If you're a Castlevania fanatic turned off by the RNG and permadeath of Rogue-lite games, though, it won't grant the fix you're looking for. If you already own and love Dead Cells, this DLC is a no-brainer - especially at $10. That means buttery smooth movement, visceral combat, tense risk-versus-reward enemy encounters, lots of random generation, and that lovely rotoscope-ish visual style. Make no mistake: Return to Castlevania, despite its name, it still very much a Rogue-lite experience. But that's just the double-edged sword of Dead Cells, and Rogue-lites in general - the thrilling specter of permanent death mixed with the tedium of repetition. If it takes you 45 minutes to get to Dracula's throne room and you die, you'll have to start a new run and venture through the Sewers, Ramparts, Stilt Village, etc. The bad news is that you'll have to visit and revisit a lot of familiar territory to experience the full extent of this add-on. The good news, as mentioned above, is that this flow helps the Castlevania stages seem organically linked to the original stuff and makes them feel meatier than they really are. Rather, you must access the new biomes through designated entry points in the main campaign, meaning you have to play through several existing levels to enjoy the new stuff. Simply put, you can't boot up the game, play straight through the Castlevania content in order, face off against Dracula, and claim victory. And while two biomes don't represent a huge amount of content, the DLC feels longer than it is because of how the levels are woven into the base adventure. In this DLC, you'll find two brand new biomes - Castle's Outskirts and Dracula's Castle - plus three bosses, ten monsters, and over a dozen weapons carried over from the Konami series. The environments, monsters, and trappings of Castlevania also fit naturally into the established world of Dead Cells. Dead Cells shares a mechanical and atmospheric affinity with Castlevania, and already plays fast and loose with the laws of physics, so it's not hard to believe an ancient evil from another reality would collide with its own. "Evil is making its way back into the world," says Richter, "you must come with me into its heart and banish it once more." After arriving at the outskirts of the castle, the game's protagonist, the Beheaded, runs into Alucard of Symphony of the Night fame, who asks the unlikely hero to destroy Dracula and rid the land of evil.Īll of this could feel very forced and staged, but it doesn't. In the opening prison area of the game, a gateway to a dark, foreboding castle has suddenly appeared, watched over by Richter Belmont of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. In fact, the studio blended everything together quite beautifully - starting with the premise. The developers at Motion Twin and Evil Empire didn't just cram a bunch of Castlevania content into the Dead Cells universe unthinkingly, of course. Dead Cells has always had a fair dose of Castlevania blood in its veins, so this new collaboration makes a whole lot of sense. The latest DLC - and perhaps the most exciting, due to its crossover nature - is Return to Castlevania, a love letter to Konami's gothic action-platforming series. What was already a fascinating, polished experience when it launched in 2018 has grown over the years to include five pieces of DLC, which have built upon the game's mythology and enlarged its register of weapons, enemies, and mechanics. By Evan Norris, posted on 31 March 2023 / 1,849 Viewsįor a game called Dead Cells, it sure has a lot of life in it.
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