Review for Death's Gambit. Game for PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 14/08/2018
In addition to bringing us a good number of triple-A titles, 2018 is proving to be particularly prolific of action-RPGs and indie Metroidvania with a strong force in pixel art. Among the various Chasm, Dead Cells, Guacamelee! 2 and the triumphant return of Hollow Knight on Nintendo Switch, it is really impossible not to notice how this type of productions are in vogue and still creatively flourishing. From mid-August, Death's Gambit is also added to the game, a title perhaps less in sight than the aforementioned, but which deserves attention especially by lovers of the various Dark Souls.
Mind you, however, ours is not yet another combination unfortunately abused in recent years against any game of arguably above average difficulty. The title developed by White Rabbit is in fact openly and manifestly inspired by the works of the team of Hidetaka Miyazaki, even if it does not give up adding customizations and new features to the gameplay to propose its own vision.
Death's Gambit puts us in the shoes of Problem, a knight who fell in battle during a disastrous expedition to Siradon, a land ravaged by immortal beings and their monster troops. Death himself brings us back to life by offering us a pact and a task: the possibility of resurrecting at each death in order to take revenge on the creatures that exterminated the protagonist and his companions, and make their way to the source of their immortality, thus restoring the balance between life and death in those lands. This is just the preamble of a story that will gradually take interesting and less predictable turns than one might think, interfacing with the protagonist's background told by occasional and discontinuous flashbacks on the occasion of the inevitable deaths.
Compared to the various Dark Souls, in short, the narrative sector is more explicit and less entrusted to the spontaneous deepening of the lore of the game world, however present. Nonetheless, the fragmentation of the flashbacks makes the reconstruction of certain events far from clear, and could generate some headaches. All this contributes to building an atmosphere of mystery that pushes us to continue on our path to learn more details of the history of Siradon and Sorun.
As for the gameplay, it will be all too easy to notice the elements in common with Dark Souls, and you will feel at home especially in the initial stages, when you have to choose the class for Sorun and take a look at the game menu. Similar to Salt and Sanctuary,
Death's Gambit brings the dynamics of the Souls back to 2D, thus requiring particular attention to timing for attacks, parries and dodges, enemy attack and movement patterns, and implying a certain ease in draining your health bar in a blink of an eye. We are therefore not faced with a Hack and Slash in which to get by by randomly tapping on the attack button, but we will have to adapt our actions also taking into account the stamina bar that decreases with each offensive or defensive move; once consumed it will be necessary to wait a few seconds without taking any action for it to fill up again.
Similar to Dark Souls, by taking down enemies we get Fragments that we can use to upgrade our stat near the statues of Death (which has the same function as bonfires). However, White Rabbit didn't just copy and paste the mechanics of the Souls, but brought its own twist and additions. When you die (and it will) we do not lose the Shards obtained, but we only drop one Phoenix feather, which normally serves to heal us. We will then be automatically resurrected to the last statue of Death and to recover the Feather we will be able to choose whether to reach the place of defeat again and try again to overcome the obstacle, or sacrifice a substantial amount of Fragments to recover it instantly.
In addition to being precious to heal us, the Feathers can be consumed near the statues to enhance Sorun and thus increase the possibility of taking down enemies and especially the bosses in his way. In addition to these differences, Death's Gambit it also introduces special techniques (linked to one's weapon, and therefore to the chosen class) that can only be performed after charging the Soul Energy bar. Taking down a boss will also unlock one of the various Talents organized in a skill tree, which usually constitute passive skills with which to customize the character even more.
The gameplay is therefore potentially very interesting, the intense boss fights (and repeatable to accumulate Fragments) and the addition of the platform dimension helps to diversify the game action. Not everything works out for the best though. First of all, the movements of our alter ego do not give the feeling of being very precise and reactive, and it will take you a while to get used to them. Moreover, although the exploration is quite rewarding, making us discover shortcuts, tomes to inflict more damage on the bosses, etc., it must be said that the game is not at all precise in indicating our main goal.
It has happened more than once to find ourselves wandering through optional passages without even wanting to, or to find ourselves on the right path and come across a sudden peak of difficulty that made us fear that we have reached a place not foreseen for our current level.
Graphically Death's Gambit clearly harks back to the 2-bit era 32D productions such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, exhibiting an inspired and detailed pixel art that breathes the ruined world of Siradon. Faced with what is overall a pleasant visual sector, it is unfortunate however that not all elements enjoy the same level of details and animations, and unfortunately the detachment is noticeable. A good job was done on the front of the character design and the transposition of the portraits of the main characters in the dialog boxes. While playing the game on PlayStation 4, we unfortunately encountered significant slowdowns in the fast transitions between zones, which are decidedly unpleasant.
The soundtrack by Kyle Hnedak instead won us over, with its ability to move from subdued accompaniments to epic and exhilarating battle themes. Too bad they are not as frequent and numerous as we would have liked.
There is a lot of substance to White Rabbit's work, but it gets tainted by some missteps that don't make it shine as well as it could and that make it frustrating at times for less patient players. In addition to the explicit inspiration from Miyazaki's works, Death's Gambit shines more precisely in the moments in which he deviates to do things his way, and which offers a story and an atmosphere that in his small way knows how to drag and involve.
► Death's Gambit is an Adventure-indie-RPG game developed by White Rabbit and published by Adult Swim Games for PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 14/08/2018
