A Link Among Worlds
(Played in English, on PC, with a controller, through Steam)
Death’s Door is an isometric action-adventure game very much in the vein of Zelda games such as A Link to the Past and its “direct sequel” A Link Between Worlds. It’s rare for being very balanced between its combat and puzzle while its peers on PC usually lay heavily on either of those 2 aspects. Its music and graphic combined also makes it one hell of charmer. With July of 2021 being surprisingly bountiful, Death’s Door still stands out as one people should not miss.
First day on the job as reaper of souls
A young crow is recently assigned to the office of reaping as the new grim reaper. Starting with a sword and a bow, they are tasked to take on 3 seemingly immortal beings who had evaded death for centuries due to the absence of grim reapers. What they found is a pursuit for immortality gone wrong for the rest of the world.
It’s surprising that most of reviews of this game compare it to the rather dreadful Souls-Borne games instead of Zelda. Perhaps it’s the presentation. The music while delightful to my ears is undoubtedly melancholy. The story is also about how death is sometimes the better option. It feels like the uniquely tragic story some wrongly consider NieR series to be. And if you want to see the toy diaroma aesthetic of Link’s Awakening but runs smoothly, you shall look no farther than Death’s Door.
A Murder of Crow
Gameplay wise especially in terms of the combat, Death’s Door can mop the floor with any NieR game or Zelda game for that matter. The combat is a fast-paced affair not unlike Hyper Light Drifter 5 years prior to it. The crow starts with 4 hit points and can be upgraded to 6, yet a horde of most grunt enemies can still overwhelm them fairly quickly. The souls you reap can be used to up the crow’s statues like strength and haste, but the crown is still a glass canon.
A badass look combat roll is the way out this game offers you plus the ready animation of enemies before they attack. Literally running circles (with the help of rolling) around enemies is the only way to win. There are no life bars on enemies here, how close they are to death is displayed as cracks on the models. The crow does not carry heal items either, as the only ways to heal is going back to their office or stationary flower pots they need to find the seeds for.
The crow has 5 weapons in their disposure, though finding them is optional. New weapon is so optional that what can be considered Hard Mode for this game is the achievement to beat the game only with its weakest weapon. What’s not optional is finding 3 Zelda game main stay tools, a fire rod, a bomb launch and a hook shot. Other than the infinite uses on hook shot, other 3 share the same use gauge like in A Link Between Worlds. The gauge can not be refilled by landing melee strikes on enemies or breakable objects, as this game encourages aggression.
Those tools are powerful weapon in combat and necessary in puzzle solving. The puzzles are fine and at least better than Nintendo’s last effort in 2D Zelda game, aka putting a fresh coat of print on the rather outdated designs in Link’s Awakening.
I enjoyed figuring the puzzles here out like I did in A Link Between Worlds. They are mostly about opening doors and shortcuts. They usually start as circling towards the goal leading to opening a straight line from start to finish within the dungeon.
Depends on how you slice it, this game can have 3 dungeons or 6. The 6 count contains 3 dungeons where the crown gets the tools in and 3 with Bosses at the end. The game does a reverse on the A Link to the Past formula, as in 12 of my 15 hours in game were spent on getting 3 things and that last boss to see the credits roll while the last 3 were spent on getting 7 things to see the epilogue, or the true end as they call it.
Other than the long final boss encounter, the game features rather genius checkpointing, while the enemies respawn as the crown does, the doors opened by the puzzle solutions remain open when you need to pass them.
A Bird in one's hand...
As the time of writing, a game titled Tunic is still not out. Shown in several Xbox showcases, Tunic is Zelda like game with a fox as playable character, and the titular tunic is rather green like the one Link wears in Zelda games.
Many look forward to Tunic as Xbox’s next indie darling. I urge those people to give Death’s Door a try if they want to play a Zelda like during their already bit too long wait. Not to demolish Tunic's potential, just that I'm increasingly only concerned with final products nowadays. As the saying goes, a bird in the hand is better than foxes out in the wild.