Admittedly, I’ve never been too into the Souls series. I understand the appeal of them; I was one of the believers, owning the first print special edition of Demon’s Souls before launch day courtesy of Amazon. I know plenty of people that love the games, with my brother getting the platinum trophy in each he has played. But something has always felt off for me in them, and the more difficult 2D games that follow a similar path fail for me in a similar manner.

Death’s Gambit is a game that may seem like the aforementioned series to someone that doesn’t have a whole lot of experience or time sunken into one of the now extremely popular Japanese games. It’s amazing to see how far From Software has gone, inspiring a new subset of genre often referred to as Souls-like. Similar to Metroidvanias, these don’t necessarily play by all the same rules, but certainly take inspiration. Technically speaking, this is closer in relation to Salt & Sanctuary, but my experience with that game is even more limited, so I can’t speak to that with much authority. So let’s jump into the game.

Starting out you’ll find that you’ve been resurrected by death incarnate and are to avenge those who have fallen, more or less. I was taken aback that the game had voice acting, and is pretty good to boot (for the more prevalent characters). The art style is the definitive high point of the game, both in character design and environments. Knowing nothing about this game, the attached screenshots would’ve intrigued me enough to buy this. But art is hardly enough to make the game enjoyable, and for that we need to discuss the gameplay.

Death’s Gambit is no stranger to the idea of killing you. If you’re familiar with the You Died screen, you’ll feel very much at home in this. The difference here is that it’s not always seemingly your fault. There are plenty of games where people will exclaim the game has cheated, and I don’t doubt that this will have people doing the same. Deaths are not always seen as fair, and that frustration will certainly translate to how enjoyable the game is for the player. I don’t shy away from difficulty in games, but when the odds are stacked against you without enough reward for the duration of the frustration, it’s hard to justify playing it.

Something that I’ve only really seen in the likes of Shadow of Mordor (likely in Shadow of War too, but I couldn’t be bothered to play past the tutorial) that makes this unique is the reaction to your character’s death. For example, I fought a woman (I believe she’s the first “boss” you encounter, if I remember correctly) who got the better of me, and when I ran back into the room after respawning she was confused and accused me of being one of the many undying demons. The game uses this mechanic to almost encourage death to see what will be said, as it fleshes out the world a bit more. But many of the game’s bosses will provide less of a challenge for you than just wandering around the world early on. I played as an assassin class, and the dodge behind and attack method worked without fail on the bosses, often being hard up to provide any challenge whatsoever. Perhaps the other classes that require different strategies would offer a bit more difficulty – for those that want to stick to their class though, the game has a heroic mode of the boss after leaving the room and coming back in.

In the past couple of months, we’ve gotten a wide assortment of 2D Metroidvanias that range from good to great, such as Chasm, Guacamelee 2, and Dead Cells. At a glance, this looks like it’ll be joining them, but it ends up being quite a different beast altogether. While aesthetically stylish with a world you’ll backtrack through, many of the elements feel unfinished or rushed. The game’s platforming is pretty standard and borderline boring at times. As mentioned previously, the difficulty seems to be falsely implemented for the sake of taking your time opposed to creating a sense of accomplishment. I also ran into a number of technical problems while playing it, but they may have been patched by the time this review goes live as that was closer to launch.

In theory, Death’s Gambit should be an unrequited success. On paper it sounds wonderful, but the execution is flawed and at times unappealing. There are plenty of things to enjoy in this, especially if you are coming to it for the RPG aspects, but for those that want a solid Metroidvania platformer will find it to be a bit lacking. With future patches this can be something that shines, and White Rabbit’s next game may very well send people down the rabbit hole, but this one falls just short of it.

6 out of 10

Pros

• Gorgeous Artwork
• Traditional RPG Classes
• Lore Through Deaths

Cons

• Seemingly Forced Deaths
• Technical Glitches
• Uninspired Platforming

Death’s Gambit was developed by White Rabbit and published by Adult Swim Games. It was released on PC and PS4 August 14th, 2018 for $19.99. The game was provided for us to review on PS4. For more on Death’s Gambit, visit its official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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