Dead Cells (2018)

Played on game pass core. Beat all difficulties and found all the areas and bosses outside the 2 paid DLCs. I did take a look at all the options, assist mode, and custom mode, but kept things at default for normal difficulty. It took a few tries to beat that difficulty. The most important thing was unlocking the permanent healing flask upgrades as the biggest issue with this game was lack of healing. To help with that I chose necromancy as my first mutation to get a little bit of healing from each kill. I always took the sword and bow at the beginning, never even trying any shield until after beating Hell mode. I can see shields being key to surviving higher difficulties. Melee was great against ranged enemies and I absolutely loved using the bow to snipe. Due to the extreme damage done by enemies and the lack of healing, I found cheese to be the way to go. Probably on my second or third attempt I found fire blast and blood sword, and the wonders of hit and run damage over time. Fire blast was a pretty sweet weapon that could often one shot enemies. On the run where I first made it to the final boss I was using melee and frost blast. The way frost blast just froze enemies solid was such a good combo. Unfortunately it did not work as well on bosses and I was not able to kill the final boss. The main reason was lack of damage on my part because I had been choosing stat upgrades based on maximizing my health. For the next run I specialized in tactics and had very high DPS. I liked using wolf traps to immobilize enemies and make them easier to kill from range. For this run I had an amazing combo of lightning whip, multi nock bow, slicer trap and heavy turret. Oh yeah the cheese was through the roof. That lightning spell did crazy damage, damage over time, auto aimed, could hit above and below, and I could float in the air for a little while shooting it. I could also drop down those traps and hide where enemies could not get me. I slaughtered the final boss with this build. Not sure if I unlocked the barbed arrow mutation at that point yet, but it proved to be incredibly powerful combined with bow.

After this I decided to start using assist mode because fuck that permadeath shit. Even having to restart the entire level with infinite deaths turned on was too much of a penalty. I also turned on highlights for secrets to make them easier to find, and revealed the map. I progressed through the game trying out the different levels, other bosses and different weapons. All the while steadily unlocking new stuff. Since unlocking new weapons and skills gave a free copy I put them one point away from unlocking so that I could use them on a run where I did not get good stuff starting off. Each difficulty got progressively harder and harder, mainly by reducing the amount of healing available. By probably the third difficulty I used assist mode to drop trap damage to 20%, mainly due to the derelict brewery; oh how I hated that place with its Donky Kong exploding barrels crap. By the next difficulty I also lowered enemy damage to 20% because I was sick of dying and restarting levels. It was not very often that I would die from sudden damage. Mostly it was more like death from a Thousand Cuts and not enough healing. I kept enemy Health at 100% because I wanted some fun and challenge, but I did have to lower enemy Health to 20% to beat the bosses sometimes, particularly if I didn't have very good weapons.

Some standout weapons and skills: the magic bow fired several homing arrows with each shot and synergized extremely well with barbed arrows. It was also very good against conjunctivitis boss. My Hard mode run gave me a legendary scepter with invincibility while spinning, which dominated the entire game. The Tesla coil was interesting in that it had more vertical range than the turrets, but I preferred the better horizontal range. The seismic sword rooted enemies and did a medium range root attack, but it really sucked against the bosses. The nail did all crits while bouncing on top of enemies, and could get some cheeky shots from below. The explosive crossbow took up both slots and was incredibly effective with absurdly high damage; an area affect shot that did critical damage to the target but did not have arrows to get stuck in for barbed, and the melee that similarly did area damage with criticals on the target. Despite how crazy effective this weapon was I had to lower the health of the final boss. It owned the giant though, which was satisfying because the first time I fought the giant I had a damage over time build, which went very poorly because his eyeball did not take damage while it was not out. For either the first or second nightmare run I had an extremely effective chicken assassin build. I found an amulet that granted invisibility; best thing in the game! I combined that with the skill that turned me into a chicken shooting a bunch of egg bombs. What I did was wait until the enemies were close to a wall, turn my back to them, then shit out a ton of eggs that chain gibbed them to death without being able to attack me. Oh yeah so cheap. Unfortunately I never found invisibility again, and it did not work against bosses. I had to beat Nightmare mode twice after beating the final boss and looking up where to get the last boss cell. Then I beat Hell mode with a brutality build using twin blades and frost blast with crazy high damage. The teleporting enemies and regular new spawns put a bit of a hamper on the cheese, but I could also lure them into my traps. I did die a couple of times in the Astro lab and the final collector boss took several attempts. For my final run I did custom mode. I left the difficulty at Hell including all the malaise effects, put healing back to the max, max mutations and max starting gold. It was too easy and probably needed to be paired with Max enemy damage. On this run I used the war javelin and found a pistol for a very interesting brutality build. The javelin was only one shot but very powerful and I could teleport to it. The pistol was more like a shotgun with only short range but did not need to reload and did a lot of knockback, so it was fun knocking enemies to falling deaths. Unlocks carried over between normal and custom mode but it seemed like the state of the world reset, with the girl at the beginning still being alive Etc. Either that or there was some weird time manipulation stuff after beating the collector.

I did not have enough mutations unlocked for custom mode. Combo was always a good choice, and vengeance was always good for bosses. The other brutality mutations were great for melee builds; open wound for bleeding, Initiative for front loading damage, adrenaline for a bit of healing. Tranquility was great for any range build and support was for having traps. I used ammo with the explosive crossbow though it could come in handy with any bow. Tainted flask gave a free healing charge while the flask was empty after killing so many elite enemies and I absolutely needed that to get through Hell. Dead inside doubled health but prevented any kind of healing, so it was incredibly useful for boss fights when my healing flask was empty. Some useful mutations I was missing: ripper, ranger's gear, berserker, recovery and gold plating. I did find it useful to reset mutations for the bosses. Other than that my gold was best spent at the healing shop; 20k for 1 flask charge, ouch. Though I did not like how 1 healing item was replaced by malaise medicine on Hell. I tried out aspects for a couple early runs to help out but the warning that they prevented unlocking the boss cells meant they were only good for subsequent runs on the same difficulty, or practice. I used relentless after reading up on the recovery mechanic. So essentially relentless allowed me to take a hit and then be invincible while I killed whatever hit me, hopefully recovering most of the damage. I can see some other great builds using the aspects (invisible + assassin, damned + cursed, blood drinker + blood sword etc). I did the daily challenge a few times and found a bunch of secret stuff, though did not bother with the moonflower keys for the castle. Even though the player was given many great and cheap abilities, so too did many of the enemies have cheap abilities. The worst enemy for me was the suicide exploding barrels in the brewery. They did massive damage over a huge area and could teleport to me. They needed to be damaged before they would explode away from me so traps and range weapons were a must. A lot of my deaths were from the big golem enemies that could teleport me to them thus negating cheese. The flying carpets in the Astro lab were annoying with their shot that could only be dodged at the exact right moment. Before that it would keep on top of me and I would preemptively dodge too soon and then get hit by their attacks. The Collector boss also had a move like this. Enemies that summoned adds, like the four-legged robot thing, could also prove to be overwhelming if not defeated quickly. The massive greatsword knights with their incredibly nasty whirlwind were best not engaged directly. Usually I combed every area to loot every single thing and kill every enemy for the best possible rewards and powerups. But these enemies made me at least consider how to skip them.

I can't even fathom playing this game on the harder difficulties without assist mode; the sheer amount of sweat gameplay and rage inducing frustration that would cause. It would be like playing Dark Souls without ever being allowed to rest at a bonfire (if stats could be raised without resting) and having to start over from the beginning upon death. But the option is there for the masochists who enjoy that kind of play. I have immense respect for the amount of customization in this game to tailor the difficulty as you see fit. Without that I'd probably give the game a 7/10. The excellent combat mechanics, huge build variety, and high replayability make this game incredibly fun to play and worth coming back to. Similar in many respects to Hades in quality and feel, but lacking the great story and characters. If I had to make one change to benefit the higher difficulties it would be to have more ways to spend gold on health; multiple food shops in every level, a food shop after every level, and the option to pick food as a category in equipment shops.

8.7/10

Saw a list in Kotaku about 15+ games that you should install in a new pc blah blah, and this game was in it. And I've remembered this game,for yet another time. I've already installed this game 2 times these past 5 years, and both times I was excited about the aesthetic, the different weapons, the pew-pew, the responsivity of the controls, etc. And both times, after a few hours, I found myself at exactly the same position: Grinding the fucking levels again and again, and when came the time that work was done, and I wanted to relax playing a game, the only thing I had installed was this game. And it all felt too much like ...work.

Extremely repetitive, too grindy for my tastes, and while I understand (from some reviews here and elsewhere) that if you manage to slog through the repetitive stuff, the game gets better: Well shiiiiiit. Guess what. I've already leveled a couple of characters to 60 in old school WoW and WoW classic. I don't need any shit middles in games I play.

Some very good ideas in this game, and maybe some even better ones in the DLCs or after the grindy hours, but I guess I'll never know. Not going to install this one again.

I haven't played many Roguelites (really just Spelunky I've spent any time with, couldn't get into the popular ones like BOI/FTL/Rogue Legacy/etc) but I am loving this so far. Learning how to navigate each level feels really rewarding, I'm eager to unlock more permanent runes to open up some new paths

Playing on Android with touch controls is a bit challenging, but I'm starting to get better, even managed to beat a boss yesterday

Dead Cells' Constant Mutations Make It One Of The Best Games Of 2021, Too

Every time I read an article claiming that the latest updates to Dead Cells have made it worthwhile to play I jump back in to see if they are right. And every time I do that I find it as disappointing as I did initially. I think I need to finally give up hope that Dead Cells is something I will one day enjoy.

I'm not a fan of roguelites but the gameplay videos from Returnal have looked awesome. That being said... from what I've gathered on the reviews and the comments here on Grouvee, it seems one of the potential problems (for me) is that it's too RNG dependent on the drops you get. Again, I haven't played the game but I was about 95% not going to buy it anyway, and it's just my morbid curiosity acting up.

I got pretty into Dead Cells a few years back on the Switch and eventually what drove me bonkers is just how much you are at the mercy of the weapons you find earlier on. If I didn't find something decent, I would quickly get demolished. And if I applied any boss cells, I was totally screwed without a ranged weapon.

That's when I decided I was done with roguelites! And therefore, Returnal is going to be a pass from me. Anyway! Just a little ramble, because the reviews have kicked up some rough memories for me from playing Dead Cells...