Silent Hope (2023) [PC] review

There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.

Following up on the March 2022 release of Rune Factory 5, Marvelous has returned with a new adventure titled Silent Hope. A once peaceful kingdom has lost its king within the depths of what the inhabitants call “The Abyss”.

If you’re reading this and a picture is being painted in your mind from the anime Made in Abyss, you will feel right at home here. Exploring and making routine visits into the Abyss in order to gather supplies for the small, cozy hub world above ground describes the majority of this game. While rebuilding, we’re also tasked with finding intriguing secrets, the princess’s tear fragments, and uncovering the truth behind what happened to the king.

The kings daughter, a princess who has been directly affected by the actions of her father, opens the story and shares that she unintentionally encased herself within a crystallized tear for over a century. We are the seven champions summoned to help her find her father, but end up being denied access to the Abyss at first. The princess offers her blessing to our party so that we may overcome the shield of malice and gain entry to the mysterious depths below. It is at this early stage that I realized Marvelous’ title choice of Silent Hope is aptly named, feeling like a proper representation of the dynamic between the princess and our group. Only she can instill hope within the seven champions to traverse the Abyss, but also cannot vocally communicate this hope due to the thick ice barrier separating both parties from each other.

What comes next is one of my favorite character selection transitions that I’ve ever seen from this genre: seven different classes to learn, but only one out of the seven champions can enter the Abyss at any given time. The Archer controls large parts of the battlefield with long-range attacks and traps, the Rogue uses dual-blades to weaken enemies and deliver quick strikes, the Farmer uses a pitchfork which comes with a unique focus of buffs/debuffs, and so on and so forth. I decided to start with the Caster, an academic who uses staves to cast various offensive spells from a distance but quickly found myself swapping through each class by means of large, crystalized tears that are spread out in the floors below. Various buffs are applied during this swap as well, so you are encouraged to level each of the seven champions enough so that they hold their own. Don’t feel that this is a requirement though, maintaining a smaller focus of 2-4 champions is perfectly fine to play through Silent Hope and still have a bit of variety along the way.

Combat mechanics and other key aspects of Silent Hope are taught directly after the first leap into the Abyss. The orchestral soundtrack and the fluid movement are exceptional when working through the first few battles. The control scheme that Marvelous went with feels easy to learn and commit to memory after only a couple uses, and that remains consistent between each of the different champions. Skill Points gained when leveling up are distributed towards learning or upgrading skills, and there is an option to revert all skills which resets your Skill Points and allows you to re-spec at any time. You are also offered a couple class changes for each of the seven champions, first when you hit level 15 and the other with an additional hidden requirement. Each of the three class options offers three skills to mix and match, and while this didn’t change or enhance the core combat too significantly, it was enjoyable unlocking and leveling up the upgraded skills to provide better options for the later stages in the Abyss.

Weapons are provided very frequently within each floor of the Abyss; so frequently in fact that 90% of your findings after the first few hours will end up being scrapped for parts. Rare and Legendary weapons drop at a decent rate and I found that anything below a blue (Rare) wasn’t worth picking up any longer once your levels started hitting a decent threshold. Once I acquired strong enough gear, I ended up sticking with those and spending resources leveling them up as opposed to constantly changing between different weapons and equipment. It’s important to mention that you can fuse gems to your weapon and equipment slots which further enhances combat by offering elemental bonuses, stat buffs, and other significant perks affecting move speed and character growth.

Speaking of the items you acquire below, there are many aspects to this game that keep it simple but give you a good amount of uses for the loot you gather.  Chests which contain various items such as recipes and materials that you bring back with you to contribute towards building the base to an improved state above ground. The hub world above will consist of small shop-like areas that have you harvesting crops, creating dishes to take with you below, forging weapons, and so on. You don’t physically harvest or forge like you do in other farming games. Instead, you will set these tasks for your other champions to do passively while you fight below, and each shop can be leveled up the more you use their services, opening up additional slots for crafting.

There are Tear Fragments placed throughout the Abyss, allowing you to either return to the surface or swap places with one of the other champions. Most floors offer an additional challenge at the beginning such as using a certain amount of skills or refraining from using healing potions in order to receive additional rewards. You will stumble across darkened portals called Memory Rifts that are scattered randomly across various floors, and these serve as optional single-floor challenges with more difficult enemies and greater rewards.

As previously mentioned, choosing the name Silent Hope is thematic, but this isn’t always a positive. Coming from the Rune Factory series where dialogue and relationships are the primary focus, the princess being the only character who is voiced and given dialogue feels like a significant downgrade. The seven champions also don’t have any sort of interaction with each other, and they don’t bring any personal stories into the mix either. They unfortunately feel like blank slates, and I often found myself wishing they at least had some semblance of personality. While the champions never talk, it feels like the princess never stops talking, and I can see this becoming a significant annoyance for some after getting further into the story.

If you don’t mind the main focus of Silent Hope being a cozy, repetitive gameplay loop that has you collecting items, fighting enemies, leveling multiple classes, and creating a home above the depths with the materials you return with, then this will be an enjoyable experience for you. It operates quite differently than what you might expect following their other titles, however that isn’t a bad thing if you enjoy Marvelous’s work in general and are looking for a shorter, compact experience.

Special thanks to Marvelous and XSEED for sending us a copy of Silent Hope for this review.

PIXEL PERFECT

Recommended

Hailing from the mitten state, Alex is a physical collector and gamer of all genres for over two decades. He has established himself in wedding videography and finance which he uses to help encourage others in forging their own path in remote work and full control over how far they can take their passions to support themselves and their families.