Buy Hail to the King: Deathbat

I gotta say, I'm dissapointed. It's my own fault really, but I'm dissapointed. Looking at the screenshots, the game looks fairly good. Heck, it looks fantastic. I miss when games had such nice colours in them, and such visually enjoyable environments. Nowerdays, everything seems so dull in an effort to be more realistic. Watching the trailer and seeing that you could pick up coins and stuff made it seem like this game would take some classic elements of videogames and that it could be a lot of fun. Sadly, even though I've only played through one full mission, I'm not seeing it.

A bunch of people are probably already going to hit the thumbs down button on this review because it's negative, and they are fans of Avenged Sevenfold or something and can't accept the fact that they could be accociated with a bad product, but I am a fan of them as well. I'm not a hardcore fan of pretty much anything, but I enjoy their music, at least some of it. But you need to understand, I don't want to give this game a bad review, it's clear that effort went into this, as for how much though... I'm not sure.

The biggest problem, like it is most of the time, is just the gameplay. It's... well... there's nothing to it. Nothing to it at all. Do you like clicking the mouse button? Does that one thing alone make a game fun to you? Then I guess you might like this. But that's really all there is. There's no complex mechanics here for fighting. It's literally just pressing the left mouse button to swing your sword over and over, or the right mouse button to fire a quick magic spell. You can't even aim in this game, your mouse is used for clicking the buttons, and pressing "next" on the text boxes in the game. You do not, you CANNOT, actually aim with it. The mouse cursor is on the screen at all times as well, but that's not a big deal really.

What is a big deal, is the fact that to actually hit an enemy, you need to walk towards it first.

This doesn't sound that bad, but when the only possible way to dodge attacks is to walk AWAY from enemies, this makes it practically impossible to avoid damage a lot of the time, unless you play the game as though you were a manual balloon pump, taking a single swing, moving backwards, and then moving in again to take another single swing, for however long it takes to kill a single enemy, which judging by the enemies in the first level, is about 5 seconds per enemy. With quite a decent number of enemies, combat becomes very boring, very quickly. If it was fun to kill enemies, this wouldn't be a problem. But it's not fun. There's hardly any feedback to your blows, and it just doesn't feel good smacking things around with your sword.

Why is it like this? Why is this game so utterly mind numbingly simple? Well, probably because this is a mobile port.

Yeah, a mobile port. Hopefully this made some of you turn away already, because you know how badly this usually ends up. Mobile ports of games don't really change the gameplay, and since they were made for mobile devices, they are generally VERY simplistic in terms of gameplay. Oh, and it used to have microtransactions, though those are not in here any more. Take that as you will.

So, what exactly does this game offer? It has fantastic visuals, that I can't deny, it has pretty good music from what I can tell, though not all of it really sounds like what Avenged Sevenfold would make. And the voice acting is... non existant. Punishment for death is pretty much non existant as well, as every time you die, you just respawn at a frequent checkpoint with no consequence. Seriously, not even more effort, as enemies do not respawn. Except for the bossses of course. And with no way to dodge attacks other then just... moving slowly... bosses can be somewhat annoying to a degree. As like I said before, you need to move towards an enemy to attack them, and cannot attack while dodging in pretty much any way.

The incredibly simple and obvious mobile port type gameplay is not something that can be overlooked, and leaves this as a very boring and occasionally frusterating game. It's a shame really. I did not have high hopes for this, but it looked good from the screenshots. It ends up being more of a chore than a fun game. If only it was a bit more complex, or at least made it fun to kill things, this could have been good... but alas, it is not.

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When I first saw gameplay of HAIL TO THE KING Deathbat, I prayed, "DEAR GOD, please give this game a Steam release!" but this dream seemed SO FAR AWAY that it was almost LOST to me. I was about to grant my hope its REQUIEM when suddenly, A LITTLE PIECE OF HEAVEN shone at me and I saw it in the Steam store, leaving me with NOTHING TO SAY; a mere SCREAM of excitement was UNBOUND from my lips. I let it download as I went to work, but as I was COMING HOME all I could think of was playing this awesome game UNTIL THE END. So far, the game has met my expectations, despite trading cards being MIA (not for long, thankfully). I look forward to playing it until 4 AM.

I usually write kinda long reviews, but I'll keep this one short. This isn't a good game. It's a pretty lazy port of a mobile game, the controls don't feel good, and the whole thing feels really bland and dull. Yeah, it's filled to the brim with Avenged Sevenfold stuff, but that doesn't make it good even if you're a fan. Don't get this game.

PS: Unholy Confessions is my favorite song of all time, and hearing it play during the most boring and dull boss fights ever is painful.

I have a couple of their older CD's but I'm not a what you'd call a "fan", so this review has nothing to do with the band.

There are a few problems as others have noted:

* Escape quits the game without warning.
* It's hard to aim magic.
* Some actions require the use of the mouse, like dialogs and using a potion (?).
* There's no map of the areas.
* It's mostly "hit and run" fighting with no dodging or blocking.

But all that doesn't matter because it's just plain fun. The areas are fun to explore, it's fun to scramble after coins showering out of chests, and fun to run through the spikey logs and acid spewing statues.

The repeatable bonus stages seem to be where you make most of the money so make sure to find the 3 bats in each area to open them up.

Edit: I finished it on normal in about 5.8 hours. Nightmare mode looks interesting enough to replay it and find the few collectibles I missed.

Fun game for A7X fans but nothing major gameplay or story wise.

Great soundtrack, would recommend as a casual game to add to your collection if you're an A7X fan such as myself.

For those who've played the mobile version and are wanting to know what to expect from the Steam version, the answer is nothing more, nothing less. It's the exact same game in every way. There are no graphical options, the resolution defaults to your desktop resolution. The UI is still decidedly touch oriented, and gamepad support is lackluster requiring you to reach for the mouse every time a menu or pop-up box appears. You won't be playing this on your couch undisturbed. But it is a fairly smooth port that looks and runs about the same as its mobile counterpart. You won't be impressed, nor will you be disappointed.

For those who have yet to play it and want to know what the fuss is all about, the answer is not much. Hail to the King: Deathbat claims to draw inspiration from games like Diablo and Legend of Zelda, yet it sheds some of the most enjoyable elements of those games. All that awaits you here is a linear hack and slash with one button to slash, one button to shoot magic and movement keys. That's it. Equipment is limited to a weapon and items are limited to barely more than health and magic potions. Most of the levels share a similar design, typically a dark gothic appearance and consist of decent textures slapped on low-poly models and maps. The games story is decidedly lackluster and the only time the games music gets good are when an instrumental version of Unholy Confessions plays during the boss battles. Outside of that, it's Psuedo-Retro sounding tunes with Arin occasionally bashing his drums over the top. Hardly a terrible soundtrack, but a waste of what could have been a memorable one.

A rebuttal to the common prasing of the games difficulty: The game gives you five lifes and makes you restart the level should you lose them all. Aside from that, there's no other real consequence. The game isn't hard by any stretch of imagination and offers but a gentle slap of the wrist for repeated failures.

All things considered, the games price reflects the game itself. It's only a few bucks. Feel free to dive in if you're curious, but be forewarned: there's nothing to call home about.

If you're a fan of Avenged Sevenfold, you'll greatly appreciate this game. The music is great, and there's plenty of references to their songs. It's pretty fun, and if you like the genre then you'll like this game. The graphics could've been improved, but I don't mind.

Before i start i would just like to say this was gifted to me by a friend, who knows i absolutely hate avenged. That said i found this to be a pretty good old school, dungeon crawler game. (despite the fact i have to mute it when music plays becasue i hate it and listen to my own) Graphics wise, its meh, but people have said its intentional, so ill let it slide. The combat is basic, but still fun, magic is a pain in the ♥♥♥ to aim though. Overall, id give it a 7/10... now to find a game with slayer music :)

The game is pretty good but it can be more improved, i really like the instrumental songs' versions, expecially "A little piece of heaven", my favourite one.
I really like A7X, I listen to them a lot and they were my first band, so the only thing I wanna say is: "Good job to everyone, but you can do much better."
I hope there will be a sequel or something like that.


💀💀💀💀💀💀♫♫♫♫ (6/10)

As a fan of Avenged Sevenfold, this game is.. well.. good. But first, let me tell you, this game isn't like Skyrim or Dark Souls, so if you're looking for a "real" RPG like Skyrim, Dark Souls, etc, this game is not for you. This game is a nice port from mobile devices (iOS and Android), run smoothly without a problem on my crappy laptop.

The gameplay itself is simple, move with WASD and clicking your mouse to attack and casting spell. The soundtrack is a bit funny, never thought they would make such song. xD Story is "good", not "epic". Anyway, never press esc button, otherwise the game will close instantly. The graphic is.. err.. whatever, it doesn't bother me so much.

If you're a fan of Avenged Sevenfold, and want to support your favorite band, buying this game is a must. But yeah, I won't push you to buy this. If you think this game is a piece of ****, leave it. But if you're not a fan and looking for a simple, adventure game, this game might good for you to grab. It's cheap, only a few bucks tho. Though... I think they using The Rev to make this game more "interesting" for "fanboys" out there.