Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania Review
Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania Review
Dead cells, a game by Motion Twin that was first released back in 2018 for several platforms including Windows, macOS, Nintendo, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. This action-platformer game keeps getting bigger and bigger with every superb update and content even after 5 years it’s still going strong. This Metroidvania games uses a procedural generation to mix a number of stages that are packed with variety of enemies. These stages or what we called Biomes spawn at random seed to keep the player feel that they're exploring new place, even with random elements with consistent mechanics and design each time you play through it.
You play as a re-animated dead cell called The Prisoner that take over a dead body, and your goal here is basically get through all randomly generated biomes and find out who has been pulling the strings from the start, the one who messing with the island, and why. The mechanics of this game is simple, if you die, then you have to repeat from the very beginning, you lose all your weapon, amulet and skills, but you keep the runes as it the only permanent upgrade and it used for reaching specific biomes. The way you progress is by finding blueprints for new weapon, skills and mutations with a currency called cells.
The core mechanics of this game is choices and consequences. With every gameplay, it offered several ways you can choose to progress with its procedurally generated biomes just only to die and used what you have learned and collected to get a little further next time. This loop is what makes dead cells unique Each biomes reveal new weapons, enemies, skill or runes that you can use get a little further.
There are several paid DLCs and free DLC you can get which is Rise of the Giant. RotG extend the story and give the player a true ending of the game. There’s also The Bad Seed, Fatal Falls, Queen and the Sea and finally, their latest DLC, Return to Castlevania. Each of the DLC add have their own lore and story that revolving around the main story, with each time DLCs reveal a mystery that you can solved by exploring through the biomes. As we said before RotG serve as a final ending for the base game, Bad Seed DLC adds a new optional side route through the early section of the game, with new enemies and a new boss to fight, as well as new outfits and gear to unlock. The Fatal Falls is the second paid expansion, giving the player new route to explore in the mid-section of the game, Queen and the Sea give the player alternative route for final section of the game as well as a new alternative ending, and finally their latest paid DLC, Return to Castlevaina.
Return to Castlevania is their biggest DLC that so far that offer player alternative route for earlier part and later part of the game, the first of its kind. It mixes the game with Konami's classic action-platformer game and one of Dead Cell's biggest inspirations. It's much less mysterious than what we've seen in the past but still giving you the sense of nostalgia with Castlevania’s iconic characters, weapon, music and locations. While the story isn’t the reason you'd play Dead Cells in the first place, Return to Castlevania does an amusing job of explaining why you're smashing your way toward Dracula's throne room this time around rather than simply escaping your island prison like in previous runs. By the end of the story, I'd faced not only the Count in an epic final battle, but also Medusa and Death itself in fierce battles. It almost felt like a newer, more streamlined version of a classic Castlevania adventure, while remaining true to the Dead Cells moniker.
As someone who've been enjoying Dead Cells since the Rise of the Giants, I’ve been thrilled about Return to Castlevania. Getting to Dracula's throne room dressed as a Castlevania character that changes the conversation before the fight, giving you a small taste of each character's backstory. That was enough to persuade me to do it for every single one I discovered. While it sounds that Return to Castlevania relies heavily on nostalgia, one of the things that this DLC does excellently is a crossover that still rewards player even if you know next to nothing about Castlevnia-esque.
With all that being said, we can say for sure that this is a very entertaining DLC for dead cells fans as well as Castlevania fans, offering a more streamlined experience of Castlevania world and story as well as fighting their iconic figure in a Dead Cells playstyle.
