As it happened with Phantom Abyss a few days ago, I enter Death’s Door with more laziness than the game deserves. I was enchanted with Titan’s Souls -From the same studio- and it would be a sacrilege not to review the great look that is spent on the visual, but the idea of another action RPG was a bit uphill for me.
The fear of dense and labyrinthine scenarios, the fear of the incessant cryptic sheet of characters who speak without saying anything, he goes from here to there and returns again to the starting point that so few games know how to take advantage of in his favor … Fortunately, curiosity has I could more than laziness and, now that I have reached the wall of the demo, I am looking forward to continue.
An adventure a la Ghibli
With an aspect that inevitably reminds of Ghibli because of some of its characters, Death’s Door invites us to delve into the story of a shinigami raven whose job is to reap the souls entrusted to him by his bosses. A job for which he is well prepared but that carries a risk: he must act quickly because as long as that soul is on the loose it will lose its immortality and will gradually grow old.
As is to be expected in the face of such a twisted proposal, the soul will end up lost and must do everything possible to recover it, which will take us from forests to ruined cities, passing through a witch’s mansion or the factory that is in her basement where she converts people in pottery objects.
Fortunately for the enthusiasm of those who write these lines, everything related to his story is usually as short and relevant as it is entertaining and concise. The game is constantly to the point and is no nonsense with the intention of wasting your time with empty and cryptic comments.
Most entertaining matches
The good folks at Acid Nerve stick with the basic mechanics of their previous game, but completely change the approach by replacing the boss rush with a much larger world full of enemies. Taste is in variety, they say, and in just over two hours I have already counted about seven different scenarios.
As if it were an adventure a la Zelda, Death’s Door makes us go from here to there completing puzzles and annihilating enemies with sword strokes, but giving greater weight to combat by taking advantage of the dodges and frenzy in the combats that many of us remembered from Titan’s Souls.
The possibility of changing weapons to offer different styles of combat -from the power of the sword to agility and the greatest combo of daggers- is added to the use of ranged attacks such as arrows or magic that, in addition, we can improve on the basis of to spend the harvested souls and fulfill certain secondary objectives.
An ode to exploration
The latter, supported by the game’s emphasis on exploration, may have been the most pleasant surprise I’ve had during the demo. Scrutinizing an area that seemed more than revisited ended up leading to a boss fight that, once cleared, allowed me to improve my fire attack after a sweet victory.
The fear of coming across a maze of clonic rooms full of stairs and bland trips was the main obstacle that kept me away from Death’s Door, but the truth is that catching the pulse of its navigation is relatively easy and, although that labyrinthine roll is undeniably in some of its points of interest, its world is much more coherent and entertaining than my biggest fears expected.
There are few moments more special than getting into a game on your ass and coming out of it wanting more. Death’s Door is endearing, beautiful and very funny, but all the secrets that I have not been able to access because of being in front of a limited demo are, at least for now, what will draw me the most to it when it lands on Steam on next July 20th.
