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

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.