Dead Cells - Review

So many different things end up in the pipes. Dinner scraps, dish grease, soap and impurities, and even Italian plumbers of Japanese origin. What if all these rejected things would gain consciousness, revive the body of the decapitated condemned man, grab their weapons and set off on a journey to the surface to take revenge on us for how we treated them? Well, it better if then such murderous creatures as in Dead Cells would stand in their way.

It's really hard to say what the main character of Dead Cells is. Just some strange, slightly burning snot, which returns to the decapitated body parked in the underground casemates to revive it and return to the fight. The game doesn't explain it and it's hard to say whether the creators intentionally leave us with guesswork or whether it was just a matter of early access and the fictional part is still quite in its infancy. Dead Cells is described by the creators of this game as cornerevania inspired by games from the Souls series. What is ta cornerevania? You know, games similar to Castlevania and Metroids are referred to as Metroidvania - because why not name the genre of games by squashing the names of the main representatives. There is also a genre of so-called croissants, i.e. rogue-like, i.e. games borrowing mechanics from an old title called Rogue. It's mainly about the permanent death mechanic that resets the player's progress with each death. Although rogue-lite games have been popular in recent years, they nonetheless offer a sense of progress independent of deaths.

Well, someone here figured out that they would take Metroidvania and crush it against a croissant. And he did the same with the name. Hence Cornerevania. It's good that they haven't tried to stick the Souls yet. Roguesoulsvania sounds like a linguistic train crash. So what is this all about? Well, we are a strange-man who travels through various casemates, houses, canals, and locks, smashing various unwelcome people, collecting and improving weapons and special skills. Each death means the loss of almost everything - levels, weapons, money, and the title Dead Links, which unlock the available items. However, if we manage to deliver these Dead Links to the merchant residing between the locations and unlock a new item before we die, this item will drop from enemies and chests on subsequent attempts. There are also permanent runes that give abilities that open new passages - e.g. the ability to summon and climb vines in certain places. Ah, and the healing potion upgrades and the ability to keep some gold after we die - this too will survive our demise. So as you can see - Dead Cells is not a rogue-like a rogue-lite. It seems to take most of what we have gained, we kind of start over, and the maps are generated procedurally after each death, but the longer we play, the more times we can heal, the stronger and more diverse items we get, and the easier it is to buy them. The layouts of the rooms are different each time, but the sequence of places does not change - although we can take different paths - e.g. from the initial prison we can go to the promenade, but instead, we can visit toxic sewers that look different and contain different enemies. So you can differentiate successive repetitions and not always follow the same path. Although I do not know why the creators decided to place two different types of channels - after all, such locations are among the most boring in games.

And for some reason, game developers have been trying to make channelers out of us for decades. The fascination with sewage systems is disturbing. But the strongest point of Dead Cells is its combat model. At first, it seems simple - that's all, each type of weapon and power has only one attack - although the animations are important here and a series of hits can mean several different swipes. We can have two weapons and two skills. The weapons are extremely diverse. Swords that bleed, freeze bows, assassin daggers that deal massive damage when hitting the back, slow but deadly swords, double blades that take more health off an enemy the longer a series of attacks lasts, and so on. In addition, there are skills that stun, freeze, teleport behind the opponent's back, and many others. The number of combinations allows you to create various tactics. It is good to combine the slow swords with something freezing so that the delinquent is not thrown around when we slaughter him. Back-devastating daggers play great with the ability to place us behind the back of the unfortunate man standing in our way. You should also add dupes from above, giving you a moment of immortality, rolling, and amazing pace and fluidity of the entire system. You die here very quickly and easily, the thing is really difficult, but also extremely satisfying. The game is helped by the beautiful graphics, which are quite old school, but not outdated because all the light and particle effects make each mournful adversary like opening a gift. A gift full of throbbing, steaming guts, but still a gift!

And while Dead Cells was still in Early Access, it has only two bosses, it already has more weapons, is more polished and varied than many of the full titles. The gameplay loop is well designed - each death brings the player closer to unlocking something new, and the loss of equipment with each death makes it impossible to get used to one tactic - you have to constantly invent new ones, depending on what the dungeons and dungeons will give us. I would never recommend buying unfinished games, but it's been a long time since I saw a preterm game as worthy of attention and as stuffed with polished content as Dead Cells. I recommend watching because even though roguesoulsvania sounds like a specific Frankenstein monster, this dish turned out quite well. Well, enjoy your revenge from behind the sink drain!

ALL IMAGES ARE FROM - https://pyre.gg/ga/dead-cells/gallery