Metal: Hellsinger is a beautiful, bloody, rhythmic slaughterhouse with amazing songs and an excellent challenge for all FPS and rhythm game fans. Each stage of Hell has a stunning track accompanying your rampage, and matching the rhythm is only the start of the challenge, but Metal: Hellsinger’s difficulty lies more in the combat rather than the beat.
No matter what your favorite song is or what level you found more or less challenging, everyone’s skill level is different. After beating the Judge multiple times on various difficulties, we compiled a list of the five most challenging levels in Metal: Hellsinger.
Metal: Hellsinger’s Difficulty
Your difficulty not only changes how much health and damage the demons of Hell have but also how many enemies and how frequently they spawn. For instance, playing on the normal difficulty, Beast, you won’t encounter elite enemies like the Siege Behemoth until the game’s last few levels.
On the other hand, if you play on the newest mode called Archdevil, you will find almost every enemy thrown at you in the first level, Voke.
Greater difficulties also scale up the health and damage of enemies. The Archdevil also gets a new demon exclusive to this mode called the Annihilator Seraph, which doesn’t appear as frequently as other demons but poses a massive threat whenever they appear.
These levels may be hard for newbies to take on. For those just starting out, we have prepared a Metal: Hellsinger beginners guide to teach you everything you need to know. For those ready to take on everything this game has to offer, read on!
Metal: Hellsinger Boss Fight Changes
Each ending boss fight also receives slight changes depending on the difficulty. On top of the standard health and damage increases, every boss in Metal: Hellginer has several intermission phases where the Judge goes into hiding and summons waves of demons to fight the Unknown.
These intermission phases are vastly harder on greater difficulties like Archdevil, mainly because all Elite monsters can be spawned during boss fights.
5. Yhelm
Yhelm is the third level in Metal: Hellsinger and includes the track Burial at Night. This is an interesting and challenging level for having mixtures of long outdoor areas and claustrophobic castles. Most of Yhelm’s combat arenas have a lot of space to maneuver around in but have narrow paths which can be blocked by Behemoths or Eyeless poison clouds.
The extra verticality with stairs and pathways that extend from the lower to upper courtyards also has lots of cover and areas for ranged units such as Cambions and Hierophants to become a dug-in annoyance.
Also, constantly shifting from high ground to low ground has advantages and disadvantages depending on the eye spawns. Fighting Behemoths on the lower courtyards makes them easier to defeat but gives enough space for Eyeless to fly away from you.
The boss battle in Yhelm is also challenging because the Judge spends most of the fight hiding underneath a stone shield, making some weapon loadouts harder to combat this mechanic. Yhelm is the first challenging level players will encounter in Metal: Hellsinger, making players more aware of their positioning and where health and Fury pick-ups are located.
4. Incaustis
The fourth level Incaustis is next on our list, which includes the This Devastation track. Incaustis is a difficult level for its constant mid-range arenas and tons of lava pits that make parts of the level more difficult to approach enemies. Lesser Seraphs and Hierophants are a plague on this level, thanks to packed arenas and the narrow paths between them.
Hierophants are a bit harder to take down on this level and can catch you off guard with their AOE explosion attack, which they only use when you get too close to them. Since Lesser Seraphs swarm you with extra demons and create bombs that pose as arena denial, they can lead you into a Hierophant’s AOE attack.
Also, Incaustis has one of the more challenging encounters with the Judge since the center of the arena has a rotating pillar that shoots multiple waves of flame. The boss arena is also extremely small, and the Judge can position herself on top of the pillar, which makes her Enrage phase much harder to dodge; plus, the flame pillar shoots more as the fight drags on.
3. Nihil
Metal: Hellsinger’s fifth level (Nihil) is the next on our list and features the track Dissolution. Nihil is the opposite of our previous entries and features many open areas. However, because there are many open skies, Eyeless, Lesser Seraphs, and Annihilator Seraphs have tons of space to maneuver around.
Focusing on the flying threats in this level is paramount, but the level design supports just enough cover and obstacles in most sections where you have to put yourself on a narrow high ground to deal with them, which results in you getting swarmed.
One of the final fighting arenas in Nihil does a beautiful job with two narrow paths with many pillars on either side but lets Lesser Seraphs fly in the middle, making them a constant threat with their long and close-range attacks no matter where you stand.
Nihil’s boss is also challenging, not because it’s difficult to figure out which Judge is a clone, but because you must dodge dozens of fireballs. The Judge spawns copies of herself for this boss fight, but only one takes damage. As the fight progresses, more clones spawn, meaning you must dodge even more projectiles. You can stand next to some pillars that soak up the damage, but it’s still a brutal fight.
2. Acheron
Acheron is the second to last level in Metal: Hellsinger. It features a track with the same name. Acheron could also fit our number one spot on this list for the unique challenge that it imposes where the Unknown temporarily loses Paz. Since you don’t have Paz for this level, you must be quick on your feet to keep your combo meter up between arenas.
Without Paz, there is no easy way to maintain your combo outside of combat. Read our guide for more insights into growing your combos in Metal: Hellsinger.
Metal: Hellsinger will continue to throw enemies at you and have shorter walks between fighting pits to compensate for this temporary loss. On harder difficulties, your combo depletes much faster. The level layout of Acheron is unique to the rest of the game, making the Unknown fight through scrap yards and other industrial locations while providing various cut-off and open parts of each arena.
The boss battle against the Judge is also extremely difficult since the arena is mostly made of spinning gears, which, combined with the Judge’s bombs, make it difficult to stay in safe areas. There are also tons of lesser demons that will spawn during her intermission phase, and with the lack of cover this boss fight has, those demons can be a huge threat or a great aid depending on how many you can Execute for health.
1. Sheol
Sheol is the final level which has Silent No More for its level song and No Tomorrow for the final boss fight. This level isn’t extremely hard and offers tons of space to move around in, with several spots to get onto the high ground that isn’t constricting to descend from. If the final boss fight wasn’t so drastically different from previous Metal: Hellsinger levels, Sheol might have gone below Acheron in terms of difficulty.
Sheol’s final boss fight makes it one of the most difficult levels in Metal: Hellsinger from the number of phases the Judge has in her true form and sprinkling in several different attack patterns and moves she has used in previous levels, on top of new ones.
The final boss does come down to shooting her weak points, but with the different mechanics you have to watch out for and all sorts of different fireball patterns you need to dodge, she can quickly bring down your health.
Conclusion on The Top 5 Most Challenging Metal: Hellsinger Levels
That’s our list of the most challenging Metal: Hellsinger Levels. Despite our linear list, Metal: Hellsinger has an outstanding difficulty curve and doesn’t throw the player a sudden difficulty spike before jumping back down.
Each level is a steady increase in difficulty and really gives you time to warm up and test your skills before going on to the next ring of Hell, which makes sense because every ring is supposed to get hotter.
If you enjoyed our list and want to learn more about the game, check out our lists for defeating every enemy and our full review of Metal: Hellsinger.
For now, happy slaying!
How We Ranked Each Level in Metal: Hellsinger
Our list focuses on rating all levels on either Beast or Archdevil difficulty. Also, we are focusing on the difficulty on each level rather than the song they are paired to because Metal: Hellsinger allows you to change the song or track list, which does change the beat and tempo of the stage, but doesn’t affect the enemy spawns or combat.
We are also including the changes made with the Dream of The Beast DLC because this included a new weapon and multiple skins which change combat encounters. Finally, we are taking fully upgraded Torment Sigils into account.
