Death's Gambit Review 2020 | Should You Try Death's Gambit Soulslike?.

Death's Gambit is a hardcore 2D action platformer with rich RPG elements. It takes a lot of inspiration from Dark Souls and feels brilliant to play. Death’s Gambit originally released back in August 2018, and met with very mixed reviews based on the number of bugs the game had at the time and some issues with controller compatibility.

However, since then there was a massive, free DLC released in 2019 which included almost 100 new class talents, many new levels, bosses, a metroidvania style map, new game modes, and weapons. If you’re looking for a new Dark Souls style game, with an absolutely massive array of customisation, classes, weapons, weapon arts and unlockable skills - this might be your answer.

When you start the game you have the choice of 7 different classes. You can choose from the Soldier, Assassin, Blood Knight, Wizard, Noble, Sentinel and the Acolyte of Death. Each with their own weapon and individual set of skills to unlock. Much like Dark Souls you can also choose a gift to start out your game.

The combat is a lot slicker than I thought at first. You can obviously dodge, roll and block incoming attacks, but there is a parry and counter mechanic and a kick ability for enemies with shields or who need to be interrupted. And that’s all before you start unlocking weapon skills.

The boss battles in this game are no joke. The mechanics for boss fights are really awesome. Each boss represents a unique challenge that will require you to think outside of the box. Some bosses might spawn ads to help them fight you, others are huge and you’ll need to find their weak points.

One boss in particular had me fighting on a platform which tilts based on where you’re stood. You have to keep moving to keep the platform balanced while you fight off the boss and get damage in, if it tilts too far, it's an immediate death sentence.

That guy must have killed me about 20 times trying to beat him! With the boss fights there are a couple of really nice touches too - there is a death counter which tells you how many times a boss has killed you, there are different boss phases in each fight too - one boss I fought had 4x different phases and changed his attacks throughout the fight.

If you die to a boss, but you managed to beat him down to certain points on his or her health bar, you will be rewarded with some crystals - which means you might have enough to level up at the shrine before you go into the next attempt. The gameplay loop is similar to that of souls like games, but with a few nice twists.

You collect crystals from enemies you kill, and use these to level up at the shrines you find along the way. When you die, you don’t lose your crystals used to level up, but you lose one of your healing pots - so each time you die, you lose one of your healing items.

You can choose to try again and recover your healing item from where you died, or you can spend some of your hard earned resources to buy back your lost feathers. So you have a choice - gain some strength or more vitality, or get your healing abilities back up to full strength.

Another really cool mechanic is that you can sacrifice some of your healing items for more damage. Each feather you sacrifice gives you an extra 10% damage, but you’ll then have one less healing feather to use as you play. This can be changed each time you visit a shrine, so you can tailor your damage output vs healing ability for each area of the game.

You can expect your first playthrough to be around 15 to 20 hours, but there is a ton of replayability here simply based on the amount of builds you can make or weapons you can pick - already I’ve thought of archer builds, mage builds, assassin builds and more.

You can also enchant your weapons for added damage - and respec yourself on the fly based on the weapon you want to use as long as you’ve managed to find NPCs to sell you the weapon skills you want to try out. There is a New Game Plus system too which allows you to carry over your build, talents and healing items.

The story is centred on death and is pretty deep in the lore department but also pretty funny in places too. Honestly guys if you’re not against 2D side scrolling type games, this one is absolutely brilliant and I’d highly recommend you give it a shot.