Death's Gambit is a great looking game that is a cross between a metroidvania and Dark Souls. There wasn't enough here to pull me through the game, so I ended up dropping it.

Death's Gambit looks great. The pixel art is well done, the enemy designs are cool, and the environments are varied and fairly awesome looking. Why is the main character green in game when he isn't in the key art?

Structurally, Death's Gambit is a hub area with spokes leading into different areas, gated by abilities you unlock. It works, but I found navigation and remembering where I needed to go to be very challenging with no map (one is apparently added in the updated version of the game, but I didn't play that!). Exploration in this game was fairly frustrating in general. Many areas are multi-level, with traversal dependent on platforming challenges or small climbing/navigation puzzles, but nothing is quite distinct enough to have a clear idea of where you are at any given time, so it feels like wandering around randomly.

Combat is floaty and unresponsive, but I got used to it after a bit of play. There are a number of different weapons in the game and they all play differently. I had fun with a few of the bosses, but overall I wasn't super impressed with the gameplay. Many of the boss attacks are poorly telegraphed or exploit the awkward controls to make things more difficult than they should be.
Character advancement is unsatisfying, unfortunately. There is a skilltree you can level up, but nothing in it really appealed to me or worked towards a build of any kind. It feels like you are just picking some random bonuses. Improving weapons is just a linear path (a bit like Demon's Souls), but i never felt much connection to my weapon.

I abandoned this game mainly out of frustration with the level design and combat. I just didn't find a lot that was very engaging about it.
I have heard that the Afterlife update has fixed many of the problems I had with the game, so I may go back to check it out at some point.

Reviewed on Jan 21, 2022


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