Dragon Is Dead Review (gnomemobking)
Excellent little fusion of Diablo-style loot acquisition and roguelike metroidvania, which is a fairly unique combo. It's a fun ride that you can jam through pretty quickly and it has a lot of modern systems to ensure players don't get too locked into ruts regarding gear progression. There some faults among the positives, though.
---Pros---
Artwork: Probably what attracted your attention to the game, same as me. The pixel art on display is incredible, and it maintains that throughout the title. While it does lose a small amount for the procedural generation inhibiting level design, I really can't find anything to complain about here; it's just an amazing looking game.
Loot: It has the fun addictive qualities of getting good drops and has many unique items to add additional affects to your skills. There are also a number of systems that let you add or reroll stats, craft legendaries using more basic gear for further stat selection, and a bunch more besides. It definitely helps you not get completely screwed by bad rolls.
Controls: It plays very well, all attacks are responsive, the dodge feels fluid, and using a controller (as the devs recommend) all of the keybinds felt super natural and were easily rebound for those who want to change them around.
---Cons---
Level design: There basically isn't any. Every zone from start to finish is essentially a series of linked arenas with some good background art. There's no secrets to discover, paths to take, or anything else you might consider metroid-y. It's a highly linear experience that just assumes you're here for combat and nothing else.
Music: It's not awful, but no single track stayed in my mind at all and the hub music is painfully reminiscient of Tristram from the OG diablo. Not every town needs mournful string instruments to remind me I'm playing a grimdark fantasy epic.
Story: It can't decide if it wants to be dark souls or not, with a lot of characters rattling off terms and names from the get-go with nary a glossary in sight. Eventually you will piece together what's going on, and maybe there's more with repeated nightmare difficulty runs, but I wasn't impressed. No moments stood out to me and there are no characters I'll remember for more than a week.
---Summary---
If you want a fantastic-looking combat experience with both solid roguelike elements and gear-chasing, then this game will be right up your alley and will almost certainly give you great bang for your buck. If you prefer more narrative driven experiences or games with a more robust world then you might look elsewhere. I'd still recommend to pretty much all fans of the genre though.