BELOW Reviews
A maddening eschewing of basic exposition makes Below feel like something of an arrogant work - but ultimately it wields a tremendous audiovisual aesthetic and weaves an interesting, if not an always thrilling, take on the roguelike adventure template.
We found ourselves constantly craving more information, only for Below to not provide it.
Below is a roguelike that excels at making players truly feel like they’re a lone adventurer on a dangerous island filled with secrets. I liked its simple, colorful art style, its music, and atmosphere, but the gameplay pushed me away.
BELOW will prove itself divisive, no doubt. But for those willing to take the plunge, it deserves the brave few who explore its depths.
Despite some issues, the wait was worth it.
Although it has a tendency to frustrate, both in terms of design and execution, Below offers a compelling adventure set in a mysterious world that's just begging to be explored.
Below's hand-crafted design is constantly at war with itself and the player, despite the gripping world Capy Games has created.
have the game worth the wait? definitely not.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Below is not an inviting or wholly accessible experience. It does, however, have a lot to offer to players who enjoy uncovering mysteries and delving headlong into the unknown. It's a more hardcore Zelda game without the true bite of a Souls-like. Love it or hate it, Below is unabashed in what it is and what it demands of players who brave its depths.
Capybara Games' Below is a frustrating and empty experience that proves ultimately unworthy of casual players time or patience.
Below is a solid and well-designed game that will challenge every level of gamer. Steeped in mystery, fans of Roguelike dungeon exploring will feel right at home in this subterranean adventure.
Below is a quite convincing Rogue-lite with good visuals and great music, despites the lack of tutorial and narration, and a progression that can be very tough and frustrating.
Review in French | Read full review
Below's maddening edge is an open rebellion to its quiet sophistication. It's loaded with intrigue but resistant to modern methods of approach, creating a Rorschach test where losing patience with its internal contradiction is as credible of a reaction as relishing its idiosyncratic isolation and adversity. Ultimately, Below is a curiosity in which gratification is dependent on personal resolve.
BELOW evokes a fantastically ominous air of foreboding with its soundtrack, and its visual style is unquestionably superb, but as an example of the roguelike, Capy's game does nothing new. Perhaps it's intentionally pared-down, but the resulting game is enjoyable for an hour or two, and a relentless chore thereafter.
Below is a good game, but it could have been something great with some more attention to things that were bound to frustrate gamers from the get-go. It's a solid adventure, and a wonderfully interesting mystery. But it's not always fun to play.
Below is a beautiful game that has a lot to offer players and a lot of interesting sights to see. However, it requires the players to put up with quite a bit in order to see all that.
After five years of waiting, though there are some frequently fantastic examples of sound used to further the tone and aesthetic, a similarly plentiful amount of contradictory design choices and unnecessarily tasking moments leaves BELOW with many rough edges.
If you like to unravel a mysterious world that doesn't hold your hand, then you might find something in BELOW. If you're looking for an action-packed roguelite, BELOW is not it.
Below is a dark-space opera with a strong imagery that revolves around the concepts of darkness and light, good and evil. It is a well built hardcore game with procedural dungeons and traps. It is not suitable for casual players.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Below is a punishing dungeon crawler, mixing elements from roguelikes, Dark Souls and survival games to create an often painful, yet oddly enticing action-adventure game.