Death's Door (PS4, 2021)
I've played one Soulslike in my life. Jedi: Fallen Order. I didn't like it. I've played no Zelda games in my life. Naturally a mashup of the two genres in which you play as a mute crow who has a job collecting souls but who uncovers a terrible conspiracy to cheat death and alter and corrupt the very fabric of reality seems like it's right up my alley.
Your crow works in a grey, bureaucratic office environment where you're given doors and souls to go and collect from the dead. This keeps the system running so you can keep going out and collecting souls. If you work in an office I'll give you a moment to contemplate the futility of your existence. The problem for our hero is that certain beings are living longer than they should and becoming corrupted and horrible, so you need to fight your way through the minor enemies to reach the larger enemies and try and right this phenomenon.
The game is fairly short. I, with the many problems which I'll cover, reached 100% in 15 hours. This means that everything in the game is quite neat and organised. Nothing really overstays its welcome, which is nice. The world itself has a simple, bold art style with enough variation between each of the locations you visit to compensate for the lack of overall length. The colour palette can be a bit muted and dull, but the art style is consistent and cute enough in its details.
That said, the actual world building itself is by far my biggest problem. When I played Jedi: Fallen Order I complained about how terrible navigation was because of the layouts of the levels and the horrible map you were given to see where you were going. Death's Door avoids this problem by providing no map at all. The different levels are technically open world, although some areas are blocked off until you learn a certain ability, so you're usually funnelled into the direction the game wants you to go. In theory this works, but often you make progress by trial and error, running around until you find the only door or path you aren't prevented from using. I felt as if an undue proportion of my time with this game was spent doing this, and the game's various charms wore off pretty quickly when it happened.
The notion of returning with abilities later on is also fine in theory, but I don't think it holds up very well. For one thing, you forget. There are so many doors or paths or platforms just off screen that you'll never remember all of them. Revisiting each area and every part of it when you unlock fire or the bomb or whatever is about the only way you can fully explore without looking up a guide, and that's just tedious. Looking up a guide will probably be beneficial for the parts of the game which aren't explained at all, like the fact you can move off a ledge, press attack and shoot down either damaging enemies or going through metal covers in the ground which actually hide tunnels which take you to secret locations. The game seems big on discovery, but there are times where it gives the player too much credit and makes things a bit too vague.
I played through the game twice and navigation felt much simpler on my second go even though I didn't feel like I was playing with any extra knowledge of what I was doing. I obviously had an advantage, but I never had the feeling of being confident with moving around. Even the hub world is infuriating for this, with three general directions you can head in to then move to several different doors to enter the world at different locations, but there's seemingly no logic to this layout and there are stairs and things making it all more awkward than it needs to be. And there's no signposting, so you'll need to go up to each door to read the name of the location you're travelling to and hope you remember which one you actually want.
Outside of the actual level design, the world itself can feel a bit shallow. I know the game was only made by two people so I don't want to seem too critical, but you do notice a lack of depth. The background music is entirely forgettable. Enemy variety is okay, but the classic Soulslike pattern of dodge then hit will get you past absolutely everything. Only the boss fights have any real variety with different attacks requiring different approaches. My lack of experience in the genre led to this being very annoying on several occasions, but I don't want to use my shortcomings to declare the game as bad.
As you defeat enemies and collect souls you can use these to purchase upgrades to things like damage and movement speed. The problem here is that enemies scale as you progress, so you might struggle to feel like your upgrades are making a difference. There are also different weapons you can discover in the world and use, but there are five and only one of them really changes the gameplay, and they all have broadly the same damage stats anyway. There are ranged attacks too and these can make enemy encounters a bit more strategic, but against minor enemies you'll often face three or four who either rush you or have ranged attacks of their own, so things often descend into a button mashing affair anyway.
The game isn't without charm, and it's easy to see how much love and care went into it. There is humour in the crow's interaction with other characters, although him being silent and the dialogue being entirely text-based makes it difficult for characterisation to shine through. The ironic spin on an established genre feels like it should be more substantial, but then I don't want to rate a game on something I think it should be any more than I want to rate a game based on how bad I am at it.
Death's Door is alright. If you like indie games, Souls games, Zelda games and anthropomorphic animals there will be a lot for you to enjoy. You won't really be challenged and you might occasionally be annoyed. You'll definitely get lost at some point and you'll probably struggle to feel a real sense of achievement. But if you like it, you might like it.
