I have to full be upfront here. When I first started playing Dead Cells, I hated it. Well, I liked it, but grew to hate it. I reminds me a lot of Rogue Legacy in it’s presentation, but it’s quite a bit faster and more difficult than Rogue Legacy is. I really really liked Rogue Legacy. Dead Cells also feels a lot like a Metroidvania title, though many will argue it’s not really a Metroidvania game, it has a very similar gameplay feel, even if the actual loop is different.
It’s closer to being a Roguelike platform game than a Metroidvania game, I’ll accept that. You do revisit areas, but not out of necessity to collect missed items or areas by using new skills, a Metroidvania hallmark, but because in Dead Cells, you live, you die, you live again. Actually, I’m not even sure you’re ever really ever alive, or maybe just you’re never dead. Your ACTUAL character is basically just a big sort of, blobby fungus thing. You start the game and possess a body and go from there.
Each iteration through the game, the levels are the same, but the layout is randomized. The route is also somewhat randomized, in that you can often choose where to go next. The choice can come at a trade off though, as the game gives bonus rewards for speed. Your equipment is also randomized. You get an assortment of initial drops to choose from and enemies drop items, but the secondary abilities and stats are all randomized out.
Between lives, you can unlock some permanent perks though. Which will help with progression as things get more and more difficult. This is where my chief problem with this game WAS. I’ll address it, but I do want to emphasize the “was”. The progression, really does not keep pace with the skill leaps on each stage. And dying at certain point in each run can mean losing any chance of progressing your ability at all, which results in a LOT of repetition and feeling of going nowhere. The ability to unlock skills only comes at the end of a stage. There is also a larger upgrade option for drops that only occurs every few stages. When you die, you lose all of your collected souls, which are used for upgrades.
You can unlock the ability to keep some of them, but it’s such a small amount it’s almost worthless. It also means the only incentive you have to spend early on, is on the ability to save souls between lives. So you never actually GET stronger for a while. It also doesn’t help that some of the unlockable items are kind of worthless and only serve to pollute the potential pool of drops.
After throwing myself against the first boss a few dozen times, then the stage that comes after the first boss, I completely shelved this game. It was fun, but not, THAT fun, to play essentially the same 2 levels over and over endlessly for a minuscule boost in power.
The game was eventually patched to add a difficulty adjustment slider, which brought me back and suddenly, the game was super enjoyable. Funny enough, this isn’t the first game this sort of thing happened to me with, Control did the same thing with the same results. Some of the more “hardcore” people complained, but it really doesn’t affect anyone else to play on an easier difficulty.
With the new ability to slide things to be less brutally difficult, the game was suddenly incredibly enjoyable. It meant going much farther long, beating more bosses and the game, and actually being able to progress along with unlocks. This also meant that the progression system was meaningful and the difficulty could be raised a bit as things became too easy. It honestly felt a lot more how the game was meant to be played.
Gameplay aside, the graphics use an interesting dense pixelated style that, despite it’s pixelatedness, really shows off all of the motion and environment well. Everything stands out well and looks pretty nice, in a slightly gross and morbid sort of way. The enemy variety is alright as well, each zone has it’s own sort of stable of enemies that show up, though some of them do get repeated.
There are also some more difficult enemies that only show up on higher difficulty levels. In addition to the difficulty sliders added in the mentioned patch, the game itself has a mechanism to increase the overall difficulty based on how many times the final boss is defeated. In order to unlock the “true ending”, the final boss must be defeated several times on increasing difficulty levels.
There are also several mini games and additional time attack modes that can be played for some extra challenge if that’s your jam.
The core gameplay loop is still a bit repetitive, and there is a lot of repeating each level, which may not be for everyone. There is still some trickiness to the difficulty as well, even on “easy mode”, which can be a turn off. Still, it’s a fun and fast platformer that plays a lot like traditional Castlevania/Metroidvania types in it’s mechanics.
