Dead Cells review

Exceptional

by zebra

Concise Review:
Great combat. Excellent build variety. Excellent longevity. Very fun Roguelite.

Journal Style Review:

Ooh I’m gonna like this game. The combat feels decent, and the weapons/builds have shown a lot of promise. The weapons have had unique feels and I can see a ton of different combinations and strategies potentially being very effective. Fun start.

Got the 1st Boss Cell. I’m loving this game. Similar to Hades I am definitely not close to stopping yet. I still have a lot of new weapons to try out and strategies to use. This build I had was fucking unreal. Currently a high B+ with A- on its sights.

It’s hard for me not to compare this game to Hades. One difference is that when I beat Hades, even with the slight difficulty mods, I pretty much crushed it over and over again. For dead cells, I am not crushing it on BC1. The challenge is much higher.

I’ve been trying to get a good ranged build going. I feel like I’ll have a good one going and then I’ll blow it during one of the levels rather than during boss fights. I think the ranged build works better for bosses than for multiple enemies.

Found a new melee build where I gain health back from melee kills with a speed boost active and built around that synergy. I used the rapier and it was incredible. Love this game. 2BCs obtained. Going for all of them at this point.

Fuck I lost on 2BC to the final boss with like a 1/5th health left. So close. I blew it right at the finish. I had this unreal heavy crossbow that was only level IV but it had such good perks and synergy.

I’m feeling the ranged builds. The ice crossbow is decent, the heavy crossbow can be amazing with the right perks and I just unlocked the repeater crossbow which also looks to have great potential, especially against bosses. I think the purple powers are the best too, whether it’s the owl, the chicken egg, or either of the turrets they are very effective. I still haven’t touched shields. I don’t know if I ever will but I should at some point.

Fuck I’ve had some good runs on 2BC quickly get fucked up. Early on I had a heavy crossbow where I nearly beat the HOTK and since then I’ve been blowing it in the later areas or I barely make a dent on the HOTK. Loving the game still. Just one more run.

Fuck me I blew another unreal run. I had three potions and half health going into HOTK with a sick heavy crossbow and both the turrets. It was my ideal build. I should have used a health potion before battle because I very quickly blew it and died before I used any of my three heals. It’s the most defeated I’ve get yet. I had such a strong feeling I was going to win. 

Fuck ya beat 2BC with my heavy crossbow build. I knew it could work. Nailed it! On to 3BC.

Played 3BC for awhile and it’s started to get a bit repetitive so I’m calling it quits for now. I may return in the future. I really enjoyed it.

Final Score: A-

Dead Cells makes a great first impression. A metroidvania inspired rogue-lite with itemization on the scale of Binding of Isaac sounded too good to be true.

It was. It quickly turned into that game I'll maybe play a single run of every few days, which is a real shame because the combat is fast, fluid, and engaging enough that I'd play a non-rogue game with it in a heartbeat. 

My first run of Dead Cells was the most fun I had in this game: Unlocking new abilities, learning the ropes, and finally defeating the "final" boss, all on my first try. I thought the game was too easy. Luckily, it seems you unlock harder difficulties each time you clear the final boss. So I switched to Hard mode and continued playing. I welcomed the extra challenge and started exploring for the remaining permanent upgrades that were locking me out of content. After a few attempts, I quickly realized that I had screwed myself. I was unlocking whatever items looked cool. Unfortunately, this is the worst possible strategy and permanently makes your save file less effective by diluting your item pool with shitty situational weapons and skills.

The itemization is nowhere near Binding of Isaac's level. You heavily rely on finding a weapon that matches your color (Red/Purple/Green) and isn't too situational to be good (bonus damage to bleeding enemies, for example, would be pretty terrible if you have no bleeding sources). Otherwise it turns into a game of cat and mouse with even the lowliest of enemies. Normally, this heavy of an RNG component would not be a bad thing for a rogue-like game, but Dead Cells runs last upwards of an hour, with most of the run being preparation for the final boss, because that's so much more challenging than the rest. Speaking of item modifiers, that's the extent of the synergies between items in this game. Some items apply status effects, others benefit from hitting someone with a status effect.

The randomization is okay at best. Level layouts change in small ways, but not enough to be memorable. I partially attribute this to the art style. It also creates poor enemy/environment clarity and some questionable animations.

I'm sure Dead Cells is a fine rogue-lite, but everything about it just felt like it was playing it safe with the typical rogue-lite formula. Nothing about it besides its obvious metroidvania roots felt interesting enough for me to stick around. It focuses too heavily on making you play over and over again to incrementally unlock all the game's features and items, as opposed to Isaac's approach of "if you're good enough, you could get every Completion Mark in a single run." The final straw for me, though, was the game crashing after every death, as if it was trying to tell me to stop playing.