

However, combine that with fire grenades and you have a potent combination. One example is a sword that glazes enemies with oil, which by itself is nothing special. Some of these support each other beautifully, and finding these combinations is a real treat. There's everything from large swords and hammers to rapiers, bear traps, grenades and even elemental spells. There's a gratuitously large arsenal available, which opens up slowly over time. The enemies give a small hint as to when they are about to attack by displaying a small exclamation mark on top of their heads, which helps to time dodge rolls and parrying attempts. The control scheme is very tight, so jumps, dodges, attacks and parries happen at the precise moment one presses the button. The combat is the best element, and it works very well. That's not to say that the game is unfair, it just requires your constant focus. The game punished us immediately and forced us to pay attention. We had passed through them numerous times, so we thought there was no real challenge anymore. This happened to us, and at one point we even started to struggle when starting the levels. Our own experiences reflected a warning we once got when we were learning to drive: "at first you're careful - it's when you have accumulated a bit of skill and experience that the risk of an accident is highest". Every encounter requires focus and sloppy play just gets you killed. The main meat of the game and it's biggest attractions can be found in the combat system and the pacing of the adventure. Quite often there's a choice between two completely different paths, offering completely different enemies and bosses. But as mentioned earlier, there are several ways that you can proceed so that at least keeps the adventure interesting. Sure the areas are challenging, but we'd still take carefully crafted environments over this generic collection of turns, traps and twists. This pseudorandom level design is the game's single largest fault, as the level structure is quite uninspired.

Eventually, all roads meet at one point, but the way there can be chosen to fit the mood of the player and the purpose of the run.
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This opens up new avenues and areas and offers more choices in terms of how to proceed. However, by discovering secrets and new abilities such as wall climbing, previously locked areas become available over time. The world also contains locations that are inaccessible at the beginning. Enemies, on the other hand, stay the same, so you know what to expect from each level. That means you can't learn the layouts by heart, as the levels are always a bit different compared to the last run. The world in Dead Cells is alive, at least that's the reason why it's procedurally generated again after each death. Every weapon, gadget and skill is available for future runs, so over time your range of options grows and grows (although at some point there might be so many weapons unlocked that you don't see them all in one playthrough). Unlocking weapons is done by using cells that act as a currency. Not everything is lost though, as one can build up an arsenal by acquiring blueprints and taking them to a creature called Collector. Nearly everything resets at this point, and you'll have to beat every level and boss monster again. The hook comes from the fact that you have to start the adventure over and over again. It's a combination of roguelite mechanics and metroidvania design the difficulty and permadeath come in via the "Rogue", whereas exploration and slowly building a larger arsenal of weapons and skills comes as part of the "vania". However, there's already another corpse in the prison waiting to be reanimated, and next time we'll get that boss for sure.įor the most part, this is how we feel about Dead Cells, a game that even coins a new term: roguevania. Our concentration slips just for a moment and we're dead again. But this time we're sure that it's going down because we've memorised all of the attack patterns and have a good gear set equipped. We've already tried to beat it many times and every single time our efforts have ended in failure. We know there's a dastardly boss just up ahead.
