Recent reviews by Ricky Mortis

Game is actually (just about) dead. Consider it abandonware. It was fun in its heyday, but now it's a ghost town. Remaining players are not the ones who made it fun, either. RIP BattleBit.

If you're thinking about buying it, do so. You'll know if you like it or not by the end of the first mission. Go in blind, don't look up guides or anything. It's excellent.

I built what was potentially one of the most difficult to control vehicles in history. Didn't matter, beat the campaign with it anyway. The building is fun and pretty easy to get the hang of, and the DLC's add a ton of enjoyment in my opinion. Building flying creations was the most fun for me, the more ridiculous the better. Overall a solid game, especially if you love building and tinkering with your creations until they work just how you want them to.

This is, in fact, furry bait. There isn't a ton to like about it right now. I don't want to sound like a hater, but the combat is kind of boring and uninspired. Beneath the not-at-all veiled pyrocinical fetish material, the game is pretty much a husk. Thanks, Iron Pineapple.

I would absolutely recommend this game if you're looking for a fun time killer (and you're a decent typist) or a fun way to practice typing (if you have an idea of what you're doing already). The good parts of this game are great; the visual style and sound design are satisfying and a good fit for a game like this. The core game design loop is fun and engaging, and there's an excellent foundation here. The game is a bit light on content at the moment, but this is something that can only be solved with time. Regardless, the content that IS there is fun and allows this game to fulfill its purpose, and there's enough here for me to happily recommend it.

Given the game's Early Access status, I think it's fair to cut some slack on some of the more... unpolished feeling aspects of the game, but I can't be too lenient. For starters, the difficulty feels quite excessive at times. This isn't coming from your average typist, either. The visual clutter begins to grow quite excessive as the game progresses, and it can become next to impossible to read certain clusters of enemies. At times like that, you have to just shoot for some of the nearer enemies that you CAN read and hope your other weapons can thin the herd. This doesn't feel rewarding, in all honesty, but it is just about your only option at times.

On the topic of the weapons, they feel a little lackluster, especially in anything beyond the base difficulty. One of the main mechanics, spawning instances of certain weapons upon completing words containing certain letters, is an awesome idea and I love it! That is, until the game just doesn't spawn enemies that fulfill the requirements. Lets say you've chosen all of the weapons with this mechanic and you have no luck with the enemies, your weapons are then almost entirely useless.

Whether you're playing in the default light mode or the dark mode the visibility of the loot drops, which despawn after a short time, becomes a little problematic. This doesn't feel good, especially when a lot of the available power comes from these loot chests. Put another way, there's very little visual draw to (arguably) one of the more important parts of any given run; those little sparkles just are not enough when they're the same color as other elements.. As such, it isn't uncommon that you miss out on something that could really help; this could be a shield, loot chest, double damage, or any of the other timed loot drops.

Another source of power (and the primary reason the game crosses into rogue-lite territory), the Augmentation system, is another source of friction. The number of augmentations you can use scale with the difficulty you're playing on. this system would suggest that they're meant to be big and impactful upgrades that help you cope with the--in my opinion--large jumps in the already questionably balanced difficulty. This doesn't feel like the case, and a some of them don't feel all that noticeable. I think this is probably most easily remedied by opening up more slots for augments across the board, but balancing the difficulty would likely serve the same purpose in that regard, so I think it's ultimately up to the developers how they want to handle this one.

My final complaint, and take this one the lightest, is the lack of run variety. This will absolutely be fixed with time provided the developers stick with this game. That being said, I know that variety is a loved and cherished aspect of rogue-like/rogue-lite games, so if it is something that you as a player absolutely need, maybe give this one some time. Even without the variety, the game is fun and there's enough to play around with to get your money's worth.

"Did this guy really just spend multiple paragraphs talking about what he *doesn't* like about the game when he said he would recommend it? What gives?" I really like this game. Genuinely, despite my gripes with it, I think this game is excellent and fun and absolutely worth the asking price. There's enough content here to get a feel for the game and the direction it is headed in. Even with all my complaints in mind, I don't regret buying it and I would say that it is absolutely worth picking up if it seems like something you might be interested in.

I would love to be good at this, but I have a penchant for choosing the worst strategy and refusing to deviate from it until I fail. The game is fun though, without a doubt. I mean, this is as "rogue-lite deckbuilder" as you can get, and it does it better than almost every other game of its ilk. Well worth the money.

I was having a bad day before I bought and played through this. After doing so, I am no longer having a bad day. I definitely wouldn't call what I'm feeling now "good" though. This is worth playing, and it does in fact hurt.

:(

Before anything, let me say: THIS IS AN EARLY ACCESS TITLE. "EARLY ACCESS" IMPLIES YOU ARE "ACCESSING" AN "EARLY" BUILD OF THE GAME. IF YOU ARE NOT OKAY WITH BUGS OR MISSING FEATURES, YOU ARE NOT A PERSON WHO NEEDS TO BE BUYING EARLY ACCESS TITLES.

Now that that is out of the way...
There are some solid bones here. The systems that are in place currently have me incredibly excited for what's to come in the future, and I think if you're a fan of fantasy rpg's, you'll be a fan of this game. IIRC, this game is being made by a single developer, which is incredibly impressive given the apparent scope of this game.

I'll start with the "bad", it isn't a lot but it warrants getting out of the way. Like I yelled about at the beginning, this is an early access title. You WILL encounter bugs and you WILL have to save and reload occasionally (which can be a bit of a hassle given loading a save puts you back at the starting point of whichever "zone" you're in). Again, being an early access title, there are going to be missing or incomplete features or things that just aren't in a very good place right now. The city building aspect (which is an awesome concept, I'll get a little more into it in the next section) is a little confusing right now, as there are some buildings you straight up cannot construct due to one of the resources not being implemented. Finally, for the same reason, there is PLENTY of jank. This isn't so much of a bad thing, just some silly little things that can happen like looting a container over and over again, which will endlessly append an "(EMPTY)" tag to the end of whatever the name of the container is, or grappling and yanking a crow or rabbit, which seems to instantaneously accelerate them to escape velocity and send them into low earth orbit. There's the makings of a typical fantasy rpg story here, but again it is something that is largely unfinished given the fact that the game is still very much a work in progress. You'll notice that all of these issues are simply a result of the fact that this is an early access project by a single developer.

With that out of the way, I think it's important to look at what's good, and why I recommend this game in the face of everything I mentioned above.

There are... a LOT of skills in this game. You can pretty much build your character however you want. Ice slinging sword swinger? For sure. Lightning throwing hatchet tosser? Absolutely. Fire chucking spear jabber? Of course. Maybe you want to do nothing but charge enemies with an "Ultrasword", or be a priest of the arcane, or a necromancer. You can do whatever, and you can clearly see there's more to come in the way of skills. You probably wont find yourself falling into the trap of "Oh boy, another playthrough? time to roll another stealth archer!" that everyone who has played TES:V Skyrim for long enough.

The resource gathering is a fun and quick little mini game where for most of the nodes you can harvest, you're tasked with just timing your clicks or button presses correctly. It's rewarding, but not necessary to do well with this. You're never punished for failing it, and I think that's a good thing. It doesn't feel out of place as the nodes are quickly depleted and respawn upon entering whatever zone they're in, and it fits in nicely with the rest of the content.

The city builder aspect is (going to be) very cool. I can already see it. Like I mentioned above, it's rather unfinished at the moment, but I genuinely can't wait to have my own little town with all kinds of different buildings and different merchants and citizens of different professions. The decorating is again, a little janky as it stands, but it is nothing that can't be ironed out.

Finally, the movement feels great. You can level up your jumping like leveling up acrobatics in TES:IV Oblivion. Mine is only level 28, and it feels like I'm just a step away from flying. Speaking of flying, you can blast through forests using a fire spell to propel yourself and your grappling hook to traverse the trees. You can climb sheer cliffs or run along walls (and jump off of them, too)! It's not a movement system you get in a lot of games like this, but it feels really fun to play with and it's a nice change of pace from solely jogging everywhere (or riding a mount, which you can also do in this game).

There's plenty of other good in this game, but for the sake of brevity I'll stop there. What's here already is fun and what's to come is exciting. I'd gladly buy this game again at full price, and I think if any of what I've listed sounds fun to you and you can look pass the typical early access jank, you'll feel the same.

This game really is incredible. Dead Cells is a love letter to the rogue-lite genre and indie games in general. Cross-over content from other titles like Slay the Spire, Terraria, Risk of Rain, Hotline Miami, and many other titles only serves to reinforce this point. This game is hard, but only as hard as you want it to be. It's incredibly accessible with the use of the "Assist Mode" settings, so even if you're not that great at games like this you can tailor it to your abilities and still have plenty of fun. There is so much to unlock here, a staggering amount really. Every run can be different if you want it to be.

On the more mechanical side, this game is excellent as well. It plays well and the controls feel tight and responsive. It is a game that rewards skill, however, with the right builds you don't need so much skill! I think this is one of the best games in its class. 11/10

Banger soundrack and unironically decent game under the meme. Not quite sure what else to say besides PHONK/10