One of my favorite roguelites that I enjoy returning to from time to time. Its aesthetic and wacky sense of humor are very enjoyable, the gun systems especially with later added synergies are fun to play around with and optimize in different ways. It's extremely difficult, especially later on, but feels so good and tightly controlled.
EtG is a peculiar title for me to collect my thoughts on because it's simultaneously a lot of things i hate about art and corporatism while also being kinda just fun to play.
the gungeon "series" has no particularly important continuity or overarching lore, it is a vessel for you to shove "references" into (1-1 things from other media, sometimes changed enough to prevent an issue of copyright from coming into play, sometimes unadapted), similar to the setting of Dead By Daylight, and while i think it has a little more going on in terms of substance, Dead Cells makes me feel the same way. if there's anything cool in Gungeon, you can bet your ass there's a trivia bulletpoint on the fandom wiki somewhere that tells you how it's actually just from another piece of media as a derivative. i do not like this very much, and i am not at all a fan of getting keys jangled in my face so that i get the pavlovian response of "oh, like a car! i see!" and clap.
on the flipside, though, this is genuinely a fun roguelike that has a lot of design decisions that i think are rad and fun, simultaneously being difficult with genuine resource management most of the time while also being willing to give you a god run for the lulz from one or two pickups, which is something i think other roguelikes attempt to strike a tenuous balance of which can ultimately make them feel unsatisfying, middling, or oddly consistent for a roguelike, with Risk of Rain 2 coming to mind.
i feel bad for getting attached to any characters in particular, i think some are cool though in simultanea i know it's either a basic checklist trope quota or it's a pull from another piece of media. comparing it to a roguelike i don't even particularly like playing, Isaac, which while occasionally containing references, goes in & goes hard for its setting. i remember a ton of things about Isaac even though when it comes to the question of "would you play this again? even if someone forked out like 50$ for you to do it, would you actually have any fun playing it?" i would answer "no." in regards to isaac, but yes to gungeon. it's strange.
overall i don't know how to feel about it. i would agree with someone dismissing it as "mid", though wouldn't disagree with someone saying "it's quite good". i don't entirely regret getting 100% on it because i did have fun, but i also bring up Gungeon as an example of what you should never do with your setting unless you are completely devoid of passion and love for planet earth. yet it's also not a game like Blazblue, where i can say "some parts of this are genuinely some of the sickest things ever created and the rest of it blows ass", because it is not a game of "best evers", nor is it necessarily a game of "worst evers", it just purely goes neutral in all things. peculiar game. soulslike.
the gungeon "series" has no particularly important continuity or overarching lore, it is a vessel for you to shove "references" into (1-1 things from other media, sometimes changed enough to prevent an issue of copyright from coming into play, sometimes unadapted), similar to the setting of Dead By Daylight, and while i think it has a little more going on in terms of substance, Dead Cells makes me feel the same way. if there's anything cool in Gungeon, you can bet your ass there's a trivia bulletpoint on the fandom wiki somewhere that tells you how it's actually just from another piece of media as a derivative. i do not like this very much, and i am not at all a fan of getting keys jangled in my face so that i get the pavlovian response of "oh, like a car! i see!" and clap.
on the flipside, though, this is genuinely a fun roguelike that has a lot of design decisions that i think are rad and fun, simultaneously being difficult with genuine resource management most of the time while also being willing to give you a god run for the lulz from one or two pickups, which is something i think other roguelikes attempt to strike a tenuous balance of which can ultimately make them feel unsatisfying, middling, or oddly consistent for a roguelike, with Risk of Rain 2 coming to mind.
i feel bad for getting attached to any characters in particular, i think some are cool though in simultanea i know it's either a basic checklist trope quota or it's a pull from another piece of media. comparing it to a roguelike i don't even particularly like playing, Isaac, which while occasionally containing references, goes in & goes hard for its setting. i remember a ton of things about Isaac even though when it comes to the question of "would you play this again? even if someone forked out like 50$ for you to do it, would you actually have any fun playing it?" i would answer "no." in regards to isaac, but yes to gungeon. it's strange.
overall i don't know how to feel about it. i would agree with someone dismissing it as "mid", though wouldn't disagree with someone saying "it's quite good". i don't entirely regret getting 100% on it because i did have fun, but i also bring up Gungeon as an example of what you should never do with your setting unless you are completely devoid of passion and love for planet earth. yet it's also not a game like Blazblue, where i can say "some parts of this are genuinely some of the sickest things ever created and the rest of it blows ass", because it is not a game of "best evers", nor is it necessarily a game of "worst evers", it just purely goes neutral in all things. peculiar game. soulslike.