Dally, 30XX’s newest character, is an excellent addition to 30XX and the star of the Feline Fury update. If you’ve been wanting a new and refreshing way to play 30XX, I highly recommend you give Dally a spin, if only for how she makes for creative builds on each new run.
Over the past two years (wow, time flies!), I’ve been fortunate to have seen Batterystaple Games’ 30XX evolve from an early access game to a full release. Check out my coverage of the full release in 2023! Since then, 30XX has had several major updates that have refined Nina and Ace’s abilities and the roguelike gameplay to give players more and more reason to play. It’s refreshing, really, to see this game get love that keeps it fresh.
The 30XX that I have been playing over the past week feels vastly different thanks to the Feline Fury update (free for all players, by the way). However, the purpose of this review is to discuss Dally, the first paid DLC for 30XX. I’ll mention some of the other Feline Fury-related additions at the end of this review in case you’re on the fence about 30XX or have yet to update.
Dally is 30XX’s first paid character, priced at $4.99 and available immediate after purchase. No needing to complete the game or unlock her through in-game missions. Once you buy her, she joins your team as a playable character in the hub. In case you missed it, Dally is the little robo cat who typically sleeps in the hub in-between 30XX runs as well as the NPC who grants you a buff (if you spent memoria) at the start of a new run. She has donned the “Catastrophe Armor” and is a hulking counterpart to Nina and Ace. While she still is fluid and relatively nimble, her power fantasy of being a gigantic mech emerges when she falls to the ground, causing the screen to shake. Her airtime when wall jumping is slightly decreased yet more vertical.
Compared to Nina and Ace, Dally plays far differently. Her attacks do not charge; instead, they restore NRG (the resource that you spend to activate powers) when hitting an enemy. She starts a run with a kitty missile power right at the start along with a short-range-rapid-fire blaster. Some bosses grant her Supers that require “charge,” which is a single-use resource obtained after hitting an enemy twenty times. In practice, Dally’s NRG restore mechanic allowed me to freely swap between weapons and powers so that I could use my current kit to its fullest extent. It gave me a unique power fantasy that wasn’t yet in 30XX: I could blast away without regard to needing to mind my NRG. Dally is the refreshing epitome of being able to launch into the fray with guns blazing.
The other unique aspect to Dally is the “Brilliant Bell” mechanic. Think of these like augments, but for your currently unlocked weapons and powers. There are 11 bells in total, and you can come across them in a shop, after completing a gauntlet/glory minigame, or in a post-boss room just as you would any other augment. They don’t replace augments, but they are added to the augment pool which amps up the variance of mixing up augments on a per-run basis. Upon obtaining a bell, you equip it to a single weapon. For instance, a bell that grants NRG restore can be attached to a power that costs energy, thus refunding some NRG when using that power. If you don’t like a combination of bell and weapon, no worries! You can freely move it to another weapon and you’re good to go.
In my several hours of playing as Dally, bells were refreshing additions to my current loadout…if and/or when they spawned. Some runs I was lucky to come across a single bell, let alone two. Other runs I wouldn’t even see a bell show up until the very end, leading me to believe that the bells were in the same augment pool as the rest of the augments that I could come across. There are FAR more augments than there are of Dally’s 11 bells, so the odds are against me in coming across them. It’s unfortunate that the bells’ drop rate is so low, especially since they’re such an integral part of Dally’s kit and uniqueness. If they can be guaranteed drops after the first boss and/or somewhere in the first level or two, it would feel like Dally’s fantasy can, at the very least, come online at the start of a run.
The Bells are a fantastic addition to Dally’s kit, however. They make it so that every single bit of her available weapons and powers can be customized and refined. For players who’ve been attached to 30XX all this time, Dally and her bells offer depth in variance and raise the skill ceiling to experiment with mixing and matching bells. Build experimentation like this rewards those looking to try new things, and it feels rewarding to see Dally change up her kit thanks to the bells.
I loved playing as Dally – I just want her power fantasy to come online sooner. She offers players flexibility that Nina and Ace don’t innately offer, making her a perfect addition to the cast. At time of writing, she has some bugginess in the Switch version related to her basic attacks (which is easily solved by restarting the Switch). I’m confident that Batterystaple will iron out those quirks in the coming days, especially knowing their track record in supporting and continuously squashing bugs well past the game’s official launch.
Now we come to the important question: Is Dally worth it? I think yes. Delayed power fantasy and minor quirks aside, she changes up the 30XX gameplay loop in a way that benefits players. For $5, it’s priced appropriately and offers the potential of many more hours of playtime thanks to her flexible builds.
Before I conclude this review, I want to praise Batterystaple for their free additions that came in the Feline Fury update (v. 1.3). Dolto (Delta’s Revenant variant) offers hardcore options to players who want to take on all Delta challenges when they are offered while being able to efficiently reroll augments and trader options. Eternal Challenges give players looking for permanent modifiers a nice way to play 30XX with different rulesets and set loadouts – and they’re available offline!! Most notably, boss stage encounters have been updated and reworked, with Lethal Tempo being given an entirely new stage that is much harder. There’s quite a bit of other updates, too, but one thing is crystal clear: The Feline Fury update gives players the post-game difficulty levers worth chasing, which is great for those who have been wanting a deeper challenge after playing through 30XX for the past year.
Dally, 30XX’s newest character, is an excellent addition to 30XX and the star of the Feline Fury update. If you’ve been wanting a new and refreshing way to play 30XX, I highly recommend you give Dally a spin, if only for how she makes for creative builds on each new run.
