I really wanted to like Helskate, and the concept of mixing action roguelikes with Tony Hawk Pro Skater sounded like a unique experience that combined two of my favorite subgenres of games, both of which shine in their fluidity and snappy movement. Unfortunately, the developers weren't able to execute this merger successfully. I played Helskate in early access, but my criticisms do not include the lack of content. My issue lies with the content that is available.

My main gripe is that, in an attempt to combine action combat and skating, the map design takes a huge hit. The main appeal of THPS to me is that the level designs mimic the flow of an actual skatepark. You’re able to continuously move around the park and chain vert tricks and gaps to feel as though you never need to stop and backtrack. Helskate, on the other hand, does the opposite. The skateable portions of the map feel linear and don't allow for expression on the obstacles. Sure, you can choose your grinds, flips, and grabs to create combos, but 90% of your time playing the game will require you to hit a manual from one obstacle to the next to ensure your combo keeps building. The obstacles aren't close enough to chain because the maps are built like arenas. This design choice was most definitely made to accommodate mob spawns and provide room for melee combat. This leads to my next issue.

The game has an identity crisis. After playing it enough, it doesn’t really feel like a combination of genres. Instead, it feels like they created an action combat game similar to Hades with skating as a side objective. Helskate has abilities that you unlock as you progress, which give your tricks certain AoE effects or projectiles. One example is a projectile tornado that you can stack by performing a varial flip. These trick attacks are the best way to blend skating with the action roguelike elements seamlessly. Unfortunately, the developers don’t seem to recognize this because you rarely get these drops during your run. Even when you do, the abilities are locked to two at any given time. The rest of the run requires you to rely mainly on swinging your chosen melee weapon, which you equip at the start. The game shows really cool enemy gimmicks only during the few boss fights it currently has. My favorite is the Grindwyrm, a wyrm that slithers around the arena with a grindable back. It requires you to use your bag of skate tricks to combo while defeating an enemy. If most encounters were like this, I would consider the game in a much better state.

The game has potential. The angsty early 2000s aesthetic mixed with the colorful (and somehow lighthearted) depiction of hell is a really cool stylistic choice. Aside from my issues, the actual combat and skating mechanics are done really well. Separately, the mechanics feel super tight. Melee attacks are precise, and the skate physics and animations mimic Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 almost identically. I hope the team at Phantom Coast gives this game the proper time in the oven that it needs because “Devil May Cry Tony Hawk roguelike” is a string of words that shouldn’t go together but somehow does.

I clocked more than 5000 hours in the old THPS games so this was calling me, however the roguelite combat mixed with Tony Hawk skateboarding doesn’t really jell with each other here. Also, holy HELL this is VERY early access, with quite misleading game trailers showcasing a more complete-looking game. It left me pissed when I bought it and saw what we actually got:

The game requires you to heavily focus on dodging enemies (with some smaller enemies who don't give much indication that they're attacking) while still maintaining a clean combo and nailing some tricks for attack boosts, but you end up rubbing up against them/taking damage as you can’t really stop moving in a certain direction quickly besides dashing, which is on a cooldown. The grinding snake enemy specifically is a pain here, you can't even jump on the thing to grind it without injuring yourself 90% of the time due to the hitbox for it's spikes on the sides. The first boss is almost unbeatable due to randomly hopping off the back of the enemy while grinding and taking damage from the goo beneath it, it’s a mess.

And even with combat being so punishing, there are BARELY any health pickups, with a max health stat boost you can pick at the end of levels that doesn't even heal you one bit.

The skateboarding though? It's almost peak, it feels almost identical to THPS and if you've played those games, you're right at home, but the problem I find is I find myself skating around and busting out fat combos more than I am actually playing the game as intended, which I think is a problem. Also, some places that should be grindable just aren’t, and keeping your combo when coming down a half-pipe is super difficult. AFAIK there’s a revert in the game, but it’s hard to pull off easily.

The gameplay feels very split. On the one hand you're battling enemies, but then you spend long stretches skating around the map to collect all the letters, hit all the camera crows, get high scores and do side-challenges that it ends up feeling so disconnected. After spending less than maybe 1 minute on actually engaging in combat and rogue-lite goodies, you're just playing a tony hawk game, wandering around an empty map for secrets.

I understand it's in early access, but this feels VERY early access. We have full cutscenes replaced with text boxes for the devs as placeholders, random dialogue boxes appearing on screen for no reason, full maps missing textures and assets, clipping out of bounds constantly, and some of the side minigames not even working when initiating them, effectively soft locking my run.

I'm still giving this a thumbs up because the devs have something here, and I think with time they'll iron things out and this could turn into something awesome. I won't be refunding it, my moneys in and I'm invested in this, but I’m still pissed about the rather misleading gameplay trailers that we got before release. It doesn’t even compare to the mess we bought with our wallets.

At the time of writing Helskate has been released in Early access for about a week and to be honest...it is rough. Placeholder text, missing assets and a fair amount of glitches. Yeah problems are expected in Early Access, but for a $25 USD asking price that is kind of a lot for a game in this current state.

Aside from that while the core experience is fun it is deeply flawed as there is a struggle to meld the Tony Hawk gameplay/controls with the Rogue like combat design. I've enjoyed what I played but the idea of this one feels compromised. Rating it right now feels foolish as there is no telling where this will end up. Studio Phantom Coast has a long way to go before this even remotely reaches its potential.

I'll check in as updates roll out as I'm hoping they can land this one. But I won't be surprised if I come back saying this was a wipeout.