Death's Door Review
Death's Door Review
Developer(s): Acid Nerve.
Publisher: Devolver Digital.
Release: July 20th, 2021.
Platform(s): Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC. PS4, PS5, and Switch (11/23/21).
Death's Door, a game made by the 2 person developer Acid Nerve is a great action-adventure RPG. You control a crow as he goes to work on reaping souls. With a great story full of memorable characters and great gameplay you can't go wrong with this indie game.
The game starts with you going to work at your job with the Reaping Commission Headquarters. When you get there your boss tells you today's soul you have to reap is the Demonic forest spirit. When you find the spirit you find out that it doesn't want to go down quietly. After defeating the forest spirit an old crow swops in and steals its soul. The old crow then tells you that a lot of crows have been going missing lately. He thinks that it has something to do with Death's Door the locked door floating in the sky. He then asks you to explore three dungeons and find the three Giant souls lying inside and take them down. Once you complete this mission you will be able to use the three souls as a key to open Death's Door and then find out why crows have been going missing.
The simple gameplay loop consists of rolling away from attacks, slashing at your enemy with your weapon, and using ranged spells and/or your bow and arrow to attack your enemy from a safe distance. This loop always feels fun especially when you go up against bosses where your skills are put to the test. You start the game using a simple Sword to destroy your enemies but as you progress through the game you will find more weapons hidden in the world. There's a total of five weapons including the Sword mentioned earlier, a pair of Daggers, a huge Hammer, an Umbrella, and a Greatsword. All of these weapons feel great with an exception of the Umbrella which does less damage than any other weapon in the game including the default Sword. My favorite weapon is the Daggers but it was a close competition. The ranged spells and bow and arrow mentioned earlier are two of the abilities you unlock as you play through the game. There are four of these and they are the bow and arrow, the fire spell, the bomb skill, and the hook-shot. You can use all of these abilities in combat along with puzzles around the world, I did have difficulty using the bombs effectively in combat and could only pull it off a few times. You can only use each of these abilities (other than the hook-shot) four times before you have to recharge them. Recharging them is as simple as hitting enemies or objects with your weapon, each hit recharges one of the four slots. This creates a nice push and pull with going in and attacking an enemy and then falling back to use your ranged abilities to lower their health bar from afar. The level-up system is one of the worst parts of the game. As you defeat enemies and claim their souls you gain a currency you can use to level up in four different skills. Each of these skills doesn't add anything exciting to the game, the skills just make you move faster or increase your damage output. This whole system doesn't feel satisfying and when you unlock something new you have to question if anything changed. The boss fights are the best part of the game. Each boss is challenging but not unforgiving. Learning each boss's patterns is the secret to victory and it feels amazing knowing when the boss will attack before he attacks. You can take four hits before you die a number you can increase by finding health shrines hidden in the world. Throughout your journey, you'll find both empty flower pots and seeds. You can heal your health by planting a flower in one of these flower pots using a seed. If you don't have a seed then you can't heal so there is a risk-reward type system at play here. Do you use your seed here and heal in case there's a big challenge ahead or do you wait till the next pot to heal that way you'll have more seeds to use in the future. You can also heal if you leave the living world and go back to the office-like hub space. I loved this part of the game although sadly as the game went on I gained enough seeds where I didn't have to have these decisions and could just heal at every change I saw. I liked the encouragement that the game gives you to explore off the beaten path by finding upgrades, it reminds me of Zelda in this way. The story is great and the characters are the best part of it. Each character is memorable from Pothead a man who got cursed to have a pot for a head to the Witch of Urns a seemingly nice old lady that is the witch that cursed Pothead. This game is easily one of the best indie games in the past few years, I'd even say it's better than Hades. With Death's Door coming to more systems on November 23rd I hope that more people will be able to enjoy this incredible game.
The gameplay is the best part of Death's Door with everything else just sprinkles on top but with the leveling up system and the length of the game, it's not without its flaws. With the eight-ten hour length, the game doesn't feel too long or too short but I found myself wishing that it was a longer game. I'd recommend it to anyone who is a fan of action-adventure games, Zelda-like games, or games with reasonably tough boss fights. Let me know what you think of this review and Death's Door in the comments below. Links to both the trailer and official website will be below.
Death's Door 9.75/10
Concept: Play as a crow as it hunts both little and small souls in this great game.
Graphics: The art style in this game looks similar to clay in a beautiful way.
Sound: The music aligns with what is happening on screen in stunning ways.
Playability: The controls for everything felt mapped to the controller perfectly.
Entertainment: I had a ball hunting souls and exploring each nook and cranny.
Replay Value: Moderately High
Thanks for reading and Game On!!
