Team Suneat’s take on the roguelite genre challenges players to take on the role of the Successor, a never-ending line of warriors hired to cleanse the land of a recent outbreak of demons. Classic platforming meets soulslike combat, and the roguelite take on progression and levelling makes for a unique mix of gameplay elements, but how does it all come together?
Dragon is Dead greets players with a sombre-sounding menu theme to reflect the dreary story about to unfold, and fans of games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne will feel right at home as far as the setting and tone go. It is clear Team Suneat has a lot of love for FromSoftware’s works, and the gorgeous pixel art found throughout this title pays homage after homage to games like Zelda II, The Witcher, and Silent Hill, with characters having well-drawn portraits for dialogue and creatures giving visual clues through their unique attack animations.
Players will need to pay attention to enemy movements, as they broadcast their attacks, and in groups they can quickly overwhelm the Successor. Button mashing won’t do much good once more than one enemy appears on-screen, and each Successor has an array of attacks, skills, and a dodge at their disposal. Dragon is Dead isn’t quite as difficult or punishing as most FromSoftware games, but it does offer a challenge, and further difficulty levels can be unlocked.
Each run is randomised in terms of level layout and rewards, and each of the three playable classes has a large and detailed skill tree. Equipment often has various effects which play off of the different skills, meaning no two runs will ever be quite the same, even if players pick the same skills every time—but the vast amount of different skills assures they probably won’t. It does take quite a long time to unlock the two player classes after the starting class, which is a shame, because even though the levels are randomised, Dragon is Dead does follow a set of linear stages, so the core gameplay of traversing each stage and combating enemies to reach the boss can get repetitive.
Another unfortunate aspect is a pervasive glitch where certain words just don’t appear in dialogue, often the names of key places or characters, which for whatever reason just render as a blank space in the dialogue box instead. It’s a small bug but it happens rather consistently, and is a bit of a disservice to the expansive lore the writers have otherwise poured into their game (which pops up primarily in dialogue, item descriptions, and very witty campside conversations between war-weary soldiers).
Upon dying, players lose most of their currencies and all of their skills and experience, but keep overall story progress, equipment, and upgrades to equipment. The system does a very good job of encouraging players to try new playstyles and mix things up on their own, which more than makes up for the lack of diversity in the core gameplay itself, and players have the option to respec their character between levels and re-roll shop items and progress rewards. It really can’t be understated how different every single run of Dragon is Dead can go, and sometimes receiving a certain weapon or artifact will unlock an effect the player may have otherwise never tried, but will find themselves hooked on.
One type of reward item, the aforementioned artifacts, carries a small bonus, as well as adding to “synergy,” which is essentially the artifact’s type. Having multiple artifacts that synergise with each other will unlock greater and greater effects, leading to yet another way to customise each playthrough. A lot of the variations on gameplay made by these effects are creative, such as one playstyle that will reward those that keep as much gold in their inventory as possible, and another that challenges players to use their own health as a source of attack power.
