4/5 ★ – sirreldar's review of Death's Door.

Death’s Door follows the story of a young crow that works for an agency that collects souls after death. During a rare and important mission, the crow gets pulled into a plot, which the player must complete. This game is filled with secrets, collectibles, shortcuts, travel/access tools, and mapless exploration, making it almost a metroidvania-like. Unique world areas, fun combat, a great OST, and a compelling story made this game a delight to play. To begin with, the combat was fairly straightforward, and relatively simplistic. There are only 5 weapons in the game that vary mostly by stats (damage, speed, reach, etc), and leveling up character stats is linear. This meant combat essentially boils down to “hit an enemy enough that they die, and try not to get hit”. There are no move sets to learn, elemental strengths or weaknesses, complex character builds, special moves to unlock, etc. For what it is, I actually found it quite satisfying. I am typically drawn to much more complex mechanics, and often find simpler systems to feel unexciting, but Death’s Door made the combat feel very smooth and natural, and it was a nice change of pace to play something with a bit more “arcadey” combat. I think this worked well with the relative short length of the game (it took me about 15 hours), and would have eventually become tedious and boring if the game was much longer. The exploration was satisfying, often teasing areas that are currently unreachable (as most metroidvanias do). It was fun to experiment and explore and search for secrets that were only hidden by the angle of the camera, and finally reaching a new place was exciting. I was asking myself “how do I get there” much more than I was asking “where do I go now” which I enjoyed. The large areas felt unique and creative, and revisiting them later almost always yielded some new secrets or collectables. Checkpoints are all connected through a central hub (HQ) which can be used to quickly move around the map, without resorting to a plain quick travel system. I thought this was well executed and made revisiting areas much faster and enjoyable, without sacrificing too much exploration or manual travel on foot. The boss fights generally felt rewarding and interesting, and while some were certainly challenging, none of them were too frustrating or rage-inducing. The only nitpick I have is their movesets felt limited and their patterns became repetitive after a few attempts. While this made the bosses start to feel uninteresting, it also made them more predictable. With no way to heal in boss fights, and only able to take a few hits, the predictability felt more relieving than annoying to me. The story was a bit convoluted and confusing to me, but still very enjoyable. The story is told through one-sided (silent protagonist) dialog and collectible lore/secrets. This is my favorite type of video game storytelling, even though I often struggle to piece it all together. Those who care less about the story and lore will find it easy to ignore or gloss over, and those who care more will find plenty to uncover, ponder, and digest. Overall, I enjoyed Death’s Door and would recommend it to most people. I would caution that it is relatively short, and there is little replayability unless you want to experience the game again. A second playthrough will not (and cannot) differ significantly from the first, due to its relative linearity and lack of complex build/equipment systems. That being said, I enjoyed it and the experience will stick with me for a while.