I remeber buying DoWII + Retribution just so I could play The Last Stand with my online friends. Great fun! I very much recommend it, even more than the actual game :)
I’m embarrassed to say I’ve died in the first encounter so many times from that stupid shield zombie and jumping one. I can’t get the parry right. They do this stupid grunt then I parry then they jump. And if I wait for the “!” they do this weird timing if I hit them. Still getting used to it.
Hahaha, the shield bearer is such a bitch when one is still learning the timing, right? However he is also a perfect enemy to initially practice your parry and roll with imo, at some point you will start to intuitively time it right and the shield bearer becomes almost harmless. I recommend using the training room for that.
Probably you already noticed that the “!” is only an indicator for the begin of the attack animation and that you have to factor in the distance between you and the enemy too, to time the parry right. Also keep in mind that only a tap results in a parry, while keeping the button pressed even for very short results just in a block / messed up parry.
But I got rickety wrekt by death in the castle map. I thought I was doing so effing good, got him down to phase 2 (about 1/3 health down) and with 1.4k health he killed me in a 3 hit combo, first hit taking half my life down and I got so blown away that I just missed wtf happened next. Game is very unforgiving.
How are you distributing your scrolls? You should decide at the start of a run if it is going to be a Brutality, Tactics or Survival run, based on what kind of weapons you want to use during the run. That defines your main colour and your two off colours for the run. The best practice is to take a scroll of your main colour whenever you can for max damage and distribute the two off colours 1:1 for max hp.
Game is very unforgiving.
Yes, indeed!
I haven’t tried any of the enhancements or crutches. Which I’m a father of 3 kids, one a new born and I’m not good like I used to be. I might check out some cheats to make things a little smoother for me.
Congratulations! In that situation I think I would experiment with custom mode a lot, it has many detailed options to tailor the game experience individually. I for example like to use custom mode to limit the item pool, once I have a lot of items unlocked that I don´t want to use on a run. If you find that you miss certain option in custom mode you should also check out accessibility mode as well.
I just got dead cells because I was in a gaming rut. I got one run in. It’s fun
It is indeed! Especially when you get lucky on a run and find/roll some crazy strong synergies. The game has a pretty steep learning curve at first, just keep doing runs and it will get even more fun. I also very much recommend the official Dead Cells Discord, it has some really nice and helpful people hanging out there.
Do you play with controller?
I do so and very much recommend you at least try playing it with a controller too, except you have a strong habit of playing games of the genre with a keyboard. In my opinion using a controller is more intuitive.
Dead Cells with all the DLCs. After being obsessed with Nova Drift for several months I got burnout and looked for other games to play.
Mafia definitive edition was on sale, so I got that. However, it quickly showed that in fact I don´t enjoy 3D shooters as I used to.
So I thought about what I really wanted to play and it was clearly roguelites with retro or at least highly stylized graphics. The DLCs for Dead Cells had been tempting me for some time already and most of them were on sale at that point, so it was pretty much a no-brainer. I erased my progress from years ago and started over fresh and it´s so much fun!
My best run yet was when I found the Hotline Miami reference lore room, which unlocks and drops the (level I) baseball bat. Now the Baseball bat does not have particularly high base damage but very good crit damage and guaranteed crits on stunned/rooted targets. That is already really cool when you combine it with stunning enemies by stomping but I was sure I´d have to replace that weapon later in the run because it was just a level I item. A few levels later I stumbled over a golden altar with a legendary Boys Axe. This item is a throwing axe that roots enemies on hit and as I told earlier you get auto-crit hits on rooted targets with the baseball bat, so obviously I ditched my rampart shield for the Boys Axe and from there on a virtually all my baseball bat hits were crit hits. But it got even better!
Shortly afterwards I found a sinew slicer, which is a trap that causes bleed on hit and then I got incredibly lucky and was able to roll +60% damage on bleeding targets on BOTH, the baseball bat AND the Boys Axe! Obviously from there I just breezed through the rest of the run and killed the Hand of the King in just a few seconds with a level I baseball bat as my main weapon :D
On top of all that, during the run I was also able to figure out how to use certain weapons like they were one, as it had been possible years ago but was patched out. This also added to making the build ridiculously strong since I could spam the baseball bat and the Boys Axe like they where just a combo of the same weapon.
TLDR: Dead Cells is crazy! If you enjoy roguelites, get Dead Cells!
I could not care less. They seem to focus primarily on improving the graphics with every part of the series, while imo gameplay is much more important than graphics. Also, for the ridiculous price of one AAA title, one can buy a whole bunch of great indie games.