Have a Nice Death Review (sethfurno)
One of the easier “Metroidvania” (however you spell it) style games.
What most likely sold you on this game is its visuals. It’s easily the strongest element. The animations are so clean and the characters are super expressive. If this is your first game of the genre, don’t fret. There’s an easy mode you can unlock.
It’s super fun. There’s like 80 weapons “different” you can play. The mechanics I find to be the weakest part of the game. The vast majority of the weapons provide only damage. The cool ones are all legendary and thus rare to obtain. There's too many that you'll just throw out the window for the sake of obtaining damage elsewhere. They are all created equal so you don’t have to worry about unbalanced ones. Except for the hammer. That thing sucks in every way. There’s a reason why they give it to you on your first run. Because you’ll never grab it again.
Many metroidvania titles have purposely restricted motion to make it easier on the artwork. But artwork is “Have A Nice Death’s” strength. Death (the main guy) has just about the longest dash I’ve ever seen. On like a half second cooldown. You’re extremely nimble. And you got space to move too. There are tools you can use to avoid getting lost but you’re never going use them. You’re too fast.
The nature of your nimble character and diverse move set calls for the enemies to be extra unfair. The bosses have huge coverage. Sometimes the whole screen. Fighting each one of them for the first time will end a run. Especially the final boss. That girl will straight up set your health to 1 and then just delete your build. It’s a frustrating experience for the first several hours. Please be patient with yourself. You’ll be twice as prepared on the second encounter.
Everything in “Have A Nice Death” has to be sought out. Secret rooms, cheese builds, weapon combos, you can’t just waltz into this stuff. You have to dedicate a whole run just to figure them out. It’s easy to forget to just take a look around or press pause to read your power ups.
With that being said. To maximize fun:
- By pressing pause and moving to the weapons screen. You can press a button (default is G) to swap the order of your secondary weapons. Some weapons greatly interfere with movement. Making them uncomfortable to use. Organize your weapons based on cast time. With the fastest on the primary mouse button. And the slowest on the trinary button. For example, left click: Scythe, right click: Sword/Bees, middle click: (my least accessible) Hammer.
- 80-95% of the build’s damage will come from only one weapon (unless you’re playing a two stroke combo). So have two of your weapons support the other. Such as “Dark Talons” providing a guaranteed stun by picking up enemies, or “Sacrifix” providing permanent health. Some of the scythes have passives that can boost damage or provide defense when upgraded. Save prismium to change scythes.
- All the weapons are created equal. But the power ups (“Curses”) are not. Many are just like the weapons; providing only damage. I almost always put my guns on defense (Blue), as that allows me to fight the bosses for longer and become familiar with their moves. It also has by far the most utility. You can always get damage later. On average, only 2 Curses will give adequate damage. The good news is you actually have agency over your Curses. The rank determines when it can be grabbed. Many of my favorites are in ranks 1-2 (Blue has really bad early ranks). So by not grabbing them immediately. You can control your Curses (plus rerolls).
- Always fight the Thanagers (mini-bosses). They unlock stuff. You’ll improve your skill faster as well.
- Skipping to bosses don’t actually speed up the run (unless your weapons are very good and you’re very skilled). As the enemies get tanky fast. The most I typically skip to is “Brad.” Skipping does provide practice against the bosses themselves though. So if you wish to do a run hit-less, then there ain’t a better way.
- Play on easy or normal difficulty. Anything harder will prevent you from playing around with weird weapons.
- Don’t skip dialogue. This game’s got good humor.
Have A Nice Death is a success story in my book. Looking forward to what the creators will do next.