As a huge fan of Vampire Survivors and having played a LOT of the copycat games that spawned in its wake, I’m confident in saying that Halls of Torment is the best of the lot by far and even better than VS. Sick ass retro Diablo-like aesthetic that absolutely DRIPS with atmosphere and texture and personality, quest-based meta progression that’s way more interesting than just “spend 1000 gold for +5% permanent damage!”, 500+ challenges/achievements to complete, characters that are actually distinct and require very different playstyles, there’s GEAR you can collect and equip like an ARPG, and one of the characters has a who goes around biting the dicks off of demons.
If you have any interest in the Survivors genre or roguelikes in general I’d strongly recommend at least playing the demo or dropping $5 on the full game (god I love that VS set the trend of making these games dirt ass cheap). I started playing back when it first launched in EA and was immediately hooked and its only gotten way better since.
I’m also a fan of Vampire Survivors, but when I tried Halls I didn’t enjoy it. From the brief bit I played before refunding, it seemed that it was mostly “dude with sword” and didn’t scale anywhere near as crazily as VS (see attached hyperbolic screenshot below). Much worse, you had to aim with the other thumbstick. I also don’t really have nostalgia for Diablo. Would you say I should give it another shot?
My Survivors tierlist:
Imo yes, they’ve added more stuff to do since then and if you play on Agony mode you will definitely get close to the kind of chaos you mentioned in VS. HoT is less of a pure dopamine rush than VS for sure and I can see why that would turn some players off to it, but imo its a more refined and interesting experience.
I’ve barely played Holocure but the little I did play I remember enjoying a lot, I’m probably gonna hop into that one next. My personal ranking rn would probably be: HoT, Brotato, VS, Death Must Die (this will probably go up once they add a little more content, love this game), and Nordic Ashes in 5th.
I’ll probably pirate it and give it a shot, then. Totally forgot about Brotato! That should be above Death Must Die in my list.