Had such a miserable experience with this game (I'm old)

This isn't meant to be a hot take, more a chronicle of my misadventures people might find an interesting read. Chalk up a lot of the negativity to my age and struggles with mental health, I do think I would've enjoyed this when ai was younger.

I've been very into Metroidvanias lately. Dead Cells shows up when you search MV or have a lot of play in MVs. I would check the reviews and people would warn it's BARELY a MV and more Rogue so tread carefully. I passed on it for years. I feel like by the time I got to it, the game had changed somewhat.

The game feels gross with all the unpaid dead ends. A lot you can't do without the DLC then have to backtrack. I saw the Parry feature as an option so I junked every shield I found for my first few days playing. I would feel horrible losing cells late game and saw the writing on the wall that progression takes incredibly long with all the jars hanging, rate blueprints were arriving, and the rather player unfriendly rarity improvement system. It all felt very much designed to make a game with not much going on feel like a bigger, longer game.

This would be a good time to mention that as I get older, I no longer enjoy plugging away in games that are withholding it's content and designed to be played hundreds of hours, when there is really only 20 hours of content in it. The discovery in Metroidvanias and RPGs feel much better these days as it feels fresh all the way through, and ends amicably in 12 to 40 hours letting you get on to the next game. There is serious bias here, I would have enjoyed this game more in my 20s and 30s for sure.

The misadventures come when I buy into the stellar reviews people give the game. Instead of accepting that it wasn't for me and moving on, the reviews of overwhelmingly positive, masterpiece, best in genre etc. to the point I feel like I must be missing something get to me, breaking me down. So I double down on the game and buy the DLCs while on sale. This barely improves the experience, because some of the unlocked areas were designed to be even harder than the game that is already seriously pissing me off.

I was already really finding it hard to enjoy a game where you slowly put together a nice build only to get two shotted on the final stages. Now I also had to avoid late game stages like Distillery or Forgotten Sepulcher which flies in the face of its boasting of huge amounts of content if you'll just want to avoid places to secure your run.

So I was feeling pretty bad reading all the accounts of people blissfully putting hundreds of hours into this game whilst I was sick of it by hour 12. But I left this sub as Joined to read about it and people's accounts of it, especially other bad reviews. This leads to learning about all the accessibility options I've been been ignoring, hmm....

So little by little I start using them, tweaking here and there, and by hour 20 I am using them all. Yes, 20/20/20 trap dmg, enemy health and enemy dmg by the end of tweaking. Started with half damage, then a third then screw it, why not minimum. I later lowered enemy health to nil to speed up Cell acquisition that was killing the game for me. The Game felt stupidly easy, but whatever, I needed cells and I was finally progressing and seeing areas I was afraid to venture before.

So with all these settings on (reveal map, reveal secrets, minimum dmg, infinite resets etc) the game started to feel good at 4/5 BC, and I was finally understanding why people like the game so much. But now the game is getting heavy with crap items I never pick, and I have to go into custom mode to make the game feel smoother. So 40 hours in I am finally putting together builds that feel good to me and am understanding what you actually have to do to finish the game, and I can't tell you how eager I am for all this to be over.

So with much trial and error, online investigation, manipulating of accessibility features, etc I finally find a game I like hiding in a sweaty twitch game I hate. IT SHOULD NOT TAKE 40+ HOURS TO ACCOMPLISH THIS. The game would have made so much more sense if it started with the feel of 20/20/20 settings with the OPTION to go harder like so many other RLs have (Hades heat system for example.) This reminds me of how hard it was in Marvel Midnight Suns to get rare cards and currency to the point you need to mod the game before you feel your time is being respected.

Some of this would have been alleviated by a better MC. I agree with accounts that beheaded is a clown. It feels bad playing as such a dope, usually. The game would have benefit a lot by more personality, npcs, ideally voice lines and up front plot exposition. Because as it is, it feels like an arcade game. I also hate the missability of content. When I was young, I loved Pokémon Snap where you'd have to play the rail sequence over and over to get everything you missed. I feel too old for this now, I just want to get to the content and move on to the next game. So I find myself with 20 tabs open, scanning over things to make sure I'm not missing something YET AGAIN which ruins the strength of the game which is fast levels and repeat runs. I'm in menus as much as I'm actually playing the game.

Much of the unlockables don't feel very good either. Games so obsessed with flat damage make a lot of the interesting abilities feel pointless. I also find the graphics mediocre to the point the entire Outfit system is lost on me. The game looks good enough and the action looks great, but with such a low res character the Outfit system just feels like dressing up a blob as a different colored blob (though I did find it pretty cool you can play as Ironclad.)

I have other gripes, but I'm past beating a dead horse at this point.

So final thoughts, though it certainly didnt read as such, I actually like Dead Cells. It's a 7/10 for me. I feel like I got my money's worth, and would recommend it to others with the several caveats I learned through sweat and tears. It sucks I had to jump through such hoops to find an experience I enjoy, but I have to hand it to the devs for making these features available. Haven't felt such relief since the house rules option in Rogue Legacy 2.