After getting stronger, it’s time to do it all over again in the next biome, and the next, and the next. If that’s your cup of tea, Silent Hope will be worth the purchase. If it sounds like Sisyphean purgatory to you, then pass on it.
Silent Hope Overview & Premise
The kingdom has fallen into silence as its king has stolen all its words and plunged deep into the Abyss. His daughter, left behind, is stricken with grief and cried and cried until she was encased with her crystal tears. Years later, seven lights fly out from the Abyss. Eventually, seven wordless warriors converge upon the entrance of the Abyss, where the crystal-encased princess awaits them. She speaks to them through her heart, and asks them to venture into the Abyss, find the king, retrieve all the words, and save the kingdom.
Silent Hope Product Information
 |
|
| Title | Silent Hope |
|---|---|
| Release Date | October 3, 2023 |
| Developer | Marvelous (XSEED) |
| Supported Platforms | Nintendo Switch |
| Genre | Action, Role-Playing, Dungeon-Crawler |
| Number of Players | Single Player |
| ESRB Rating | Everyone 10+ |
| Official Website | Silent Hope Official Website |
