Rank 3: The Bells Hells
The campaign surrounding the Bells Hells comprises 121 episodes and ran from October 2021 to February 2025. The leadership was held by Matt Mercer as Dungeon Master, and the cast primarily consisted of the well-known players Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O’Brian, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham. The adventure begins here on the oriental-inspired continent of Market in the well-known game world of Exandria.
The Hells unfortunately only reached rank 3 in our ranking. Mainly because you need quite a bit of prior knowledge about the world of Exandria, its characters, and the existing evil forces. Although all the main players have new characters, for example, Travis begins by embodying his Vox Machina guest character Bertrand Bell. Robbie Daymond also joins in the earlier episodes with Dorian Storm from Exandria Unlimited: Kymal.
The adventurers also have to repeatedly confront villains and figures from previous campaigns, and there are a whole lot of guest appearances from old player characters. This is a treat for the hardcore Critical Role fans, but probably confusing for newcomers.
Alex says
Bells Hell are for me the 3rd place because I just didn’t get attached to the characters. I really tried, and I generally liked the concepts, but I always felt it wasn’t as coherent as with Mighty Nein or Vox Machina.
I didn’t have a real favorite until the end, where before it was always hard for me to limit it to a favorite since all characters were simply cool and engaging. Therefore, the story could only gain partial points with me because I could never really build that emotional connection to the fate of the characters, even though the team really did their best to make them relatable.
Caro says
I made it a point to watch every episode of Bells Hells immediately after release and follow along weekly – until I finally did not anymore.
Not necessarily because I explicitly had something to complain about, but it just happened. Bells Hells unfortunately couldn’t connect with me emotionally the least, BUT they involve one of my favorite characters from Critical Role, which is why I’m still very grateful for the campaign.
Sophia says
I tried with the Bells Hells and simply couldn’t get excited about them. Some characters have strong ties to the Vox Machina campaign, and at the same time the animated series The Legend of Vox Machina came out on Amazon. As a Kickstarter backer, I’m a huge fan of the series, but the Bells Hells felt like an advertisement for the cartoon in the first episodes. And Fearne was just too much for me.
As a long-time Critical Role fan, I was of course delighted when it was said that some of my favorite characters from the past would have guest appearances. But that didn’t bring me back – to fully understand the story, I would have had to catch up on the entire campaign with X episodes. I just haven’t been interested in that until today.
On the next page, we continue with rank 2!
