Death's Door - Review
The Death’s Door narrative follows a newly hired crow to lead souls to the afterlife via what seems to be a bureaucratic organization. With not much being told in the start of the game - apart from the first soul you were to guide having been taken from you by your predecessor - players slowly unveil the game’s narrative by meeting a variety of interesting characters on their journey.
Think of it like the Japanese anime, Bleach, with Ichigo and its Soul Society. To explain the story simply, without giving too much away, that’s it in a nutshell. Through the journey you take, and one that’s similar to FromSoftware’s Dark Souls series (and the like), Death’s Door deals with a lot of storytelling from it’s item descriptions and dialogues, with side characters scattered across the game. In fact, there are so many similarities that it felt quite evident that the game’s developers, Acid Nerve, were fans of the Dark Souls games. I mean, even their previous game was titled, Titan Souls.
Death’s Door’s visual design has definitely changed from its predecessor to a more modern, minimal but stylistic visual design that works well with this game. The character designs are absolutely creative and fun. Not to say that their previous 8-bit style was worse - just different to the current art style. Characters are designed really well and fit the fun atmosphere and story, even though the overall theme is quite morbid… -“DEATH”, which is also placed across the screen upon dying, similarly to Dark Souls’ ‘YOU DIED’ screen. As previously stated, there are many instances where you can clearly see Death’s Door taking inspiration from Dark Souls, like a particular character with a pot as a head which could be said to be reminiscent of ‘onion bro’ (Siegmeyer and Seigward). Additionally, some other designs are quirky and similar to the designs of a Studio Ghibli animation, which enforces the fun and light-hearted game on a topic so depressing.
Not only is the art in this game absolutely fantastic, the gameplay itself is a lot of fun and challenging at times. Players are forced to manage their attacks between dodging enemies - it’s not a simple hack and slash, but one that teaches players to learn their enemies’ movesets and knowing when to be aggressive and when to roll away and dodge. Again, this is something that’s familiar if you’re a fan of FromSoftware’s Souls-like games, where the emphasis is always placed on strategic reactions, and management of ones actions (coupled with ragequits, of course LOL). One thing that I noted that makes Death’s Door tricky and highly frustrating, personally, was the turning circle of the character you play. This often lead to feeling as though I’m controlling a tank. That being said, it made me think about how to approach an enemy, time and develop my approach upon each attempt after ‘DEATH’.
Though you start the game with the Reaper’s sword, a basic but overall well balanced weapon, you’ll unlock extra weapons along the way such as a twin set of daggers all the way to a greatsword (and more). Finding your style is definitely one that you’ll need to work out as you progress through. Whether you’re one that loves to inflict heavy hits, but with less or slower swings vs. one that dishes out faster mini hits, etc. This game lets you adjust, experiment and adapt whenever you like as you’re not forced to upgrade any character stats to a specific weapon type. Additionally, you’ll unlock extra abilities in the form of weapons and spells such as a bow, an arrow, bomb, hook shot and flame spell. These abilities are used to progress and unlock areas on the map even though these puzzles would seem pretty straight forward.
On the flipside, Death’s Door is littered with secret areas that go beyond a simple puzzle to reach a certain area, but you have to go out of your way to look for certain locations that were initially locked and/or unseen. Going back to the characters you met, making sure you pay attention to the dialogue for hints is a must which clearly shows the game design’s detail from little quirks like breaking a signboard and reading it afterward (if you haven’t already seen images on Twitter and the like) to even just looking at the level design. To say that the creators took a page out of the Dark Souls series would be an understatement. My opinion is that I’d consider Death’s Door an isometric Souls-like game.
Couple the game’s visual and level design, boss fights with a fantastic score that suits the fun factor gameplay and you’ve got a near perfect game. The music used picks up the pace when it needs to, especially during boss fights, or slows down the pace depending on the area you’re in makes it feel like it’s intentionally decided on, and not just an afterthought.
Death’s Door is a challenging yet very fair isometric Souls-like game that I would highly recommend people to give a shot. I can’t stop going back to the visual designs as it just looks incredible, but coupled with a fair challenge of difficulty to players will make you want to keep going. As previously stated, the only frustration I felt was the movement of the turning circle, which you’ll adjust to, but will still nip at you from time to time… of course, that’s seriously nitpicking at a fantastic game. This game is definitely one that you’ll have a lot of fun with, and is an absolute pleasure to play. Especially when you overcome some of the challenging boss flights and climb over that hurdle.
The Score
9.0
Review code provided by Devolver Digital
The Pros
+Fantastic visual and level design
+Fun characters you meet along the way
+Absolutely fun and satisfying gameplay
The Cons
-Could be too challenging for some players
-Most puzzles might come across a little simplistic
