Don’t Fear The Reaper…
Reaping souls of the dead and punching a clock might get monotonous but it’s honest work for a Crow. The job gets lively when your assigned soul is stolen, and you must track down a desperate thief to a realm untouched by death – where creatures grow far past their expiry and overflow with greed and power. Talon Sharp Combat: Utilise melee weapons, arrows and magic to overcome a fantastic array of beasts and demigods. Mistakes are punished and victory is rewarded. Gain an edge by customising your character stats and mastering the abilities and upgrades you obtain.
Death’s Door is an isometric action-adventure game that takes inspiration from the likes of The Legend of Zelda with its combat and puzzles but manages to stand on its own thanks to great writing, characters and locations that make this game one of the must haves of 2021. The game has a good level of customisation as well, making it more of an RPG as you upgrade stats and so on.
There’s an additional challenge for those achievement hunters in the form of finding an umbrella at the start of the game and only use that as your melee weapon for the entire game. Now, considering the game takes roughly 15+ hours with normal weapons, the umbrella playthrough is a bit of an undertaking since it’s so much weaker than what you start with, let alone what other weapons you can get. It’s not impossible, but it will definitely be challenging for a lot of people.
The locations are all designed brilliantly and there wasn’t one section that felt like a drag, it’s all well planned out and the small team at Acid Nerve deserve a lot of credit for it. I think this has the potential to become a series and I hope the team at least give us a sequel of sorts, as I loved every second of it and will eventually even pick up the PC version to try and grab the other achievement list. There’s a decent amount of side quests and collectibles to find for those wanting to 100% the game and it’s definitely worth doing if you want to get the most out of this gem.
The art style is also great with an understated dark tone that feels just right. The game runs smoothly throughout and as you would expect load times are pretty much non-existent. The soundtrack is also well done, creating a nice atmosphere for this adventure from start to finish.
The Verdict
Death’s Door is a great Zelda inspired game that stands on it’s own feet with incredible game design, memorable characters and locations, plus superb writing and a charming art style. I really hope Acid Nerve make a sequel…