Dante’s Divine Comedy has been an endless source of inspiration for artists around the world for decades. Its motifs have found their way into painting, literature, film, and eventually video games. Yet, despite Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven providing an almost perfect foundation for a great gaming experience, titles that directly draw from his work remain relatively rare. Among them, of course, Dante’s Inferno stands out, while certain elements can also be found throughout the Devil May Cry series. La Divina Comedia is also coming soon, and then there is the game that is the subject of this review – The Alighieri’s Circle: Dante’s Bloodline.
Dante’s work offers almost limitless possibilities for creating fantastic worlds. His vision is divided into three completely different realms, while at its core lie themes of sin, punishment, and redemption. Because of this, The Divine Comedy is excellent material for storytelling. The ideas Dante explores remain universal enough even today for players to recognize themselves in its characters, their choices, and the consequences that follow them.
This time, I had the opportunity to play The Alighieri’s Circle: Dante’s Bloodline, a title that uses this familiar mythology as the foundation for an entirely new story. You play as Gabriele Alighieri, whose duty is to close the gates of hell while uncovering the dark secrets hidden within his family’s past.
The Journey Through Hell Begins With Your Own Family
The game arrives to us from ONE-O-ONE GAMES, the team behind The Suicide of Rachel Foster, with Aftermath and Curse of the Crimson Stag also announced. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to play The Suicide of Rachel Foster, and much like Dante’s Bloodline, it is a game primarily focused on atmosphere, puzzles, and story.
The game explains at the very beginning that The Divine Comedy is not simply a work of poetic genius, but something that contains a key capable of closing the gates of hell hidden within its verses. Every 33 years, a certain ritual must take place, requiring the pages of the poem to be collected and brought together so that eternal darkness does not consume our world. Every Dante’s ancestor becomes a ,,Guardian”, tasked with collecting these very pages during a journey through Hell, where several trials await them, each of which must be completed in order to obtain the pages.
You then learn that the year is 1993., and that you are playing as the last of Dante’s descendants, Gabriele.
Hell Is Only the Beginning
Dante’s Bloodline is another walking simulator filled with interesting puzzles, wrapped in beautiful visuals and accompanied by a fantastic atmosphere. At the very beginning, you find yourself in a beautiful mansion that you can explore while collecting various diary pages that reveal more about the story. Gabriele also has a comment for almost every room you enter. Alongside him are his wife, Dalila, who provides useful advice over the phone, and his daughter, Ginevra, who serves as a source of moral support. To make sure you do not get lost in the enormous space, the game provides you with a map, after which the first puzzle begins. This initial puzzle is largely based around exploring the mansion, as you have to find specific objects in order to open a portal leading to hell. Once there, you will encounter even more puzzles, as well as your own guide, who may make the journey easier for some players and perhaps more difficult for others.
The gameplay revolves around exploration and puzzle solving. Even though you are in hell, there is no real danger lurking around the corner. There are no beasts, no timer, absolutely nothing. The game encourages you to explore and take in its beauty before turning your attention to solving puzzles and collecting pages.
The game is also not particularly long. It took me around three hours to complete it in its entirety, even though I got stuck in one area for a while, as I am not particularly fond of puzzles whose mechanics remind me of a Rubik’s cube. Additionally, if you are going after the platinum trophy or all the achievements, that will not take you too long either, as the game offers several collectibles scattered across its various levels of hell.
After collecting a page, you return to your world and usually immediately go to speak with your wife about what has just happened.
Hell Painted In All Its Beauty
The crown jewel of this game is its world. Every time you return to the mansion, you have an opportunity to pay a little more attention to its details, the beautiful paintings covering its walls, the garden where gorgeous flowers embrace the white columns surrounding a charming fountain. Although the mansion has been abandoned, it never stops offering a sense of warmth after you return from hell. There is old furniture, a basement filled with various statues, and hallways packed with beautifully preserved antiques. Hell itself is also far from what you might normally expect to see. At the beginning, vivid red and grey tones blend together beautifully, a sight that immediately reminded me of the opening level of Saros. The most striking part of the first level was an enormous head rising from bloody water and beginning to speak to you. Hell changes with every level, and one of the most beautiful areas is accompanied by exceptionally pleasant sound design and a gorgeous gold and black color palette. The cutscenes are also beautifully illustrated and a joy to watch. Unfortunately, the voice acting is not quite on the same level. The protagonist occasionally delivers a joke, which is not always funny, and even during some of the more serious scenes, his performance does not carry as much emotion as it should. Thankfully, your guardian, who accompanies you throughout the journey, helps elevate the experience with his own voice acting.
The Final Circle, But Not the Final Story
This is the kind of game you can finish in a single afternoon when you have some time to relax and want something simple to play while experiencing some beautiful scenery. Or simply if you are a fan of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
The Alighieri’s Circle: Dante’s Bloodline is not a game that tries to overwhelm you with content, nor is it a title that demands dozens of hours of your time. Its greatest strength lies precisely in knowing what it wants to be – a short, atmospheric journey through a world inspired by one of the most famous literary works of all time.
Although some of the puzzles can prove challenging, and the voice acting occasionally diminishes the emotional weight of certain scenes, the game manages to keep you engaged through its atmosphere, interesting premise, and a world that genuinely makes you want to explore it. I particularly enjoyed the fact that hell is not presented solely as a place of punishment and suffering, but also as a visually striking world filled with its own stories and secrets.
The Alighieri Circle: Dante's Bloodline (PlayStation 5)
Dante's Bloodline may not be the biggest or most ambitious interpretation of Dante's work we have seen, but it is an interesting attempt to transform his story and ideas into an interactive medium. If you are a fan of The Divine Comedy, walking simulators, or simply looking for a short game you can complete in a single afternoon, Gabriele's journey through Hell may be worth your time.
