Picked this up because I was in the mood for a cool werewolf detective story, which it was, but I feel like it would've been better in any other medium where it was paced better and not pretending that your choices have consequences (yeah I know Telltale game jokes on me). But yeah, decent layered mystery, cool setting, great vibe and OST, (mostly) good designs and the voice acting really brings the mood together. I also didn't think that something this linear could be this buggy, I spent a third of an episode with a dollar clipping through Bigby's thumb which made it look like he's constantly trying to get people to unstick it from his hand which honestly sounds like a funny plot point that should've actually been in the game.

This is a tight, mechanically sound and incredibly satisfying game that gradually completely falls apart as you unlock higher difficulties and dig deeper into the systems that the devs are still tangibly struggling to balance 6 years in. Going from the fun action RPG that Dead Cells starts out as, and ending up in the stat check-bloated wreck it becomes in the late game (in individual runs but especially in the overall progression), is like seeing a child prodigy grow up into a tweaking crackhead. Don't get me wrong - there's still enjoyment to be had even in the depths of the unrepentant inferno that is 5BC! It's just that the punchy and well-paced core gameplay gets molded into this incongruous twitchy mess where if you're not blowing up an enemy in one hit the nanosecond they're in your line of sight, you're playing it wrong and your deaths start to feel more and more bullshit. And at that point, the whole variety in weapons, mutations and enemy design becomes almost irrelevant; which is a shame because it's initially one of the game's strongest points.

Whatever Motion Twin's next project is, I hope they at least build on this foundation because the actual moment-to-moment experience of Dead Cells is immaculate.