Death's Door (2021)

I loved this game.

Combat is challenging from start to finish, occasionally breaching the threshold to frustration. Every mini-boss victory carried immense satisfaction.

The story, the art, the music, the characters, and the environment have a compelling charm. I felt for not only the main character but also the npcs and villains.

The designers waste nothing of the isometric view, crafting intriguing maps with unexpected verticality, battlegrounds with destructible and shifting tools and hazards, secret passageways, and collectibles revealed through occasional 90-degree camera rotations.

I couldn't bring myself to go for the 100% ending, though I blame backlogs more than tedium.

Death Dooring is a game where you beat the big bosses in 2 seconds but most of the time you die to the guys with the hammers and shields

fun game. i probably would've liked it a lot more if it leaned even more heavily into the theme of "everything has to end at some point so enjoy what you have while it lasts" without the humor undercutting it all but that's probably just my personal taste showing. some really cool character / world designs too. and a banger soundtrack

I had a ton of fun with this one. So much fun that, after 100%ing my first playthrough, I started a new game and did the umbrella run to get the platinum trophy. I'm not a trophy-chaser. I only go after platinums if I enjoy the effort to get them, and pursuing my final trophy in Death's Door (umbrella) was challenging but so much fun.

The art and music are excellent. The music, especially, is a treat to the ears. In fact I'm going to search out the soundtrack it was so good.

It's not perfect; I'd give it a 4.5. It's deserving of a round-up, though, since grouvee only allows integer ratings.

The history is good enough and the gameplay is fun.

It's an isometric light darksouls.

Has a lot of replayability since there are things that you can not do until you get a specific power, so you can go back after you get it.

I felt a little bit lost at times because it has puzzle like scenarios, so I guess it's expected, but so you know it :)

Overall really good and fun game. Would recommend :)

Death’s Door is awesome. It's just awesome. It’s one of those games I decided to play on a whim just for the art style alone, since the way I mostly saw it described as - a cute-looking soulslike - wasn't exactly something that immediately drew me to a game.

I’m really glad I played it, tough. The attractive visuals really lived up to the hyped I had put on them, with a beautiful mix of looming greys and a vibrant, upbeat colour palette. In fact, almost everything in the artistic vein is of an impressive quality. The music is fantastic, at times reminiscent of the Witcher and, more rarely, Nier: Automata, and something I never once grew tired of, even after spending a ton of time in a particular hub. The levels are all visually and musically simple, yet different enough to make you feel like you’re in different places, exuding a strange allure and inciting a will for exploration (one of Death’s Door strongest aspects) that I don’t remember feeling all that much over the past few years.

But I also realised that Death’s Door is much more than its artistic prowess. Perhaps its main plus doesn’t even fall under the artistic umbrella. Gameplay in this game feels so good to experience firsthand. Combat and movement are simplistic but incredibly fluid and responsive, making almost every single interaction enjoyable (I probably spent more time grinding and blasting through respawning enemy waves than I’d care to admit). As a result, even those specific battles that can be a bit more frustrating to overcome feel satisfying. The mechanics that get gradually introduced - mainly in the form of ranged combat options with things like arrows, bombs or fireballs - are all useful in their own right and, once again, highly enjoyable to experiment with (the skyhook feels particularly great). And the way progress is handled - again, incredibly simple yet streamlined and practical - makes you feel like you’re never overly punished and you’re always taking a step further, even throughout countless deaths. These three aspects - gameplay, mechanics and progress - inform everything the game tries to do, and never did I feel anything in them was out of place.

But alongside them I also found a surprisingly memorable and endearing story, one that offers an original and compelling message on death and existence, allegorical as a lot of it was. The characters are fitting, purposeful, and bursting with charisma, and not one feels like aimless filler since they all intentionally add to the narrative threads one way or another. Boss fights were also pretty cool. I love when a game keeps to a smaller number of bosses that nevertheless feel distinct, instead of showering you with a bunch of unremarkable ones. Death’s Door does precisely that, with a handful of highly enjoyable, visually impactful encounters that take just the right amount of time to overcome (though the final dude really proved a bit of a challenge to my admittedly limited skillset).

Finally, level design. Here is where I initially had my most conflicting feelings, since it felt like I was required to do a lot of backtracking that I found annoying, especially since I believed there was no real level looping to speak of. Remembering every place I needed to go back to once I unlocked new abilities was a bit of a pain because I'm not exactly great at navigating without a map (even though Death's Door's levels aren’t at all massive). However, as I progressed, I started to realise the error in my judgement, as looping sections were there for sure. I just needed to unlock certain abilities in order to be able to explore them. Throughout the course of my 16-hour playthrough I did come to appreciate and get used to the philosophy behind level creation, but I would've still preferred to have seen it handled differently. Sometimes the game gave me a metroidvania vibe which I wasn’t necessarily looking for, and a hand-drawn map, for example, one that would register points of interest once you’ve discovered them, would've been great.

All told, Death’s Door left me with a really nice feeling in my gaming soul. It is charming and immersive, it boasts a world that is simply a joy to explore, its visuals and soundscape are incredible, and its gameplay never misses a beat. There were a couple of niggles (aside from what I mentioned above, I wish melee weapons could’ve been more differentiated in their use, and I encountered one annoying glitch in a boss battle that gave me an unfair disadvantage), but nothing that overshadowed what was, on the whole, a great experience. So much so that I'm now on a quest to find similar ones. 8.5/10

I don't have much to say here other than this wasn't that thrilling, wasn't that challenging, wasn't that exciting. Loved the art style.

The writing just wasn't my tempo, too cute and twee. The story was pretty boring for me. The combat was repetitive and not too challenging. The levels looked different, sure, but it was exactly the same process x3.

I know this is a small indie team and I want to hold them up, but I think it's genuinely this is not the game for me.

I know there's a slew of post credits stuff, but I cannot be asked to stick around after to just do more grinding. Maybe I'm too old, but I typically don't get down with game plus stuff.

Anyways, it was beautiful and I had some fun.

The game started real rough, like so rough it almost killed interest out the gate, but I stuck with it and after about 2 hours or so it really started to warm up. Now I'm past the first major boss and honestly I love it and can't recommend it enough. It's also got a surprising amount of humor, considering what the game's about lol

I'm happy for these Xbox sales cause it's nice to finally be able to play the stuff everyone else has played recently.

I'm trying to stay positive, but so far this is....just...blah. There's nothing really bad about it, but it's just so...everything, ya know? I feel like I've played this a million times in a million other games that look almost identical and play almost identical. Gonna give it a fair shot, but not a great first impression.

EDIT: Okay, it's starting to grow on me a bit.

When I first started playing this, I would have called it a Tunic clone except that I know Death's Door came out first. The isometric map and wide map explorations with little to no explanation aside from the basic plot reminded me a lot of Tunic. And then I think it came into its own.

The fight style wasn't overly complicated, but the game was just short enough that by the time I got tired of it, there wasn't much more of it. The levels were huge and colorful, and the gauntlet levels were really unexpected and very fun. Boss battles weren't terribly challenging but were clever and again, not too long.

I even found that I was having fun doing the post-game extra adventure. Except.

The one major complaint I have overall is that all the weapons are pretty much the same. You collect 5 over the course of the game that are all optional, but none of them are particularly distinct or good for different things. Another is the sewers, which LOOK like something you need to go back to later but no, you never get anything for them and it turns out you could explore them the whole time. Lastly, the VERY last thing you need to do for the true ending more or less requires going through the entire map again, and I just didn't want to do it.

But all in all, I really enjoyed this game.

It is a decent Zelda + Dark Souls type game in an isometric perspective with some positives and some more negatives. The game feels very polished. It has a nice artstyle. It has some fun side characters. The minus though kind of disappointing. It's missing map/minimap. The combat gets kind of boring quickly, because there is no real progression when it comes to combat abilities. There are 3 of 4 magic abilities that are pretty much the same. There is not enough enemy diversity; the usual grunt types of enemies were the same in every area, just with different hats. Also, buying upgrades feels like nothing changed at all.

The missing map is a terrible design decision, especially for players who want to finish the game 100%. There is a lot of back tracking to find stuff with new abilities, but it is an absolute chore to do that without a map. Also even progressing through new areas becomes a game out of going somewhere, realizing it's not where you wanted to go, and going back. Half of my time playing this game was getting lost because of no map. Back tracking not included here. Because of that flawed design I stopped playing the game after 2 major bosses. The game has lots of potential, but unfortunately it was wasted. But if you can live with getting lost constantly and with pretty much the same combat system from start to finish, then you're going to enjoy it.