Bobik Dead Cells Review

Wow, just wow. After literally hundreds of hours and runs in this game, with (almost) the same levels over and over again, I still don’t get bored, and that alone is incredible. It’s truly a masterpiece of game design and deserves to appear on every list of the best games of all time. It was my first roguelike(lite), and I was skeptical at first. How could it be fun to start over again and again, essentially doing (seemingly) the same thing in every run? And oh boy… how fun it turned out to be! The game constantly forces you to make interesting little decisions: which weapons and skills to choose, which tactic to use against each group of enemies, which path to take through the levels, how to combine weapons with each other, and so on. Every run feels different and exciting. It reminded me of Sid Meier’s famous saying, “Games are a series of interesting decisions” - and it applies perfectly here, even in such a fast-paced action game. On top of that, it has the best 2D combat I’ve ever played. It feels so fluid, responsive, and satisfying. I honestly hope this doesn’t ruin other 2D games with combat for me. The graphics are gorgeous, and the music fits the atmosphere perfectly, but the icing on the cake is the alternative soundtrack from the Castlevania DLC, which I love so much and can now enjoy in this game - simply wonderful. Of course, it’s understandable that not everyone likes this game, but I think you should try to be objective when rating it. If it’s not your genre, you might not get into it, and that’s fine. But just like you wouldn’t rate a racing game badly because you don’t enjoy racing, it doesn’t make sense to criticize Dead Cells for being repetitive. The repetition is part of the design. It’s about improving your skills, refining your approach, and perfecting each level, just like perfecting laps in a racing game. It makes me think of games like Pilotwings or Mario Kart 7, where you replay the same missions and tracks over and over until you’ve mastered them. That’s a similar sense of progression Dead Cells captures so brilliantly. And just when you think you’ve got everything under control, you switch to the next difficulty level, and the game feels fresh again, with some new enemies, challenges, skills, and weapons to experiment with. It is one of the many game design achievements of Dead Cells that the difficulty levels are so seamlessly integrated into the gameplay. I don’t think I’ve ever changed the difficulty in a game before (I usually stick to "normal"), but here I’m motivated to push all the way to the hardest mode. It’s amazing how the game manages to make that happen for me. Long story short: a masterpiece! Easily in my personal top 5, maybe even top 3.