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this game has been a repeated victim of unfair representation in the mainstream gaming media due to surface level understanding of how it actually works. it's unfortunate because what let it die accomplishes is really unique.

let it die, on its surface, is a live service game with premium currency paid revives, with clumsily implemented "souls-like" combat and a focus on grinding for materials and resources. if you only played for about 3 hours, this is honestly a very easy and not entirely unreasonable opinion to arrive at. however, these things are all only half truths.

let it die is a live service game, however - barring the fact that progression might accidentally be artificially extended if you did - this game could be played as a fulfilling and unique singleplayer experience if the servers were shut off tomorrow. in the game, you ascend what's called "the tower of barbs" which is the games entire singular location. it has over 100 floors, however what is considered the main base game is floor 1-40, after which defeating the final boss on floor 40 entitles you to post game content.

for posterity, at the time of this review i have just ascended to floor 30, with the 3rd major boss out of 4 total to still be defeated when i feel prepared. this is over the course of about 100 hours of gameplay. i think to beat the first boss on my original first play attempt on PS4 during release, when information was much more limited, it took about 15 hours of gameplay. a LARGE majority of my playtime has been spent still in the base game, and other than buying a monthly pass for free elevator rides maybe twice in the 100 hours across 2 years of playing on PC on and off, i've never spent money on reviving my character a single time.

the player revival mechanic costing $0.50 cents has been a hot button topic when this game was discussed in games journalism when it was new, and from release til now one thing has remained consistent if you have played to at least the first boss. this is an unbelievably bad and unnecessary noob trap and is not encouraged by the game other than completely ironically through tounge-in-cheek "insurance sales" pitches from a pretty lady.

to break it down, when your character dies, your character turns into a "hater," a husk of your former self that will now roam as an AI controlled NPC in other players' games when they enter the floor you died on. in order to gain use of this character again, you have a few options. you can either, immediately on death, spend the 50 cents in premium currency to resurrect on the spot, OR you can salvage your character back. this can be done immediately from home base by using the in-game currency called kill coins that you naturally accrue through regular gameplay, or for free by using another character to ascend back to the floor you died on and killing your own hater. more often than not, the price in kill coins proportionally to how much you can consistently earn by playing and NOT dying is easily worth the saved time and energy of manually reviving them. reviving them manually can also be a benefit on occasion, as you get to make the same run you just made, therefore earning all the things you earned before your death, and now again as you ascend back up to your furthest reached floor.

this is one of many "noob traps" the game has that *seem* like powerful ways for you to spend real money in order to get an advantage, but in reality often only to serve whale players a way to skip some minor occasional tedium or waiting time. fast forwarding R&D/buy timers/upgrades, buying upgrade materials from the daily vending machine, even the non-event cosmetic blueprints they occasionally offer for sale are all ways to trick players into spending money they don't need to if they are willing to actually interface with the systems the game has very carefully put into place in order to keep you from doing that at all.

combat, initially is clunky. i felt this when i first played, and even now i can absolutely concede that it has nowhere near the depth or skill expression that combat in any dark souls game has. however, the game does make up for this by providing a very unique and very wide array of weapons to play with that not only suit many play styles, but also provide valuable niches and benefits to counter specific armor and/or enemy types. certain blocks of floors in the tower will be fraught with a certain kind of armor that all the regular enemies happen to wear, encouraging you to experiment with weapon types you may have not tried yet as they will be increasingly strong against that type. the combat being shallow is almost deliberate in order to allow this sort of rock paper scissors equipment system to shine, feeling rewarding when you master a new weapon type both literally by maxing out its mastery score, and figuratively when you learn how to play with it effectively.

the game is, without a doubt, interested in making you grind. however, i think this reputation actually unfortunately gets perpetuated by players who either
a) got way too impatient either before beating the first boss, or AFTER beating the 2nd boss and experiencing the games first extreme difficulty spike
or b) are players who are well past the base game, having defeated the final boss long ago and have spent the bulk of their playtime grinding in the post-game "tengoku" floors, where upgrading your weapons and armor a single time can require materials that require hours just to have a chance of finding, as well as "uncapping" your fighters with a tertiary currency that must be intentionally hunted down.

the grind element of the game is absolutely present, the game will throw enemies at you in waves after making certain benchmarks in the tower that are sufficiently spiked in power compared to the enemies you were used to. you will need to upgrade armors that fit the area's most common weapon types, as well as weapons that will counter the most common armors. however, i think a lot of people find this to be a harsher wall than it is due to an understandable neglect of game systems on their way to the first initial difficulty spike. before around floor ~25, you hardly, if ever actually *need* to use mushrooms (the buff spells, essentially, of the game) in order to overcome any major challenges. you can often brute force your way with properly upgraded weapons and armor, which at this point are not difficult to upgrade as the threat in the first 10-20 floors is relatively low. however when you hit that first midboss of the 21+ floors, there is a serious numerical spike. enemies hit much harder, can take more blows, and start carrying more difficult to deal with weapons like flame-elemental items. this problem, i learned recently, is alleviated drastically if you use your mushrooms when you need to, you take advantage of the rotating floors of the week to target farm useful materials and money, and you plan ahead. before this point, you practically never have to do so.

overall i have a lot more thoughts about this game, and there's so much more to say, but i think what's most important to me is that i clear up a lot of misconceptions about this game and that if you're even slightly interested due to it's engaging aesthetic (like i was), definitely give it a shot and if you're not hooked after beating the first major boss, then you can at least say you gave it a fair shake.

no 144hz support, stuck on 60hz only. will fix my review if changed because its otherwise very fun

edit: they fixed it! the game's population is pretty small and they made some changes to movement that make it a little slower but it's still pretty fun

in the 48 hours that followed this game releasing on steam, a literal half of those hours in my life were spent playing this

RE is no stranger to its long and rocky past, sometimes seemingly failing to learn from its mistakes (we still see attempts at things like Umbrella Corps or RE:Verse), but since the release of 7 as a mainline game, capcom's flagship RE products have never failed to deliver since then. 7, 8, RE2R, RE3R (while a little short) are all absolutely fantastic products, and RE4 has managed to put them all to shame.

absolutely everything that needed to be done to make this a unique product and not just an HD texture pack for an already timeless, ageless game has been done, delivering a new authentically original experience without sacrificing anything longtime fans of the original would be missing if it wasn't included. every major weapon, all your favorite boss encounters (excluding one that isn't included at all for the better imo), every memorable and memeable touchpoint in RE4's history has either been tastefully redone or lovingly referenced in other ways.

the environments do a great job of varying themselves up layout and atmosphere wise while still giving you the exact feeling you should be getting when you go through the originals. enemies are redesigned but in ways that absolutely feel in the spirit of the original game's style and image, and leon's personality of being a macho secret agent action star tough guy is kept in spirit, with much better writing that really fits a modern game.

ashley's redesign visually and character wise is fantastic. rather than being an annoying spoiled rich kid that goes from being scared and screaming to being scared and screaming less, she's a college age girl who acts like she's one, initially extremely afraid and at a loss for words, growing to adapt to and conquer her environment, standing up for herself and not feeling the need to screech in your ear every time something bad is happening.

the gunplay and mechanics for upgrading and acquiring treasure have given you these small but very much appreciated and honestly necessary moments of personalizing your own gameplay journey, like which jewels you'll use for which slotted treasure item, which requests are you gonna do (and what rewards will you get with your spinels). other little distractions like the gachapon of case charms you can play with shooting range tokens (which only have a limited number you can get per run, adding to the replayability) and choosing your attache case color to give you different benefits all make the game feel more personal and enjoyable especially on a repeat playthrough.

everything good combat and gameplay mechanic wise from previous RE Engine era RE games is all there. random spread and (what seemingly is in the game, not 100% sure) bullet travel time create some awkward shooting instances in rare cases or in the shooting range minigames, but it is a minor issue and guns all feel varied, useful in their own ways, and enjoyable to do damage with. the gore mechanics from the RE Engine do great work here especially relating to plagas enemies spawning. there's lots of depth in terms of micro-level choices you can make in every encounter from spending durability on your knife to kill an enemies plagas form before it spawns to parrying melee attacks from regular ganados, it really feels like a combat system you can make your own.

anything negative i could say about this game would either come down to modern day triple-A monetization (why can't i get the pre-order only charm and case either in-game or at the very least as a DLC? completionists are ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over by things like this) or nitpicking small little issues within something i overall enjoy a lot as a whole. my one sentence to sum everything up would be "this is what a game charging you $60 should deliver"

goated scroted and throated

neon white does a lot of things right, and an almost equal amount wrong. typically i'm not a fan of bullet point reviews but i think dividing it up by what works and what doesn't really emphasizes why this game should be a "sit on it and wait" purchase:

pros:
- core gameplay loop is immediately satisfying and complimented well by the progression system (beating a level with a certain time can reward you with a hint on how to beat it faster)
- movement, while floaty in the air, is still satisfying enough and tight to be fun in a speed game like this. there's just enough air control to be enjoyable even if it's not as robust and tight as something like source airstrafing is
- the card system is an interesting idea, if not fully explored yet. it incorporates a lot of mechanics from other games famous for their movement like sticky jumping from TF2, airdashing from basically any game, triple jumping, etc.
- the game's visual design is very pleasing to look at and has remnants of inspiration from things like killer7, cowboy bebop, Y2K design, and modern minimalism, all mashed into a somehow coherent world and look. the character designs visually are all also quite solid and you'd be hard pressed to find at least one character you don't think at least looks cool.

where this game loses me is in a lot of minor issues (or major, depending on what kind of person you are before you buy this game):
- while i knew i wouldn't give a ♥♥♥♥ about the voice acting or characters in literally any way (how did they get steve blum to agree to this?), they are already genuinely unbearable. even my friends with a much higher tolerance to this kind of thing find themselves skipping every cutscene, and the dialogue is very amateurishly written with the subtext being non-existent and has everyone speaking completely like an anime trope
- certain mechanics that would make almost every level more enjoyable to speedrun without breaking the flow of the level desgin, most majorly the ground pound card, are level exclusive to whichever level decides to utilize it and makes a lot of levels feel slower than they could be if you were just given more control of your character globally
- this point is what REALLY irks me, but the complete lack of a crumb of a replay system extremely cripples this game if you are like me and are interested in racing your friends' times and global times. you CANNOT view a replay of not only other players' runs to get an idea of what the best route is (which if they're worried about spoilers, lock this behind the platinum medal or even the red medal for any given level), but you cannot even view your OWN replay, and the ghost mechanic you race along side against is a measure of when you should reset at best and an obtrusive pain at worse. if the level i'm trying to improve my time on isn't being played recently enough for my PB to be fresh in my mind, i find myself struggling to even remember what route i took or what little things i did to get the time i already got, which is extremely frustrating
- you CANNOT skip cutscenes, you can only "fast forward" them, which while it isn't a major hassle by any means, it's a little questionable in a game dedicated to speedrunners. the word is literally in the steam description on the store page. it also means i have to still listen to quips and one liners sometimes from these unlikable characters that i cannot turn their voices off for.

the negatives of this game hamper down the core experience a lot for me, however if you're just looking for a singleplayer experience focused on speed, but not looking to grind out times, and you have a high tolerance for anime garbage, this is a decently well crafted experience for the price. i'd happily change my review if the functions needed to make grinding a time on a level less frustrating were implemented

the first thing you should know is that this game is EXTREMELY derivative and referential. that shouldn't be immediately considered a negative, but yes if you're looking for something unique or experimental you are looking at the wrong game.

this game wears its inspirations on its sleeve, with not-so-subtle references to characters from famous horror franchises, a few eerily similar room layouts to old school resident evil games (even direct copies of the types of keys you can pick up), and even a monty python reference lol. however, considering the price point you do get a full, yet short experience that has a lot of the original survival horror flavor that can sometimes be hard to come by in between lengthy waits of good resident evil releases.

the whole game can be beat in under two hours on a fresh normal difficulty playthrough, so speedrunners can try and get their money's worth and get a refund (a practice i wouldn't really encourage since this developer's passion in the project is clearly seen), however like any good true survival horror game there is decent replay value. the combat is well designed and feels very tight and responsive, while also still imposing some classic restrictions like having to stand still to focus your aim in, and reloading slowing your movement which would normally be frustrating things to deal with in a game like this, but enemies and their attack patterns and movement speeds are well made to compliment this slow paced combat.

there are a few moments i do genuinely get scared but they are largely reduced to moments where the game wants to jump scare you, however without spoiling it there are one or two moments of real tense horror that get you pretty well.

for 5 dollars this is a well rounded out product with a decent enough amount of replayability and secrets that warrants the price point

wow!

edit: wow!

edit again: wow!