4.5/5 ★ – zachtrimble's review of Dead Cells.

Full disclosure that I am hard stuck at 2BC mode at the moment of this review, but want to continue up to 5BC so I can beat the final boss. This game is probably the hardest roguelite I’ve played. The game allows you to make quite a few mistakes until 2BC, where your run can get ruined in one combo from enemies. It’s frustrating but I’m aware it’s due to my own issues as a player that I can’t win for now. That being said, I think the difficulty of the game is expertly handled in that new BC modes offer new enemies and even new layouts to how biomes work. And things that used to be really great in the earlier difficulties, like frost blast and infantry grenades, for example, start falling off. And options that used to be useless in those difficulties, like shields and food shops become invaluable to the player. In essence I really appreciate that this games meta shifts the more time and skill you put into the game. Also the fact that there are many blueprints that are locked away until you get to higher BC modes motivate me to get better so I can unlock more weapons and mutations. The way DLC is integrated into the game is also extremely smooth. Giving the player more options on how to navigate their runs is always a good thing, and again opens up even more on higher difficulties. There is also a new “incentivized biomes” system that rewards the player with more cells and gold when going to biomes that you often avoid going to. That being said, there’s still some issues with certain biomes just being poorly designed in regards to risk vs reward *cough* ossuary and dilapidated distillery *cough*. The only issue I have is certain items are a bit buggy in that their effect doesn’t seem to proc properly sometimes but that’s few and far between. This game has really developed into a masterpiece in the last few years of development, with all of the free content updates really adding a ton of variety and balance to the game. And 4 years later they are still adding more content that breaks the mold of what the game has traditionally done (with the Bank being the next free biome being released). Overall, this game is definitely an S tier roguelite that deserves to be up there with Enter the Gungeon and Hades.