Hellboy Web of Wyrd Review

Spikes of supernatural activity are everywhere, so it's time to take control of Hellboy as you head out to The Butterfly House to investigate a surreal realm named The Wyrd. Hellboy Web of Wyrd is a title created by Upstream Arcade and published by Good Shepherd Entertainment, inspired by the Hellboy comics in collaboration with Dark Horse Comics and Mike Mignola (the creator of the comic)!

Hellboy Web of Wyrd is a 3D action title with heavy roguelite inspirations that closely resemble some elements of Hades in its design. You take control of Hellboy as you set out to The Butterfly House and soon find yourself entwined with the Wyrd, a strange world that resembles different geological locations alongside different times. You start off in the Mediaeval period and work your way through numerous areas with myths, monsters, and a group of deities.

Marked as the Protagonist by Sheherazade, you embark on a journey to free these deities that seem to be controlled by a mysterious, almighty overlord that has their grip around the Weavers. The game has an underlying story you can follow, though most of the dialogue is optional, and you won't have to talk to anyone for the most part, as you can jump to the Wyrd as soon as you come back out. 

That said, as a person who knows nothing about the Hellboy franchise (with this being my first exposure overall), I enjoyed it enough. The story is relatively simple and has Hellboy fighting an enemy he's faced prior, though I can only imagine the narrative itself is more enticing to those who know more about the universe it's set in.

Once you've finished talking to everyone at The Butterfly House, it's time to beat up some baddies! You get four abilities at your disposal: your trusty punch, a ranged armament (first unlocking the pistol), an amulet, and a Vengeance attack. For defensive options, you have a dodge and a block, both of which can be done "perfectly" to get a bonus if you do it at the very last second an enemy attack would connect.

Combat is quite simple once you start it up and far less intimidating than it seems in the tutorial. Every room you explore in the Wyrd has what’s called a "Big Bad", which is the main enemy you have to defeat to move on to the next area. The Big Bads are stronger and more capable than the fodder that fills the room; these special foes should be the primary focus, and you'll usually be fighting one at a time, with a second being introduced later on in the game. You have to traverse four worlds, and each one has a variety of Big Bads that block your path. There are usually three variants, with more being introduced once you reach the second half of the game, where it expands and becomes far more difficult and complex.

The first half is easy — sometimes, too easy. The reason for this is just the obscene amounts of damage and health that Hellboy has at the start, with two health bars that enemies have to go through before you actually "die". The first one is the game's most robust and most broken mechanic: Toughness. The yellow slots in your health signify this, and it's basically an ever-regenerating chunk of life that you recover most of (if not all of) with each room you pass.

The second is your actual health, which enemies can only damage once they go through your Toughness. This is the one that dictates when you die, but for your first health to run out, enemies will have to batter you a lot, which in a one-on-one situation doesn't happen nearly enough to actually occur. And even when your Toughness is running out, you can kill the fodder around to restore it by chunks, which was the most overpowered thing in the game.

Truth be told, the first half of the game was the weakest link. Though I very much enjoyed being a powerhouse to be reckoned with, Hellboy Web of Wyrd is a roguelite title, and I couldn't benefit from some of the upgrades because I was ploughing through levels, meaning I didn't get enough currency to upgrade everything I wanted. Considering for the first five hours of the game, I was pretty much immortal, the criminal amount of strength I had started losing its charm, and it felt like I was mostly button-mashing against enemies with little-to-no repercussions.

As a roguelite title, I was likely under-levelled for the second half of the game, as I had passed everything without any obstacles. Basically, for each Big Bad you defeat, you earn a currency shaped like an orb that you can spend on various perks, including upgrading your weapons. Since I never really died, I had the minimum amount of power by the time I reached the second half, where Hellboy Web of Wyrd picked up the difficulty. Even that, however, was a bit too easy, and I passed through most of the game without dying.

The complaints about the game being too easy aside, however, Hellboy Web of Wyrd is a thoroughly enjoyable fighting game. In pretty much any encounter, you have to target an enemy and duel them in one-on-one combat, where some of their attacks can't be blocked, so you'll need to learn to dodge properly. Once you've dealt enough damage to their Stamina, they'll get stunned, and you can do the most satisfying punch I've had the pleasure of doing, which shoves them back and knocks them against the nearest wall, dealing a lot of damage.

The combat is most gratifying at the bosses, who are far more resilient and dangerous than the Big Bads. With five different bosses scattered throughout the world, they aren't necessarily the hardest to defeat, but I found the back-and-forth nature of offence vs defence to be more enjoyable. Once you defeat them, you unlock a new "boon" you can get, which affects one of your three main abilities, with the deities giving you other types of boons that affect more passive elements (like the amount of ammo in your armament).

Hellboy Web of Wyrd is a genuinely fun title to play. Though I do wish there had been an option to make it harder, it might not be nearly as ungratifying if you play one run at a time every so often, as it doesn't feel like the type of title you'll want to binge from start to finish.