In what seems like an endless sea of indie games, it can be hard to find something new to play that is fresh or original. And I'll be perfectly honest, Death's Door isn't that. But that isn't a bad thing. Death's Door is the second game from Acid Nerve, the company who had 6 years prior released Titan Souls. In this action adventure RPG you assume the role of a small crow employed by the Reaping Commission as a soul reaper. You are tasked with an assignment of retrieving someones soul, but it gets stolen from you. Following this thief leads you into a world untouched by death. While your contract for the soul is open, you become vulnerable to the clutches of death as a mortal. With that, lets talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of the game.
The good
Death's Door does a lot of things well. First off, the game is super pretty. The environments, characters, enemies and animations are all very polished and cohesively fit together. Each area has a unique atmosphere and all of them feel like they had a lot of effort put into their visuals. All of the enemies also feel appropriate to the areas that they inhabit. The enemies themselves are all pretty varied, have reasonable attacks, and telegraph them fairly well, something which is important for a game that is supposed to have difficult soulslike combat. That being said, they do get re-used throughout the game (sometimes with visual changes) but there is enough of a variety of enemies already where this never felt like an issue of monotony. The bosses in particular are (mostly) awesome fights. They all have cool designs and do a good job capping off each of the dungeons that they dwell within. A couple of them have some well done gimmicks that add to the fight elevating them above simply dodging and counter-attacking.
As a Zelda style adventure game, there naturally has to be a bunch of collectables hidden throughout the world. There's a mixture of collectables that are purely for show (as far as I know), new weapons, upgrades to your items, as well as to your health. Many of them are very minor, but they feel worthwhile to seek out. Several of the collectables are teased to you being visible along the main path and many of them are fairly well hidden and require a decent eye to try and find. They did a good job with the variety of difficulty in finding them.
I'm a fan of the way healing is done in the game, it is very interesting. Instead of you having consumables to use during combat or enemies dropping healing items on death, you collect hidden seeds on the overworld or in dungeons. Those seeds can then be planted into a pot which are scattered throughout the game as well. Upon planting a seed a flower grows which you can use to fully heal, and if you do, it withers away. The flower regrows after you die (and maybe after a long while) so it isn't a one time use.
Generally in games where I miss finding collectables, after beating the game I rarely go back to try and find them. To me there kind of isn't a point unless I enjoyed the game a lot and want to try and 100% it or see things I missed. This isn't an issue in Death's Door, since after beating the "final" boss there is content that unlocks in a very creative way. This makes combing back through the overworld and each individual side area less of a tedious task and more of a fresh new look on them. It may also cause you to revisit some out of the way areas that seemed like they should had something prior.
The last thing I want to commend is the fast travel system. You start the game in a hub town that where you can upgrade your combat abilities. This hub town contains a bunch of doors which connect to another door that you unlock somewhere in the main world. In the context of the game, doors are what reapers use to travel and collect souls and they are made by your employer. It's a good system because you have clusters of doors in your hub town all leading to a bunch of different places spread amongst the main overworld. This keeps everything connected and fairly quickly accessible, but unique areas still feel separate from each other.
The bad
I have a few small gripes with the game. Firstly, I think it was a silly decision not to include some sort of a world map. I get that in soulslike games you don't get a map and the design of the world is done in such a way that it isn't too difficult to navigate around, but this is far closer to a Zelda game. You do a lot of backtracking over parts of the world you've been to due to the fact that you collect items that allow you to reach secrets which were previously inaccessible. It's hard to remember if something was left or right of an area, especially if you aren't playing through the game in a short time span. Another issue I found was with the design of the areas. Most of the dungeons and surrounding areas are pretty linear. They do the thing where they make areas wrap onto themselves so you can unlock a path through allowing you quicker access when coming back. This is fine but I personally prefer having multiple choices in paths to take that somehow fit into one another. I will be fair though, each dungeon as you progress through the game does give you more choice in how you can go about different parts of them. But it really isn't that much.
Another area I found the game lacked in was music. The music wasn't bad per se, but in most spots in the game it really didn't feel fitting. Sometimes it felt like it was trying to be too grand or epic. Other times it didn't really match the tempo of what was going on or the feel of the area. I know this in particular can be pretty subjective, but I feel that the music did not add to the game whatsoever.
The ugly
Now, lets get into the worst part of the game, the combat. While there is a pretty wide variety of different enemies, the combat was extremely boring and repetitive. My expectations of the game was that it would have interesting challenging combat. Having the combat as a selling point of the game led me to believe that there would be more to it than simply rolling in, hitting, rolling out, and repeating. Many of the normal enemies you can just mash attacks through. Normally I wouldn't say this is necessarily a bad thing, especially if the core of the game is the dungeon delving and item collecting, however it really felt like this game was supposed to be a marriage between the two, a Zeldasouls game. Maybe that's on me for setting my expectations too high, but I found some of the areas in the game pretty annoying because I had to deal with enemies. Especially if I had to retry an area from dying trying to rush through it too quickly skipping the enemies.
The combat definitely could have been improved if there was more variety in how you could approach it. You have a standard melee weapon attack as well as a linear charged range attack. You have a limited number of charges on your ranged attacks and you can refill them by hitting enemies or objects with your melee attack. You do unlock different weapons and ranged attacks, but all they really are are slight variations on the default. The ranged attacks you unlock are used as items that gate off content so I can excuse those, but the different melee weapons are pretty much just variable numbers on damage and how fast they attack. One does have a weak AOE effect that happens when you hit something with it separating it from the others. It would have been nice if the weapons at least each had a small quirk like that.
As for difficulty, I felt the game overall was kind of medium. I only really felt a challenge on one of the bosses and one of the mini bosses. There definitely was an issue with artificial challenge in some areas from the game simply pushing a bunch of enemies onto you. Again, this wouldn't be a problem but its clear that the game intends you to have a difficult time with some areas through the use of enemies. Traversing a dungeon and running into a bunch of enemies that aren't difficult, but due to the fact that there are enough of them and limited healing, you are bound to die. Those deaths are annoying as opposed to justified for not playing well enough.
Conclusion and recommendations
I enjoyed playing through Death's Door a fair bit. It definitely plays more like a Zelda game with tougher enemies than a souls game, so take that as you will. It does have its annoying moments but they really are few and far between. All of the good parts outshine what I felt lacked in the game. It is a shorter game (8-10 hours) but it is also a pretty inexpensive game. Personally I feel its a decently above average playthrough and would give it a recommendation if you're into Zelda style action adventure RPGs.
Thanks for reading!