If you enjoy the 2D action platformer structure mixed with a heavy dose of Dark Souls, then you’ll love Death’s Gambit: Afterlife. It’s a bigger game than the original and certainly a deeper/richer experience.
When a game has the words ‘challenging’ and ‘deep RPG elements’ in the description, you know you’re in for a ride. As is the case with Death’s Gambit: Afterlife, a 2D action platformer that has all the right amount of toughness and depth in the backend to satisfy any misogynistic Dark Souls player. Of course, it’s a hard sale to me, but one that I understand why someone else with a fair amount of patience would want to purchase.
Having said all of that, this game came out in 2018. This version of the game is an expansion of the original and features more levels, more challenges, and a whole lot of backend goodies to make the tough journey worth a go again. You’re in for a treat, if you have never played this title before, much like yours truly. Without further delay…
…let’s get it on!
Story
Your character is mortally wounded in battle and the lone survivor of a great war that didn’t go so hot. Instead of dying and joining your brethren, your character meets Death who makes a deal with you about cleaning out guardians in the world of Siradon. If you take their souls, then you snatch immortality. In the meantime, you are constantly brought back to life by an irate Death as you will certainly die many times before achieving greatness. That might be the most entertaining portion of the story.
The story is simple on the surface, but as you progress through the game, you start to see more pages in this game’s narrative. There is a lot of background to the main character and the journey he must take in the game. It’s quite good and it takes a lot of work to get through it all. I did enjoy the breadcrumbs left by the developers as you move through it all. I do appreciate that they don’t give the entire story away at the beginning, unlike other 2D platformers of this type. I also enjoy the fact that the character is given more depth than, “You’re Death’s righthand man, so go kill”. There’s so much more to explore.
In addition, the girth of details with the guardians you must defeat is quite profound. You get a lot of backstory and setup as you go through the game. Nothing seems like a wasted part, sans the common enemies, but nobody cares about those poor schlobs.
Anyway, the story is good and gets better as you push through.
Wowsers, this is one of the nicest looking 2D games
Without a doubt, the most perfect part of this game is the presentation. You read that right, before we dig into the nitty-gritty of the game, just note that it is the nicest 2D action platformer that I have seen in some time. While it certainly does mimic 2D games of yesteryear, the amount of art and style that went into this game is stunning, as is the ray tracing and hardware usage to put the visual world to amazing use. The character models have profound and artistic details that are smooth as a button when set in motion. The environments, while flat by genre nature, have layers to them to add more scope and personality to the story. Everything seems to be visually alive and feels like it’s a real-world, even in 2D.
What about the music and voices? Equally as good. The music kicks/bangs when it needs to, and the actors really bring the goods in portraying their counterparts. The game goes all-out for presentation and putting the player in the story and making them feel like the developers cared about the experience. You may read that as asshole-ish, but it’s the truth. You can tell visually and audibly that the developers at White Rabbit absolutely believed in what they were doing. Some games simply do not go as far as this one, which prompts me to point it out, as there was a lot of love and thought brought into this experience.
If you’re staying for the pretty, you won’t be disappointed in the delivery.
Now, about that gameplay
I would like to tell you that this is a common 2D action platformer that mimics a game like Dead Cell, but I would be completely off-base. Rather, this game acts more like Diablo than any 2D platformer of its type. You kill things, you gather things, you upgrade your character, and you fight impossible odds. The only thing missing from this entire experience is the ability to bring a friend in to help out. At least it would BE Diablo at that point. As it stands, it has all the elements of the Diablo backbone, which includes the slow build to greatness. And that build is quite slow.
The game is built on being challenging. It’s the crux of the entire gameplay design. The developers are going to force you to ‘get gud’ in the game and put your gaming skills to the test. As someone who is not a full-fledged member of Team Dark Souls, I do not usually enjoy over-the-top challenging games. I always believe that you play games to have fun, and not to curse and not have fun. As it stands, this game is meant to attract the best of the best to come to play and conquer. The bosses are generally overpowered, which means you must discover patterns and how they react at certain stages of the fight. Grinding out your character is a must in this game, otherwise, you’re going to find yourself frustrated as hell during boss fights. That sounds horrible and all, but quite frankly it’s the nature of the beastly gameplay design, which will absolutely delight a lot of gamers out there. The game lays out its hand to show you how a boss works, even give you some advantages occasionally with perfectly timed blocks and special attacks that must reset after a certain period. It wants you to win these fights, it just doesn’t want you to do it easily, which I can respect with its design. This execution won’t attract all gamers of the world, some will be turned off by the difficulty. Kudos to the devs sticking to their guns throughout the experience. It’s not an easy game to play through at all, but they do shine a small amount of light in the entire process by slowly getting you to the point you want to be to fight these things equally.
To help push you along, the game has an entire skills tree, traditional RPG attributes to upgrade, a macro system of different items to collect, equip, and use, and a fair number of goodies to discover. All of this makes the experience unique and fun, though you have seen elements of this in other similar titles.
Anyway, to upgrade your character’s attributes, you take out enemies and bosses. You slowly gather XP that can be translated to upgrading attributes, such as strength, vitality, intelligence, and other typical DnD RPG categories. Most of what you grind in the game goes to the attributes, which is more than fine. The more you do, the more you get, and the easier (lol) it is to get through the game. I can tell you the grind is gradual, meaning that you will have to grind hard to get what you want out of the game. It’s a marathon of sorts to get through this game and not a sprint.
On the skills tree side of the tracks, it’s broken up into many different boosts that you must unlock. These boosts, which do have other specific names, help to increase different percentages of action. For example, one boost can increase your healing abilities by parrying attacks. Another can gain energy weapon ammo by collecting 15 souls from fallen enemies. Some of these boosts can open ability slots, while some can just make your life super easy. Regardless, they’re all worthwhile, but not too advantageous immediately. The game really does want to keep you in check the entire time.
As for the aforementioned ability slots, these are special abilities you can perform to help you out on your seemingly impossible task of soul gathering. For example, the first one you receive is an assassinate ability, which unleashes a powerful slash of daggers on your enemies. If done right, it will cause great damage. If done wrong, it will miss, and you have to wait 30 seconds for it to reset. Regardless of right or wrong, you still have that cooldown time, which is proper and expected. It’s a neat way to understand what the hell is going on with abilities and a motivating factor to gain more abilities through grinding. It’s a weird, but wonderful balance in the game.
The other elements of the game come in the form of items and equipment. They’re exactly what you would expect from a game of this type. Think Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and you have the general structure of how this part of the game works. It’s typical, but still fun to upgrade and activate new items.
That is the general backbone of this game, and it complements the simple hack/slash action that you initially start out with within Death’s Gambit. I’m unsure what the original game was like when it was released, again, I have only played this version, but I can’t imagine it was this loaded with depth on the backend.
What is new in this version
Well, it is now on PC and Switch, which is a big deal. I honestly prefer it on PC for pushing the hardware envelope reasons. As mentioned way above, it looks fantastic, and I prefer it to look pretty while I die repeatedly. Anyway, what has been added to this version are 10 new levels (huge deal), 22 new weapons (incredibly interesting), and a bevy of different pieces and parts to make this game far more than what it started out as in 2018. There is a lot to be had in this new version and it’s very much an uphill climb through it. If you’re coming into this game the same time I am, we have arrived at the right time. Apparently, the first version of the game had a lot of questionable issues, which seem to have been cleaned up in this one. Kudos to the devs for going back and improving their passion project. It looks to have paid off.
Conclusion
If you enjoy the 2D action platformer structure mixed with a heavy dose of Dark Souls, then you’ll love Death’s Gambit: Afterlife. It’s a bigger game than the original and certainly a deeper/richer experience.
