Recent reviews by Joonysuke Higashikata

I want to play this game; I want to like it. The problem is that it's constantly crashing, whether I die, or just casually play mid-game. It's so random. I tried looking for any known fixes, and I know there was a hotfix back in November of last year to help alleviate it, but so far, that's not the case.

Cannot, and will not recommend due to the fact it's been an ongoing issue and the dev(s) can't fix it completely.

Despite the fact a friend of mine bought this game for me even though he knew how I initially felt about the game when I played the demo. Not much of my opinion has really changed, outside of giving this game far much more of my time than I should've, but I'm a completionist in a way... So, here's my review of this game.

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As the name would suggest, you're supposed to kill Death. However, Death has yet to make an appearance in this game. Don't know when, don't know how. I don't even know if he will. Yet 5 mortals have been tasked with this, though the other 4 arrive sequentially after Avoron(the Knight) at some point inexplicably. Instead, Dracula is tasked with being the final boss you defeat at the end of a run-- which is ironic. For those of you who haven't played Castlevania, Death is a servant of Dracula, not the other way around. Though I'm not suggesting that is how things ought to be; I just find it funny.

The characters are very one dimensional, and a chunk of the writing is awful. 2/5ths of the cast talk in an obnoxiously "quirky" style of writing, akin to people who shorten their words when texting.

Now, if this game wasn't meant to have much of a theme, I wouldn't be so harsh on the aforementioned stuff I wrote above. However, Hades is a game this one takes great inspiration from, and for those who have played Hades, they know how incredibly well done the writing and voice acting is done in that game. We also know that Hades is a game about the Greek Gods, and their part to play in helping Zagreus escape from the Underworld to find his mother, and those very same Gods impart blessings to Zagreus to empower this weapons and abilties throughout a session of play. Death Must Die is derivative of this. It uses a similar concept of Gods assisting the player, speaking to the player before imparting a random blessing of your choosing, and throwing in exposition to quirky one-liners once the dialogue has been exhausted of the aforementioned exposition.

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I do enjoy most of the pixel art. The UI, the stage scenery, the icons, particle effects, enemy design, hub area, they all look great. However, most of the character sprites are awful. I'm not a big fan of the 2000/10s era of indie pixel art, where limbs are about 1 pixel in length. I find it to be lazy. Ironically, Kront(the Orc) has the best design out of the playable characters. He's more visually readable, and has nice stumpy legs instead of paper-thin sticks for legs.

The Gods are very inconsistent with their portraits. Some are remarkable, others have terrible inlines/outlines that clash with the hues they're meant to mesh with. Which wouldn't be an issue if everyone had them, but that's not the case. Take for example Summer, the Goddess of Fire; most of her design is top-notch. She has very few contrasting inlines/outlines on her body, and the ones she does, have been done very well. Where it gets bad is when you look at her fox tails and the flames around her. This is probably the point in which the artists got lazy, because the tails and the flames do not fit the design they were going for.

Contrast that with Winter, the Goddess of Cold. Her entire design is consistent. Not sure why they didn't keep that approach. Every other God shares that level of inconsistency with inlines/outlines. Krom is probably the worst design of them all. Either he was the first one developed, or the last, because he has the least amount of effort put into shape, definition, consistency in color, and overall theme.

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There's very little I have to say about this. So, this will be the briefest subject of them all. Music is alright, but mostly forgettable. There's like one track that plays in my head from time-to-time. Probably the best one.

The voice acting on the other hand. Absolutely dreadful. I'm already biased against English-speaking voice actors. As its rise in prevalence brings with it self-trained amateurs that watched too much anime, and with it, put on the same crappy voices you hear time and time again. I can't stand it, and this game is no exception. Had there not been an option to disable the voices, I probably would not have been able to put as many hours into the game as I have, as I would've dropped it permanently in the first hour.

Also, that soda can opening SFX they used for the Possessed Armor is really weird, and I can't unhear it.

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At the time of writing, there's only one stage. ONE(1). Meaning, this game has less to offer than Vampire Survivors when it first came out, Halls of Torment, and a few others. 20 Minutes til Dawn only had one stage, but was fantasically done with it's gameplay aspects that it could be overlooked to a good degree.

I found myself playing this game on controller mostly because for some reason, this game feels awful to play on KB+M, and I couldn't be bothered to change my controls. Since attacking while moving slows you, setting the actual auto-attack option was never something I wanted to toggle on.

My biggest gripe with this game is the progression. A lot of the games in this sub-genre offer a permanent option to level up stats as you progress on each session you play, with some granting ways to change the overall playstyle of a character, even granting gear options the more you progress. Now, Death Must Die offers 2 of 3 those options. Characters have different "signs" they utilize to somewhat change the playstyle of the character. These are unlocked by completing the challenges/achievements in the game with the respective character, though some of these are just an unlock and provide nothing but trophies of enemies scattered around the hub area. Most of these signs are rather forgettable changes to a character, but can offer a great boon to a character, or just a means to an end. Like Nixi's sign that dramatically boosts her ability to attain item drops from enemies. However, there are some signs that are just outright too good to pass up. Merris's Sign of Timespace, where she permanently vacuums all EXP gems, regardless of distance, at the cost of a single dash. While the downside of her sign seems like a very significant one for those who have difficulty with evading attacks, the upside is too hard to pass up, as leveling in this game is crucial. At least it would be, if not for the core issue.

Gear in the game is the single most critical method of progression the game has to offer(at the time of writing). As I have stated earlier, many of its contemporaries inspired by Vampire Survivors offer some sort of permanent progression system, often spent with gold or whatever currency the game offers. DMD instead has you use gold to buy gear, which early on, isn't very good. However, anything is better than nothing at the start.

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I actually had to omit a lot because I just wrote so much. I would've liked this game more if it spent more time fleshing out more core mechanics and a better theme than rehashing what Hades did better. Overall, the game isn't terrible, but in it's current state, it's not even worth its current price. Which is saying a lot.

To be honest, I thought this game hit 1.0, as I hadn't looked at the store page in a good long while, but this definitely FEELS like an unfinished Early Access game.


I do not recommend.

It's more of that Risky goodness.

I'm all for games to compete with the subgenre that Risk of Rain helped bring, but as of right now. This ain't it chief. Since this is obviously marketed as a "demo" without being tied to the actual release, the devs are keeping any negative reviews locked behind this "title" as opposed to the full release; smart, but I don't really like nor care for it.

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The game just looks like Risk of Rain 2. Nothing too compelling about that. If you liked RoR2's looks, then I guess you'll like this one. It just feels cheaper by comparison, especially since this isn't a 3rd-Person Game. Speaking of which, I don't know if the devs played the first Risk of Rain game, but somehow despite the fact this is meant to be like a copy of RoR2 in aesthetic and design. The map(s) somehow feel incredibly claustrophobic by comparison. The enemies don't quite look interesting either, feeling kind of rushed visually. The particle effects seem fine, but overall everything just looks "cheaper".

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Overall, the audio isn't terrible, but the music, once again, feels like a watered down version of the Risk of Rain(both 1 and 2). More specifically, any synth-esque sci-fi styled music with that atmospheric tone to it is what it sounds like. Very generic, perhaps a placeholder. I really don't know, but it wasn't at all compelling to listen to either. I just heard it, recognized it, and then subsequently drowned it out, or at least tried to, before it was all I could hear because the same few notes kept repeating due to me activating one of the Totems. The SFX is slight-below average, but it's kind of hard to have crisp, ear-pleasing sound effects in games that you'd rather listen to over the music itself.

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This is where I'm most disappointed. If you've played any "top-down" run and gun shooter in the past 5-10 years, then this isn't really going to break the mold in that category. Again, we're dealing with a game that's more inspired by Risky than any other game in the genre, so its core mechanics stem from that. I tried both game modes. When I first played the game, the map was pretty hard to get immersed in, and it took me a while to understand what and where everything was. I almost immediately tried the second game mode to unlock the second of two characters available.

There are presumably 4 different levels that you go between until you loop around and do them again. Unfortunately, all the maps feel the exact same due to the structure of the maps and the lack of variety of terrain(meaning, no slopes/verticality), so instead you're left seeing slightly different rocks formations or vegetation and not much else. No differing biomes, no thematic changes to the world; nothing.

Enemies also lack in variety. You're bound to see every enemy type the game has available by the first, maybe second map. While there's quite a few to see, the fact they aren't designated to specific maps means you'll get sick of all them piling together quite quickly.

The items don't feel very interesting as practically most things, if not everything, scales linearly. That could be considered a good thing if not for fact that the current game loop feels incredibly awful. The start of the game in 'Aurora' feels horribly sluggish and nearly painful to kill anything, so you're pretty much forced to run to a Totem ASAP to kick-start the game, as it's ironically the fastest way to accrue the currency in the game. After some point, the game starts to feel uncomfortably easy, not even a braindead sort of way. It's just like the scaling, the amount of money you receive, and how insignificant the enemies are due to them being basic Pathfinding filler that spawn endlessly, even after completing the main objectives each level. It feels more tedious than rewarding. The one good thing I'll say is that they added the ability to slow down the game to choose what item you wish to pick so you're not getting BTFO whenever you purchase anything.

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With all of that said. The game obviously isn't released fully yet, and surely most of my complaints could be subject to change and fixed. Plus, this review won't even matter once the full release is out, as no one would see it on that page. The game is free, play it for yourself, and come to your own conclusion. However, once the full game releases, and if my most of my complaints remain, then I can't possibly recommend it in the carbon-copy state that it's in. You're honestly better off just playing Risky 2, or waiting until the Risky Returns comes out.

Game would be a heck of a lot more fun if I wasn't paired with kids that can't fit the square block in to the square hole, whilst fighting against players who actually know what they're doing and going 5-20 with AFKers and early surrenders at 8 mins into the match. Call me when this game is F2P.

It's been a while since I last reviewed this game-- which was back during Lake of Kalandra. I gave it a negative review for good reason. During that time, Chris Wilson's VISION™ was in full-force and caused a major rift amongst fans and that VISION™. Now, after 4000+ hours of play, I can safely say with great pleasure that this pretty much my favorite game ever.

Posting this just for the task.

Imagine seeing every reviewer give a positive recommendation on a game, while saying the same "Waited 6 years for this, and it was worth it. 10/10 would shill again!" comment. Now imagine someone actually having something interesting to say.

That's not exactly me, but I'm gonna provide some feedback anyway.


Now, I too had originally played this game back in 2013 during its nascent state of development, and after learning of its continued development a few weeks ago, I'll admit, I was excited. However, upon recently playing the game again, and putting at least 5 hours into the game, and almost getting nowhere, I'll have to say... It needs a LOT of work.

Pros

• Despite its simplistic design, the art style has a bit of charm-- so as long as you're not a massive graphics ♥♥♥♥♥.
  
  
• Sound is decent, and the music is also rather charming. It's pretty soothing to listen to, but I wouldn't recommend turning on loop since some of the soundbytes are pretty short.
  
  
• The world is pretty vast-- albeit not in the same "infinite world" aspect that was initially advertised many years ago.

Cons

• There's very little direction to where to go or what to do. This might seem fine if you're used to games like Minecraft, Terraria and the like. However, this leads into my next comment.
  
  
• The world is very unbalanced. You'll spend countless times lurking around trying to find something to defeat, only to get BTFO by not just a 6 star, not just a 4 star, not even a 2 star rating mob, but even 1 star mobs can give you a hard time if you have no idea what you're doing.
  
  
• Combat is dull. Now, the combat in the original alpha wasn't any different, but you would think this game coming into a beta, and VERY soon an open paid product for everyone to purchase and try, that some attempt at further fleshing out the combat system and mechanics would've at least been attempted. Instead you'll be met with the same weak basic attacks on defaulted on the MB1, the heavy powerful attack on the MB2, and your "ultimate ability" on the R key, which varies for class, but all of them are pretty meh.
  
  
• Progression is stilted by gear. Which means levels don't really exist beyond what loot you can get your hands on. That means, you'll be spending most of your time either trying to find materials to craft gear, searching for random loot on the ground you can use(yes, this is something you can run into), or hoping that a successful kill on an enemy will drop-- that you can use for your class.
  
  
• So, now that you know gear is how you progress through the game, all you have to do is get good gear, right? Wrong. Gear is region-locked. Meaning, if you become a God among mortals in this area you've spent a good several hours exploring in, and decide to branch out elsewhere, your gear will not be usable outside the region it was obtained in. So, you're forced to start over and regrow. While it's an interesting mechanic on paper, and makes sense to avoid steamrolling through every region. In practice, however, it really puts a damper on the actual progression of the game. It's like a line graph showing your increase in progression and power, only to plummet back to zero and having to repeat this Ad nauseam. No one would want to do this forever.
  
  
• Character creation is pretty weak. Most races you can pick from have a significantly weaker selection of what actually can be adjusted compared to say-- the Human. Making the option of preference rather pointless in hindsight, but that's just subjective.

I want to like this game, I really do. In fact, to a certain extent I still do. Otherwise I would not have put in the hours that I did, even during the frustration I was succumbed with. But in it's current state, I cannot recommend this to anyone looking to get a different experience from a voxel-based, open-world exploration "RPG". I urge you to wait until major changes occur, and significant improvements are made.

Because where it stands, it's shell of it's former self, and no amount of "it's still in development" or "it's in beta" will change anything if these improvements don't happen. If you don't believe, then I'll refer you to go look that the development hell that was DayZ's "beta" for more than half a decade.

~~~I will repurchase this game once it's fully released, so these aren't my final thoughts on the game~~~

I'm just gonna make this brief since I didn't put enough time into the game to warrant a full review.
The game is BRUTAL for beginners. Most of the mobs you fight will pummel you into the ground if you don't know what to expect. That's not exactly a bad thing, but does leave a bad taste in my mouth when I keep dying.

• The game has a very comfy atmosphere. So much that it starts to lull you into a state of sleepyness. Ha.
  
• The music is great. Adding to that sense of "comfiness", the composition compliments every part of game that I briefly experienced, from day-to-night.

• The artsyle is pretty shallow. "Pixel-art" is a fickle style that can be a blessing or a curse. In this case, it's the latter of the two. Just some of the aesthetic comes off looking very rushed, or uninspired, whilst a few others looks clever, and intricate. I hope they go back and brush on the designs of NPCs, and scenery. Perhaps going with a more fleshed-out 16-bit, rather than roughly 8-bit mostly.
  
• This game was meant to be a multiplayer game. This is probably what the devs were going for when they designed the game, but much like how Don't Starve Together seems to be more of a worthy experience than playing the game solo, Feel The Snow gives the same vibes. So, if you feel compelled to buy this game, probably have some friends, or find a group to play with.

All in all, it's a game I want to put more time and effort into, but at this current point in time, it's definitely not worth it. Hopefully, the game gets a healthy amount of updates and feedback, where I can pick this game back up and have sense of fulfillment when I play again.

So, after bickering with someone that seems to believe this... "Thing" is actually good. I took the liberty of wasting $0.64 just to see how garbage this mess really was. AND BOY IS IT GARBAGE!

PROS:

• If you're into incest and lesbianism, then this is for you.
  
• If you have poor eyesight, then the art style can be actually quite refreshing and worth noting for it's "intricate" design.
  
• If you like your games less than an hour long, and about the rate of completion on par, if not surpassing 'Gone Home', then is a worthy investment.
  
• Buy this game if lighting dollars on fire is a natural pass-time for you.
  
• It has multiple endings.
  
  CONS:
  
• As soon as you start up the game, you're greeted with a screen devoid of any audio.
  
• The UI, if you can call it that, looks like vomited feces that has pieces of corn in it of varying widths.
  
• Speaking of audio. I've not once heard any voiceovers, and the background music gets grating after the second loop... Which loops pretty often if you're a slow reader like I am. Fortunately, it has more than one track.
  
• It's riddled with spelling errors, and poor punctuation, you'd almost think this was made by a bunch of Weeaboos with a love for history *COUGH*. Excuse me, I have an allergic reaction to my own irony.
  
• The ability to make decisions happens once in a while, and dictate when and how your ending will play off. If you think that's normal, you'd be right... Except if you spacebar'd through the monotonous text, then decisions mean nothing since the game ends as quickly as it began.
  
• I'm not very good at history or linguistics, but I'm pretty sure Romans didn't talk like these people. I'm not even refering to the fact that English probably wasn't their primary language.
  
• Remember those endings I mentioned earlier? Yeah, there's probably like 4-8 (I only encountered 3 of my own) endings, and each one is just a history lesson about the two protagonists. I'm referring to Caligula, and Drussila. Oops... SPOILERS! Like it matters...
  
• Speaking of Caligula. He's in this game for some reason, which contradicts the whole point of Drussila "overthrowing him", considering that in one of the history lessons that preceeds one of the endings, it mentions he passed the throne to Drussila after falling ill. Hmm....
  
• The text box sucks. It's far bigger than it needs to be 90% of the game, and when text does fill the window entirely, it's welcomed by its co-pilots, BAD GRAMMAR & PPFT-WHO-NEEDS-WORD-WRAP.
  
• Remember how I said the art style is great for those with poor eyesight? Now, if you can accurately see your screen, and actually have artistic taste, then you'll probably agree the characters and the accompanying background look atrocious. I mean, most DeviantArtist's would likely agree that it looks "nice", but this isn't DeviantArt.
  
• It kicks actual Visual Novels in the balls for being better at being a VN than this monstrosity. By that, I mean it isn't a Visual Novel-- Because it's not the length of a novel... Not even a Light Novel.
  
• There's controller config in the options......... Why?
  
  
  Final Thoughts:
  If I can get my money back, I likely will proceed in doing so. Even if it's a measly $0.64. That 64 cents was spent to prove a point. The point has been made, and I'd rather go back and play Zombie National Park before I play another "game" by this company again. Here's a small album of a few screenshots I took showcasing some of the "excitement": http://imgur.com/a/PFbZX
  
  1/10 - Never again.