Divinum Blends Hollow Knight's Combat With Dark Souls' Difficulty, And I Love It

Divinum is a 2D hack-and-slash Metroidvania that blends dark fantasy elements akin to games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring, with fluid movement and “expressive combat” reminiscent of Hollow Knight, along with boasting a vast array of builds to choose from that place emphasis on player expression in combat and exploration, letting you choose how you want to approach and tackle any encounter.

Your quest sees you, Fjør, take on invaders on your home island and uncover the secrets your homeland harbours, utilising the “intricate” combat system to do so. Divinum has a very free-flowing and "easy to learn, hard to master" type of combat system, allowing you to launch enemies into the air, use the classic block and parry, unleash devastating combos, and much more as you slash through hordes of enemies as you master deadly attacks.

To aid you in combat and on your quest, Divinum offers meaningful upgrades that are not simply stat buffs, but items that really impact how you face enemies – called “runes” – that are collected from defeated bosses scattered around the island.

These runes have a chance to grant modifiers that “completely change how you approach battles” but may also come with a trade-off that you must weigh against the bonus. I think this mechanic is a welcome step forward for the genre, as it avoids the arbitrary stat increases many games fall into, which can feel unrewarding and dull.

Exploration is also a core part of the experience, seeing you go through caves, forests, ruins, and even more areas that are all crafted in an amazing pixel graphic style that further adds to the atmosphere of the game, beckoning you to explore more and more with every area reached while also rewarding you for doing so with upgrades and encounters.

Overall, Divinum is a nice mix of souls-like, Metroidvania, and hack-and-slash, blending these three genres almost perfectly to deliver a new, refreshing experience that feels familiar to its predecessors but still sets itself apart in a way that makes it its own beast.

Divinum releases on the 28th of August, but if you want to jump in right now, there is a free demo available on Steam that I would urge you to check out if what I have said interests you even slightly.