Dante's Inferno

Dante’s Inferno is one hell of an interesting game. Based on the first part of a fourteenth century of a set of poems by Dante Alighieri called The Divine Comedy, the poem follows Dante’s journey through the afterlife from hell (Inferno) purgatory (Purgatorio) and finally heaven (Paradiso). During the Inferno he visits the 9 levels of hell guided by the Greek poet Virgil. Besides the visual descriptions in the poem the similarities between the poem and game end there, the Dante in the poem is a week willed man who is in hell simply because, while the Dante in the game is a strong Crusader who enters hell in pursuit of his love Beatrice who is stolen by the devil. The game starts with Dante in a prison riot in Acre. As he cuts through the dozens of enemy’s he is stabbed in the back by an assassin where Death then appears to bring Dante to the underworld. Dante fights back and kills death (why not) and steals his scythe. Realizing his sins he goes back to Florence to his love Beatrice (in the poem she is an old love from childhood not his wife) and live a life of peace. But it is not to be as he finds his father and her murdered and Beatrice’s soul belonging to the devil due to Dante’s sins.

This leads him to start a quest to get back his love by going through hell itself. Dante begins his quest in the first level of hell (Limbo) where he meets his guide Virgil who begins to explain about hell and does so till the end. This provides a great way to give exposition. He explains Limbo is where all of the virtuous pagans like Socrates, Homer, and himself are. Also people who are to be judged go through Limbo and are judged by King Minos. After the fight through Limbo Dante heads down to the second level (Lust) where he must fight the demons led by Cleopatra and her love Marc Antony. Next is the third (Gluttony), a land of pulsating flesh, oozing with puss and bile where you fight the giant worm Cerberus. Next Dante descends to the fourth level (Greed) a place where people are dipped in boiling gold. Dante must fight his father, a greedy, lustful, and corrupt man who greatly influenced Dante into the man that he is.

With the sixth level (Anger) Dante rides the river Styx as he nears the city of Dis which leads to the final and even worse levels of hell. He breaches the walls by riding the demon Phlegyas, this leads him into the seventh level (Hersey) where Dante fights dark priests and practitioners of dark magic. He drops into the eighth level (Violence) where he must transverse 3 levels of violence. Violence against others which is punished by a river of boiling blood, violence against oneself a dark dense forest, where Dante meets his mother who killed herself when she realized her husband was cruel man and couldn’t take it anymore, and lastly violence against god, a barren desert where Dante meets his fellow Crusaders who went against god. There he fights his friend and lovers brother Francesco who died because he took the blame for one of Dante’s acts. After this he comes to the eighth level (Fraud) where Beatrice (who has been turned by Lucifer) sends Dante through a series of trials testing his skill and strength. At the end though Dante is able to free Beatrice who is then brought to heaven by the Archangel Gabriel who tells Dante that he will see Beatrice one day, and that his redemption will soon be at hand. Dante finally comes upon the ninth and final level of hell (Betrayal) where he fights the Devil. Once he wins he is able to seal Lucifer back away and escapes into Purgatory where upon To Be Continued… appears, and likely a sequel due to there being three poems and the second one being Dante’s journey through Purgatory.

All across the nine levels you encounter a variety of enemies, from standard demons, to flying demons, gold monsters, glutton worms, succubus, and etc. When you kill these enemies you get souls. Souls can be used to upgrade your defense, weapons, or magic. There are three kinds of souls, holy, unholy and neutral. To combat these enemies you have three weapons at your disposable, Death Scythe a melee weapon, Beatrice’s Cross as aranged weapon, and magic which can be both ranged and melee. Combat is simple involving simple hack and slash with your scythe with ranged attack with your cross. Magic adds more attacks as there are radial, passive, and straight attacks. Magic involves Mana which you can get from Mana fountains you find. Health is also recharged this way as well as you can find souls and relics which provide benefits to you and weapons. Along your path you come upon multiple souls (27), historical people who have been sent to hell for one of the 9 sins. You have a choice when you come upon them to both absolve them of their sins and gain holy souls, or you can punish them and gain unholy souls. Also challenging you throughout the game is a wide variety of puzzles. Most involve moving blocks from point A to point B, while others are considerably more difficult.

This is a very interesting game. Set in hell, this game manages to get the medieval view of hell to a T. Dark, foreboding, and very unpleasant, the game shows a very disturbing view that some people might not like. The combat is very brutal, with blood and gore to spare and it’s even more in boss fights. An example is with King

Minos where you essentially split his face in two with a spiked wheel. The setting is as well disturbing as Gluttony is a land of flesh, oozing with bile and pus. The enemy’s are of a standard variety with each land having their own special kind. But for some reason they appear in other levels even though they have no part in them. This is kind of weird such as seeing a succubus in Gluttony and so on. There are problems with this game; this game has a way of screwing you over with the uneven difficulty. In some place’s puzzles are extremely simple while other’s you use moves that you have never used before or again, or a solution that you would never think of or use again, this is quite frustrating and a huge turn off the only way I beat them is by consulting the internet which you should never have to do in a game. But these puzzles are few and far between so it’s not a huge bother. All in all I would say it’s a good rental.

The Good

• Great voice acting

• Good Story

• Visually interesting

The Bad

• Uneven level of difficulty

• A bit cheap

The Ugly

• A bit disturbing