Dead Cells

I'd love to recommend Dead Cells. Objectively the game is great, combat is smooth, progression is fun, and the lore is surprisingly deep. That being said, I really, really hate how all the DLC are visible in every playthrough. It's a scummy way to make me try to buy the DLC when I don't want to. It isn't as bad as other games I've played but I have a low tolerance for this. When I buy a game I expect you not to ask me to buy more things unless the game is deliberatly free to play. If you do offer DLC, I'll buy it if I want to and I probably will get the DLC for Dead Cells someday, but as of now, I find this business practice underhanded and annoying.

Very few actually viable builds in the game.

✔ fast past paced, snappy gameplay ✔ lots and lots of weapons and other content ✔ timer is frozen when choosing rewards or in lore areas ? investing souls (permanent currency) into unlocking weapons. It's very, very slow and grindy ? it inherits good mechanics from souls likes, like flasks... until it doesn't! On harder difficulties (Normal is too easy in general) it starts dismantling such brilliant concepts bit by bit... ? game looks good in general, sometimes there is too much visual clutter when there are too many enemies on the screen ✘ you increase your stats / life with scrolls - essentially choosing one color. Weapons also have colors. Damage is multiplicative with every point you get. This system wrecks build creation - it's only worth to invest into single color. All the other items that you find? Not viable. ✘ you are rewarded for being methodical and clearing entire levels to get all the scrolls, which evolves into busy work (there is also gold, which is quite useless) ✘ build creation seems pretty bad either way. It's just a numbers game - get enough scrolls to one-shot enemies (or at least stun them) and don't get hit ✘ ah yes, getting hit. On harder modes you get 2 shot easily. On top of that there is a Curse mechanic, which causes any damage to insta-kill you, until enough enemies get defeated. And god forbid you have a leftover curse counter on a boss... You can skip those... but then you lose scrolls. So math is against you. Exponentially. ✘ levels are pretty long causing the game to become repetitive. Remember - you need to scour levels in search of scrolls so "gotta go fast" isn't such a great option long term The game has good foundations, albeit it's too easy early on when you play as intended and demolish levels with bigger numbers. And then the higher difficulties get balanced around grind + don't get hit, ever. Build variety, replayability and general fun from trying things out suffers. Some people like this kind of gameplay and I am not one of them. I recommend for the first several hours. It currently sits at Overwhelmingly Positive, which is too high. Far too high, so I review accordingly.

No, I don't like it. The movement is too loose and floaty for it to be satisfying as a "skill based" game, the progression is grindy and depends too much on rng. It looks nice, the music is good and it's kinda neat seeing all the other indie games it crosses over with, but if I wanted a roguelike metroidvania Rogue Legacy 2 is a lot better because it has tight movement you're in total control of.