• Art Style
• Animations
• Soundtrack
• Characters dubbing

• Poor number of weapons
• Game length
• Some typing errors

Positive:

• I enjoyed the aesthetic of the game but was especially impressed with the voice acting and OST. Since I did not care much for the gameplay, the excellent music and voice acting are probably what drove me to finish the game. While voice acting is by no means essential to the story-line, I found it to be a very welcome addition that breathed life into the characters (especially Death (⌐■_■)) and kept me invested in the story. I just wonder why no voice acting was done for the protagonist.
• Upon death, you drop a feather (your main healing item), which reduces your max by 1 until you pick it up again. While not terribly punishing initially, several deaths can make retrieval more challenging. It seems like the developers realized this and added a feature where you can pay to retrieve your feathers at every checkpoint. Furthermore, you can choose to sacrifice a specific number of feathers (also at the checkpoints) to boost your damage for the given area, giving the player a choice of risk/benefit. I find both features excellent as it makes the game more beginner and hardcore gamer friendly.

Neutral:

• *shakes fist* why is there no map?! To be fair the layout of the land is fairly straightforward (you can either go North, South, East, or West from the main hub) so it is unlikely that you will get lost. Regardless I would have preferred to have a map instead of having to rely on my memory for two main reasons: [1] every time I took a break from this game I would have to spend a considerable amount of time reacquainting myself with the world; [2] you can have heroic rematches with bosses (basically harder rematches) and I wanted to get to the boss rooms quickly.
• Not a fan of the (many) cutscenes between death and respawn. The timing of these cutscenes make perfect sense from the story’s perspective but I find these to be poorly placed from a practical standpoint. In many cases I was pumped full of adrenaline from a boss fight and (most likely) was frustrated because I just died. As such, I was either too frustrated, hyper, or eager to get back in the fight ASAP to fully appreciate the cutscenes.
• There is a mechanic within the game, disenchanting, where you can exchange items/weapons/armour for soul stones, a resource central to upgrading your weapons and armour of choice. It would make sense that upgraded weapons (i.e. Sword +4) would be disenchanted for more soul stones, right? Wrong. This especially frustrates me since a large number of soul stones (32+) are required to upgrade items past a certain point, so why would the developers decide to be stingy with disenchantment? A simple way to get past this hurdle is to simply farm for items but I did not care to do so.

Negative:

• Very limited weapon arsenal. I was hesitant to upgrade my starting axe since I thought I would eventually find a better one. However, after a few hours of gameplay and a little research, I disappointingly discovered that there was no other axe. This seems to be the case with most other weapon types.
• Uninspired skill tree. I often struggle with allocating my skill points when presented with an overwhelming array of useful skills. The opposite is true for Death’s Gambit; I did not want to invest my ability points simply because none of the upgrades intrigued me. Only a handful (at best) of unlocks have any use and these are mostly at the end of the ability tree.
• My biggest pet peeve is the awkward movement. I can’t fully describe how bizarre and clunky the moment feels but it's almost as if you are controlling a limp ragdoll. I was still not used to it by the end of the game (around 7 hours in).
• Similarly, weapon movesets are not particularly good either. Sure, the different weapons have specific advantages and disadvantages but the moveset for the axe in particular really grinds my gears: I literally could not hit the crystal lizard (same enemy as in Dark Souls) with my standard axe moveset because the enemy hitbox is too low. Instead I had to rely on perfectly timed jump attacks to graze it. Furthermore, given how limited the weapon movesets are, the mechanical skill cap (the required mechanical ability for you to play the game at your peak) is very low; you should be able to fully explore the ins and outs of a weapon within 10 minutes. The only remaining challenge is the timing for perries. In sum, the movement and combat are mediocre and bland, which is not something you expect from a game that focuses on combat.
• This game also suffers from poor pacing. My biggest issue is that there seems to be a boss every 15-30 minutes. I would just begin to explore an area and when suddenly boss time, followed by area completed. It almost seems as if the developers could not figure out how to expand the game while keeping it entertaining so they just decided to throw in a bunch of bosses. Mediocre level design to say the least.

Verdict:

★★★☆☆ Missed the mark