Acid Nerve’s Death’s Door, one of the most anticipated game of 2021 is finally here. Acid Nerve is perhaps best known for their work on Titan Souls but death's door is by far their most ambitious and in my opinion their best title to date.
In death's door you'll play as a crow who works for the Reaping Commission Headquarters, in fact all of the employees appear to be crows. Your job here is essentially the well reaped souls but when the soul that you were assigned is suddenly stolen it's up to you to travel through various doors and try to retrieve it. This will set off an adventure of collecting various souls actually through a massive sprawling universe that manages to feel completely connected.
The characters you'll come across tend to be facing their own demons and even some of the majestic bosses that you'll need to slay in many cases.
I like the dark vibe of this game and the pacing of the story was fantastic. A few games really managed to create such a bleak dark setting with subtle humor like that's Door does.
A lot of the characters that you'll come across are just packed with great writing humor and a lot of personality.
You can think of the Reaping headquarters as more or less the hub world for the entirety of this game. Here, you'll be able to spend experience that you earn to upgrade your crow and you can travel through different doors to new areas, you’ll need to unlock those doors.
As you explore you'll also be needing to return to previous areas fairly often in Death's Door. As you collect more abilities such as flame magic and bombs, they will help you to unlock new paths.
As you progress through the game, it really opens up and it encourages some degree of exploration. This can feel a little overwhelming at first because of the size and scope of this world but I came to love the joy of discovery using my new magic and powers to solve simple puzzles and unlock new paths was awesome.
The combat index door is really fluid here with a heavy reliance on sword swinging and dodge rolling, you have standard slashes of course with your sword but you can also mix in some projectile attacks by using your bow and arrow or hurling bombs and flames at enemies.
It is not the most robust combat system but it always manages to feel satisfying thanks to some really sound mechanics and an abundance of enemies.
The enemies in each area feel pretty unique from one another and will throw various types of patterns at you, some enemies will require a delicate dance while others will need to be stunned with magic. For example you have about four bars of magic that will drain when you use projectile attacks in this game and the way that you earn magic bar is by attacking enemies or you can also break pots.
There is a healing system in the game, you plant seeds in various pots around the maps, you grow a plant and then you heal from that plant.
The game is challenging but not frustrating. It is brimming with secrets collectibles paths to date so you can expect a good 15 plus hours of gameplay.
In Death's Door, I will say that I could have done with a bit more weapon variety, I felt like hours in I was still using the same sword that I started with. I didn't personally mind that much but it would have been nice to have some more cool weapons a bit earlier on in the game. Of course due to the somewhat open nature of this game your experience there may vary.
I'll also say that the leveling up system is quite slow here, it takes a good long while to earn experience off of enemies or by finding it in secret crevices so maxing out your character is really going to be a process.
As far as visuals go, it is a stunning work of art each overworld is brimming with small details. The dungeons look grimy and enemy designs are just really varied and interesting at all times. The game has incredible attention to detail like subtle, smokes or drops of blood that are left behind as you vanquish enemies.
The game run flawlessly, I was running it at 4k 60 fps on a RTX 2070 Super and I never came across a single frame drop even when the screen was completely over encumbered with enemies. You can feel the rich history within each labyrinth and the animations are so fluid that it brings the whole package together in a really wondrous way.
This phenomenal visual presentation is made all the better by a stunning soundtrack melancholy piano melodies, playful guitars and soothing strings make for one of the year's standouts.
There's no voice acting in the game whatsoever and I actually think that was the right choice, it just adds to the mystery and the allure of this title.
The sound effects are all very satisfying, plenty of great slashing sounds and subtle effects there as well. It really does work incredibly with the visual presentation of the game. In fact just unbelievable across the board few games really managed to captivate a player like Death's Door from its fluid fun combat, incredible dungeon design and jaw-dropping visual and audio presentation.
This is not only my favorite Indie game of the year so far it's one of the best games I've played in several years.
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