Its been 12 years since the release of Demon’s Souls and I’m still trying to decide if it changed (or perhaps “returned” might be a better word) the landscape of video games to better or worse. Having played several very unfair older titles – hello, Megaman X series final stages, and fuck you too! – I think the concept of “Nintendo Hard” is something better forgotten about, and plenty of developers toe the line between “tough but fair” and “fuck you” to the point that it blurs and I just don’t want to play the game anymore because difficulty curves should never become difficulty spikes.

Anyways, here’s Dead Cells.

This was on sale on the eShop, and I was in the mood for it – having previously long since finished the game back when it was first released and before any updates, I wanted to see how far it had come…and I wanted something good to play in short bursts. Dead Cells is definitely a “short bursts” type of game, as you can run through it in about 20 minutes and most of the time The Hand of the King will murder you at the end, which is very very aggravating. Combine that with the verrry slow progression for upgrades and it’s not a game designed to be played for long periods of time…at least not for me. The loop in games like this feels very much like bashing my head against a brick wall.

The biggest problem with Dead Cells lies in its RNG – a good run will see you steamroll everything, a bad run will fuck you over by the Concierge usually. Although with the inclusion of custom games – which I don’t think were a thing when I played it, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have sold it immediately once I was done with it the first time – that’s mitigated somewhat. I don’t give a damn about achievements, I just want to get to the end without dying a horrible ignoble death again. Disable them if you want, just let me start with decent gear and lock out trash I won’t want! After I’d unlocked a few things I played almost exclusively in custom mode and even if that’s borderline cheating I really don’t give a damn: even Hades let you pick your starter weapons.

But I’m whining. Dead Cells is actually a very fun game, and even if it’s a little short and repetitive – and difficult to get on different routes; I’m sure there are some areas I’ve never seen before still – it’s oddly satisfying to speedrun the stages, and even if progression is slow, there is definitely a good sense of it, and unlocking new things is always satisfying. There’s a pretty nice variety of things to unlock at this point too, and not too much of it is useless crap…well, asides from shields, but I was never a parrying sort of person. Give me a wolf trap, a turret, and a bow, with a melee weapon as backup in between bosses if I need it. Which I usually do.

It took me nearly forty runs to actually beat the Hand of the King though…and I only reached him 9 times. I have a bad habit of getting careless in games like this the more I fail; I just want to get back to where I was previously and I get sloppy. Enemies follow you – and that is VERY annoying, by the way – and then all of a sudden you’re neck deep in them and no amount of rolling will save you. If your second chance goes before the Hand you may as well give up right there, which leads to more mistakes, which leads to death. On and on it goes. Playing this for longer than a single run at a time is masochism of the worst sort.

I’m writing this entry now, but I’m actually still playing this game, and have plans to play it for some time to come – the main “story” is over, but there’s so much left for me to do! I’m actually quite motivated to unlock everything, and explore every area (I couldn’t even get through the Distillery, holy crap, and the Mama Tick boss is actually harder than the Hand of the King!) and see what the DLC is all about. This is a good way to fill in the time between longer play sessions (Disgaea 6 and Scarlet Nexus both arrived this week, so once I finish my Uncharted replay don’t expect an update from me for a while!) and despite my grievances with it, it’s strangely addicting, and has an appealing visual style and soundtrack. I couldn’t play this all day, but I could certainly play it for the rest of the year.

It’ll probably take me the rest of the year to beat the final boss again, I’m certain I got very lucky in the run that led me to write this blog entry…