Let It Die's gameplay is simplistic. It does add some crafting and decision-making as you progress in the game, but ultimately you’re in for a button-mashing method of gaming that is sickly addictive, even through its obvious flaws. It’s fun, frustrating and makes you want to come back for more, if not only to prove you’re capable.
The commercials created for this game were true. There is no way that you can have a regular amount of fun with this game, but you certainly will try – over and over and over and over again.
The story is simple. You’re woken up by Uncle Death to ascend to the top of a brutal fighting tower filled with individuals, sometimes questionable ‘individuals’, who are hellbent on killing you. If you die, then you restart (sometimes). If you proceed, you’ll find a deep experience waiting for you. Regardless, you won’t let the experience die anytime soon.
The gameplay design in Let It Die is raw at its fundamental core. You’re cast into a multi-tier level city that I assume is based in hell (or what I think is hell), where you fight your way from level to level, hoping to find new weapons, defense and a bevy of nasty items to detour enemies from getting to you. Picture Dark Souls, but with humor, as well as less reward for your efforts. That is essentially what Let It Die’s foundation is formed from and what you should expect when you dive into the game. It’s not easy, sometimes it’s not fun, but it’s one helluva challenge.
The brutality of the game equals out to a punch, dodge, punch, dodge method of gameplay. You approach enemies in hopes of beating them to death before they beat you to death. You will find this out quickly when you first wake up in a subway car of bodies and are sent off to the world by Uncle Death to go make your way to the top of the tower of violence. Once you meet an enemy, you’re going to button-mash like crazy, figuring out how to time each attack and hopefully dodging better than yours truly. Of course, the game is more than just fists and dodging.
As you fight off fellow residents that come at you with unique tools and ways to fight (sometimes they’re fast and precise, sometimes they’re slow and clumsy), you’re going to learn quickly that you need more than your fists to make your way through the game. Along the way, you will have the opportunity to pick up weapons or craft things to help you battle. This aspect of the game is a selling point for the title and the motivation for players to keep going. It’s the one point that pushes you through the poor man’s Dark Souls experience and gives you some sort of warped light at the end of a large amount of tunnels. Gathering elements, visiting a center shop that offers up things and finding recipes to help push you through is what is going to be the special bond created between you and this game. How much patience you can extend for the process and how far you’re willing to go depends on what you expect from Let It Die. That said, dispatching someone with a hot steam iron or a gun that is built to shoot fireworks is nothing short of special, and sometimes gross, but nonetheless entertaining.
Beyond obvious weapons, and weapon creation, you’ll find a variety of different methods to take care of enemies as you progress. A neat set of throwable weapons can be found through various animals(nothing like smashing a frog or putting it in your pocket to work against your enemies) and fungus laying around in the game. Early on you’ll find the likes of tear gas and poison from these elements to attack your enemies or at least stun them long enough to kill them more easy. As you progress you’ll find nastier ways to dispatch enemies through non-swinging weapons, as well as more creative ways to put things together to help you keep going. You can also use some of these items to revive or rev up your character. Each item has a set of attributes to it, describing exactly what you can do with said item, so read each one of those carefully before haphazardly using them. Of course, if you want to entertain yourself, don’t read them. Seeing your character shake in horror with tear gas or put themselves to sleep by accident is fun.
As for the enemies in the game, they range from simple to darn right difficult. The early enemies are generally repeating and predictable. The latter enemies kick it into fifth gear and will dispatch you intelligently and with no remorse. There are moments where the game will swing quickly from a steady pace to chaos, as you’ll find moments like that scattered throughout the beginning, possibly just to prep your emotions and tension for what’s to come. Overall, though, the spastic difficulty of the enemies and AI that comes with them (dumb to OMG-that’s a smart CPU character) is what helps push the frustration, as well as the humor of the game, and the challenge of the gameplay. I watched a good friend of mine, we’ll call him Tim (okay, that’s his name), play this game in my living room for nearly an hour. He cursed a lot, laughed a lot and ended the day by going home to download it. He died a lot in the game, but it proves that the fundamental gameplay, which is built on challenging the player, that is mixed with a Dark Souls sentiment is effective enough for gamers to push through and continue.
The last item I want to discuss in the fighting category are the controls. When you’re fighting, the controls fight against you most of the time, though I imagine this is by design (again, Dark Souls). You’ll find yourself punching and using weapons, only to find yourself missing by distance or missing by direction, then being caught in getting attacked. Once you’re in the process of getting attacked, you’re stuck in that process until the attack is done. That in itself is so frustrating to watch. You cannot dodge out of the way while being attacked, again you simply have to take it until its over. Most people will be more conscious of their attack methods or pattern because of this, but there will be plenty of eye-rolling because of this aspect of gameplay.
Beyond button-mashing, which is mainly with the top buttons for attack, the use of the directional pad and touchpad to make weapon and non-weapon choices is actually pretty slick. While you won’t have much time to appreciate the scheme built, the eventual experience will sink in because it’s easy to use. Regardless, the control scheme is both a blessing and a curse. Controlling your character and his/her actions can be an uphill fight, but choosing things to help you out during the game is quite intuitive and intelligent.
Fighting aside, you should expect some microtransactions in this title that don’t necessarily compromise the experience, but can twist your arm, if you make it far enough up the tower. Once you die in the game, you’re given the opportunity to retrace yours steps all the way back for free or to purchase/earn gold skulls that allow you to revive at the place of death. While Grasshopper Manufacture does give you an out to play the game for free, the difficulty level of actually getting through the game in one piece without spending a dime is high. Without them providing me with 80+ skulls for this review, I’m not sure I could have made my way as far as I did in the game. That’s not to say that I wasn’t having fun prior to receiving the skulls, but it was much easier to progress by reviving myself after each brutal death with them. Don’t think, though, that the developers won’t throw you scraps of skulls for free, as they will. Each time I came back to the game (after taking a day break or so) there were 4+ skulls waiting for me, which gave me a small amount of faith that people who play the game religiously won’t have to spend all of their money on continuing their brutal adventure.
Related to dying, once you die and decide not to pay to come back, when you reach the point where you died, you have to kill your old self to re-obtain the goods you might have collected up to that point. Killing yourself, especially the ‘yourself’ that is equipped with some good stuff, is not easy, but accomplishing such a feat means that you don’t lose everything if you don’t pay for your immediate revival. While this generation of gamers will not understand such a concept, the fact that you have to work hard to get your stuff back is another positive point to the gameplay and an additional challenge to the gameplay. It certainly makes the process intriguing.
Overall, the gameplay is simplistic in Let It Die. It does add some crafting and decision-making as you progress in the game, but ultimately you’re in for a button-mashing method of gaming that is sickly addictive, even through its obvious flaws. It’s fun, frustrating and makes you want to come back for more, if not only to prove you’re capable.
On the presentation side of the field, the game isn’t going to particularly wow anyone with its environments, which are mainly dark and drab, nor is it going to set any new benchmarks with its character models or intricate details. The graphical prowess of this game is set firmly around the last generation transitioning into the current generation — meaning it looks good, but it’s nothing special. I will say that I am impressed by the girth of the world created, though the stint of time within levels is short and sweet, ending in an escalator ride up to the next level. Presentation-wise, you get a long, deep and fun amount of tension filled levels that set the mood for the gamer.
So, is this game fun? Well, what is your definition of fun? If you like a challenge and don’t mind the clunky controls or the sporadic difficult level of gameplay, then you’re in for a fun time with Let It Die. If you’re expecting a serious game that is crafted at its highest quality to compete against the best of the AAA fighting/action titles out there, then you’re going to be very disappointed. GungHo Online Entertainment and Grasshopper Manufacture have not been shy on letting people know what Let It Die actually is and they certainly don’t ask for any forgiveness for this beautiful abomination’s creation. They seem to have built the game they wanted and pulled it off brilliantly. It is flawed, but its addictiveness has enough push to pull gamers through, if they’re patient enough.
Anyway, TLDR — it’s fun.
