Death Must Die short review

Before you even think about it, know that Death Must Die has been in Early Access since November 2023, and in all that time, they've managed to cough up only three maps. Don't be fooled by the high ratings. It's yet another "survivor-like," a sub-genre of bullet heaven that's already stale. If you've played two or three, you've played them all. This one tries to be different with pixel graphics Hades copy-paste job, but it's still the same old shit.

The gameplay loop is bland as hell, each full runs are 20mins+. You just pick a direction and run, keeping one eye glued to the minimap for icons to click. You repeat this until a boss shows up. Some of these interactables give you interesting choices, but most are just boring percentage power-ups and other garbage. As for the maps themselves, the first one is stale, with boring mobs. The second desert map at least has some visual and mobs variety, but the third one is so forgettable I can barely distinguish it from the first, other than remembering the boss was a complete pain in the arse.

And the characters? They have personalities, I guess, but it's paper-thin and boils down to whether you're using melee or range. Each one has a separate skill tree you have to grind slowly and painfully just for perks that finally differentiates the characters. The so-called personality comes from dialogue that's trying way too hard to be quirky. For example, the dark elf talks like a 2000s teenager texting "who tf are u," and the elf mage sounds like a valley girl, complete with emoticons. Instead of being clever, it's just cringe and poorly executed. It’s a jarring tonal clash with the gothic mood the game pretends to have. They also pretend there's this deep, established world by having characters chat about lore you, the player, know nothing about. Some knight reminiscing about a revolt? Why should I give a shit? Don't pretend you have a world built when you obviously don't. It's just lazy info-dumping for a world that doesn't exist, and I could not care less.

The combat mechanics are just another lazy rip-off of Hades. It’s the whole song and dance: gods give you blessings, you pick between 'Strike,' 'Cast,' and the other crap they copied over. The punchline is, the game literally doesn't explain what half of this shit does. So unless you're like me and have played a fair share of these, you'll have no clue what's going on with the underlying systems. You'll grasp the simple power-ups, sure, but the actual mechanics that are supposed to define your build? You're completely on your own to figure that out.

The main bosses are even worse, designed to be "anti-player" rather than a natural challenge. The third map's boss especially, with its weirdly delayed AoEs and multiple tracking attacks, it's literally designed to test your build's movement speed and/or dodge recharge rate, never skills, it's cheap.

I guess the one fun thing is the loot system. There's a fair bit of unique gears and enough randomness, including silliness and references to feel rewarding, even though you probably won't know what half the stats on it actually do for your build.