Remember when Devs used to make games because they just wanted to make a good product, that respects players ability to overcome challenges, to think for themselves instead of handholding every step of the player's journey (cof cof Blizzard 2024) and that has enough content for it's price?

Death Must Die is an amazing game with DEPTH, HOT CHARACTERS, CHALLENGES, AND LOTS OF CONTENT, for only... $6.99 USD. Stop wasting money on 2024 AAA cash grab AI-generated games and support hardworking, passionate indie development studios.

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Need to list a couple of disclaimers here:
-- If you are just now considering whether to buy the game or not, DO. This is one of the best horde survival games on the market. There's a lot of content, especially with the Act II update, and you'll get your money's worth no doubt.
-- My negative review is entirely based on the perception of the before/after and though I will mention the irks you'll most likely have as a beginner, a lot of it will be due to my nature as a returning player. So, let's get those irks of a beginner out of the way.
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With the latest update, the game has added a unique 'talent tree' for every individual character. This, honestly, was a good thing as the level of customization you had before was just selecting 1 passive ability and that was it. Do note that this does not necessarily mean that characters will have a more unique gameplay now as the old passives are baked into the new talent trees in some way, shape, or form, and everything else is just basic % stuff that's there as a visual clutter to say 'hey look how big the tree is'.

The issue with this is that the game has gotten at the very least 10x more grindy with the update. Every hero needs to be individually leveled up whereas before you simply had to get an achievement to unlock a rather unique passive that changed how you play the character. To get to the same level of unique customization now, you'll have to play for a lot longer. Again, if you're new to the game and you have no frame of reference, this will likely not bug you too much because you'll simply be unlocking passive points as you're trying out characters/builds.

However, as a returnee, this almost ruined my desire to play. I've already tested out every character multiple times and tried their unique builds, BUT in order to play those unique builds, I now have to grind out for HOURS yet again, playing the same content I've already beaten before several times over.

To provide some context: in the game's previous iteration, doing 1 run with a character was usually enough to unlock at least 2 unique passives that changed, in some way, how you'd play that character. This meant that if you didn't like a particular gameplay style or wanted to try something new, a unique variety was, at most, 20 minutes away, usually less. For instance, Skadi's trait of 'Wanderer' which gave a random Skill +1 every 3 levels required you to just run ONE map before. Now? Now it's at the bottom of the talent tree and requires at the very least 35 talent points. To put it into perspective, you get 1 talent point per boss kill, and there are (I think?) 4 bosses per map. And you HAVE to play every map for 20 minutes. Now, multiply that for every other character.

Now that's not to say that there are no meaningful upgrades before that talent, don't get me wrong, but a gameplay portion that I've already unlocked by playing the game was taken away from me, and I'm now forced to effectively grind out the game from the start. I get that it's an Early Access game and that they probably couldn't do it another way, but it's still rather annoying.

It wouldn't be so bad if the leveling was account-bound rather than character-bound, but I honestly just can't even imagine needing to run the low-difficulty, boring portions of the game over and over and over again just so I can unlock the traits that I already had for all the characters. The only proof that I've even played the game past the unlocked characters are items that are gonna be replaced soon anyway as they've introduced Tier 2.

AGAIN: if you have NEVER played this game before, I genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, recommend it. It's fun and fast, and they've fixed a lot of gameplay annoyances with the Act II update to make the gameplay feel so much smoother. The update itself added a lot of content as well, and even though I rage-quit for a little bit when I saw everything, I'll definitely go back to the game and grind out at least a couple of my favorite traits (even if my favorite one was just yanked from the game altogether, lol; to be fair, it was the most OP one so w/e) & finish Act II. I just wanted to voice my annoyance a bit because I feel kind of cheated :(

Anyway, thanks for reading. Now go play.

I don't know why so many people are complaining about the update that has added act 2! This game starts out hard and personally I was happy to see that the new act brings this back. It's also an early access game meaning things are bound to change and evolve over time; it's the risk you take when buying from early access so why are people complaining about the newly added talent system? Yes I can understand that existing players might feel a bit cheated that their previous runs haven't counted towards the talent point count and many have said it's one of the reasons the game has become 'unfun' to them; but let's be real here, there is no need to act like this game has suddenly wasted your time, the point of video games is fun and you clearly stated that you had that before. Entitlement is what is killing your experience now.

Personally I'm thoroughly enjoying the new update and will continue to play and support the game! The challenge is what brought me here, but if you aren't happy having to work for your overpowered runs, I'd suggest manning up perhaps looking elsewhere.