Halls of Torment: Boglands DLC – PS5 Review

We’ve been playing Halls of Torment pretty solidly since we reviewed it last month and those German devs, Chasing Carrots, certainly did deliver an enjoyment and addictive game but one that’s quite the time sink.  We’ve put in countless hours already and so we’re not all that convinced there needs to be more of it but here is Boglands, a paid-for DLC that adds a fair bit more to the original game.

The DLC isn’t immediately available to you after purchase and you’ll need to complete a short quest to give you the option to play it but that’s a good thing because it also represents a step up in difficulty over the main game.

Where the original game offers up timed levels, the titular Boglands stage doesn’t.  There’s a timer but this time it counts up and is pretty irrelevant.  What’s important instead is that you’ve got to power through as the stage gets progressively harder.

In terms of the stage, there’s not anything remarkable about it.  As with the other levels in the game, it’s a big, sprawling affair with randomly-generated monsters targeting you directly with melee or ranged damage.  Each stage in the game has its secrets and this one does too, with a chain of small orange blobs leading you ultimately to a tough encounter with a beetle type of boss.  There are also large blobs and we’re not even sure what they’re for.  The game doesn’t like to explain itself.

Anyway, it’s a tough stage but if you’re up to the challenge it’s fine.  More of the same.  That said, the drab, swampy aesthetic isn’t all that attractive to look at.  But that’s not all that this DLC adds.  There are new items to find and quests to take on, none of which massively stands out but is nice to have.  The main draw here is that there are two new characters:  the Alchemist and the Crone.

The Alchemist is a fairly unremarkable magic user who felt pretty weak to us where as the Crone is a bit more interesting.  She uses large, aggressive plants that do different types of damage to nearby enemies however you don’t have any real control over them and it all makes for a pretty tough start to any run if you’re relying on them.

As such they don’t really add much to the overall game especially given how dominant characters like the Sage, Exterminator and Shield Maiden are.

It’s also been a pretty frustrating few weeks with the DLC as it seemed to crash constantly.  The patches have certainly but even as of today we’ve had the occasional crash.  Hopefully the patch that just dropped will fix things further.  We’ll keep you updated.

For just over £3, this DLC is certainly cheap enough to check out but it’s just not the best, or most effective, content the game has to offer.  But if you’re loving Halls of Torment and want a little bit more, this is a good shout.  Just don’t expect the sort of fun and interesting content that the Vampire Survivors DLCs have been adding.