Recent reviews by klesus

The graphics is updated but the UX isn't.
Some hotkey configuration isn't possible to set because it seems hardcoded.
And there's no information on how to switch graphics mode (F1) so I had to google it.
There's a modern control scheme, but you're unable to do certain moves with it.
It's an incomplete package.
Playing for nostalgia is fine, but otherwise I can't recomend it.

This is actually my second playthrough, I've played more than 6 hours as steam suggest I've spent on this game as of writing. If you can appreciate a game purely for it's art then perhaps you might like this, but that's kind of the problem with this game, that it feels like it's made by a group of artists that wants to make a game, rather than a group of game developers that can do art. It just lacks much of what makes a game fun to play.
A lot of exploration with nothing to discover. You need to travel vast spaces with nothing to do in between. There will be enemies as you go along but there's for the most part no reason at all to engage them. The controls are clunky if you play how it is meant to be played, with mouse only. The map system is terrible. The menu system is messy.
Basically it's only a game worth playing if you have a lot of time to waste, and that's the reason I'm replaying this game again, to re-evaluate if it was as mediocre an experience as I remembered, and so far it has been.

You are given a gun. The majority of enemies are airborne. You can't shoot up.

No matter if this will be an issue for you, just know that this has a serious impact on the game's pacing.
Which IMO works against itself since you acquire currency by performing timed combos, a gimmick that adds challenge, but not good gameplay.

The controls aren't terrible, but I don't like them. To make a high jump, you have to press UP while jumping. I ALWAYS want to make high jumps. Because of this I get Nintendo thumbs from a couple of minutes of gameplay. And because I constantly have to hold up, it becomes harder to make precise left/right inputs. Why can't I just make a high jump by holding the jump button?

The controls described above also aren't explained to you in the game. The game includes a tutorial, but it fails to mention or require you to do those moves. It doesn't explain the currency mechanic either. If a game doesn't explain how to play the game in a tutorial, then it misses the entire point of a tutorial.

Coupled with subpar controls, there's very questionable hitbox detection. Never in a game before have I seen enemies survive because they were too close to the shotgunblast.

The game has a nice aesthetic where your surroundings spawns before you as you get closer, and disappears as you move away. This isn't a big problem besides for one section in the game (as far as I've come at least), where you have to be climbing. That's right, invisible platforming. Fall down and you can't see where you can land.

Every good roguelike I've played has powerups along the way. So it might be a personal opinion that for a roguelike to be good, it MUST include powerups, I don't know, I just haven't played a roguelike without powerups that's good. And powerups sadly are absent in GoNNER as well. And the game feels very bland and un-fun because of it. There are UNLOCKABLES, but that is not the same as powerups. There are three kinds of items in the game. Heads, Guns and Backpacks. Each of every category behaves a little differently, but you can only hold one of each. You never power up. And once you've found a loadout that you like, you'll probably mostly play with only that anyway. There's very little incentive to experiment.

It has a good soundtrack though.

Here I'm making an updated review because my previous one wasn't very descriptive of what issues I find with this game.

I'll begin by saying that I disagree with how the developers pitch this game. Which is slightly different depending if you come from the Dead Cells website or read the about section here on Steam, but nevertheless, I disagree no matter where you get the pitch.

First they describe the game as a RogueVania (Roguelite + Metroidvania). The thing is, from a technical standpoint, sure you could say that DC is a Roguelite, but the truth is DC doesn't PLAY like a Roguelite. At least not like any of the Roguelites they compare DC to (Rogue Legacy, Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon, Spelunky). DC has NOTHING in common to those games that MAKES them Roguelites. In those Roguelites you get upgrades, that differ from each playthrough. In DC you get stat upgrades. That's it. The Roguelity aspect that DC qualifies for on a technicality boils down to a simple numbersgame.
Neither does it have anything in common with the Metroidvania genre either. This game might be inspired by Castlevania: SotN, nothing I can say against that, but the only common denominator between these two games is that they are action platformers. But that doesn't make this game a Metroidvania in any sense. There are no upgrades in this game that changes the gameplay, which is a requirement for Metroidvanias.

Next, they talk about Souls-lite action/combat. I don't know why they even mention the Souls franchise. Sure there are similarities between the games, but the things that defined the Souls games are not present in DC.

After that they mention non-linear progression, and with this one I at least don't disagree. But that doesn't matter much for reasons I will get into later.

Lastly they try to appeal to you with exploration, mentioning secrets and hidden passages. But secrets are basically just for unlockables. Once you've found all secrets in a biome (a level), the novelty of exploration is gone. In a game with no options but permadeath, where you're supposed to "Kill, die, learn, repeat", exploration seems like a dishonest thing to bring up in a salespitch because "exploration" and "repetition with no variation" are in direct conflict with each other.


Dead Cells is not a bad game, which makes it unfortunate the way the developers describe the game, but I would say that it appeals to a very particular type of gamer. Namely those that play for a challenge, gamers that wants nothing more than to beat that challenge. That's it. If you like games that let's you explore and/or build yourself up into a powerhouse with the rewards the game gives you for exploring and/or completing challenges, then you're going to get disappointed because you're not really given the opportunity.

There's nothing wrong with providing a challenge, but IMO they've gone overboard with this game. I think this way because there's nothing I'd consider a reward in this game. Besides power scrolls, that just up your stats, NOTHING in this game comes without sacrifice. There are no powerups besides power scrolls, so everything else revolves around what weapons you get, but you can't add weapons to your arsenal, you have to exchange one for another. So every upgrade is gonna be minor.
There are bonuses you can get for either completing levels before a certain time or racking up your kill count without getting hit. But keep in mind that I've spent hundreds of hours on this game, and NOT ONCE have I been rewarded with anything that made me think it was worth the effort. So either RNGesus is being a total ♥♥♥♥ to me or this game is all about "High risk, low reward".
I'm pretty convinced it's all about "High risk, low reward" though. Remember I said weapons have to be exchanged so upgrades will be minor? Well sometimes you can get "lucky" and get a cursed weapon that does X times damage. Now there might be certain weapons that suit better to be cursed, or it might be more noticeable the further into the game you are, but in my experience, cursed weapons aren't really worth it. First of all, the curse applies to you as well. Secondly, you have two weapon slots and two skill slots, but the damage boost only applies to the weapon or skill, so you're actually getting a X/4 damage bonus, but you still always take the full X extra damage. Thirdly, in my experience, at least for 2X bonus, enemies still often take the same amount of hits to kill. Fourthly, on boss fights it might be hard to tell if the damage bonus makes a difference, because bosses are damage capped, so you can only do a maximum amount of damage per hit anyway. But you still take that X bonus damage from enemies so... is it worth it?

After all this I still have a lot of issues with this game. Some of them have been remedied in patches, like gold was almost useless because everything was so insanely expensive so you get to make a maximum of 2 purchases per run, 1 if you want to buy a health potion. But they've also patched in stuff that I don't like so the list goes on and on and on.

So how come I've played this game so much if I don't recommend it? Like I said, it's not a bad game. But I only play this game for the challenge when I have absolutely nothing else to do. But I don't really ENJOY playing it. It's just a past time while I wait for other better games to come along for me to play. And that's why I don't recommend this game.

Action packat RPG spel fast med en spelstil mer lik Zelda franchisen. Fighter är realtid till skillnad från turn-based. Förutom rustning och nycklar för att ta dig vidare i spelet finns det inga items. Det enda du har för att ta dig frammåt är din egen skicklighet.