Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania Review (Qain)
One of the reasons I got back into Dead Cells and actually finished it, together with the rest of the DLCs was Return to Castlevania, the latter being one of the classics I hated so much because of its difficulty (I was a child, give me a break).
What I found was me making the same observations as with the base game; Combat feels amazing, the assets, music and references are spot on, and the difficulty ramps up tremendously. At the same time, nearly all of the new enemies are essentially rehashes of the original ones.
What caught me off guard was that the level was divided into sections, which allows you to take a break (as the levels are quite large), with some of them being hidden and even introducing a different character. Pretty neat touch!
The thing that really killed off my enthusiasm with this one however, was the ending, to the point where I only finished it twice to get the entire content out of the way. You see, you get.... 3 bosses in this game, one of them I'm sure you'll figure out. The first two are nothing too challenging if you've been playing Dead Cells for a while. Not overly annoying, but fun. However, the very last one is designed as a complete game over boss, meaning that if you finish it, you finish the game. The problem with that, is that the boss has SO MUCH HP that it becomes a battle of nearly 15 minutes just to chunk off its health. The only way that I managed to quickly finish it off was using a glass cannon build (300%dmg, doing like 30k per hit!), but it still felt wayy too exaggerated to the point where I thought it was bugging out.
Still, if you are a fan of Dead Cells, and you've previously enjoyed Castlevania, then this is a must have DLC.