Dragon Is Dead

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.

As much as I had hopes for this game, I can't recommend it after having the 1.0 release 1 year after I first played it. -There is an enormous amount of bugs -Almost no content got added except a final boss and NG+ with terribly overstatted enemies -The devs have 0 responses towards the community over the last year -A lot of content is copy pasted with a spin on the art from Skul and Blasphemous -The roguelite gameplay look isn't really fun, upgrades are mostly stats from items. The RPG item/looter aspect gets really boring really fast -The gameplay loop is long and unsatisfying to restart over and over since you are overstatted for the early game anyway because of how items work -Abilities are kinda same-ish and most status effect have 0 effect on bosses -Clearly the devs put almost no work into the game in the past 1 year, which makes me believe there won't be any fixes for all issues stated above in the near future I really hope I can recommend this game in the near future if the devs actually start working on the game instead of seemingly working on it for 10 minutes a day or fully abandoning it after 1.0. But as it is right now, I just can't recommend it and you should honestly just go buy the games it's clearly based off of.

Sadly cannot recommend this game, as much as I was excited to play it from early access footage and the supposed concept of the game. (1) Firstly, this is not a metroidvania meets roguelite. There are no metroidvania elements at all; the player does have a dodge, double jump, and air dash given right at the start but these are used mostly for combat rather than exploration and traversal (2) The game world is incredibly dull. I understand that the developers were going for a dark fantasy feel but the design is overall very lacklustre; music is uninspiring and boring and the same track was used for so many stages/ biomes (3) Gameplay in the end boils down to having hordes thrown at you and bullet hell. There is not an ounce of combat strategy or tactice. Characters do not stand out from each other in terms of mechanics and skills; skills are similarly boring and there is not enough for build customisation (4) I don't expect much of a plot here but the writing is abyssal. NPC speech is too wordy; everyone sounds the same (character design and art is pretty good though) Game was sent for a refund.

[h1]Dragon Is Dead: A Surprisingly Solid Platformer[/h1] [b]Dragon Is Dead[/b] truly shines where it counts: the [b]gameplay[/b]. The mechanics are [b]excellent and highly responsive[/b], making every jump, dodge, and attack feel precise. As someone who's not usually a fan of platformers, I was genuinely impressed; this game is [b]far above average[/b] in its execution and kept me hooked. The [i]story is strongly average[/i] – serviceable, but forgettable. It's more of a backdrop for the fantastic platforming action. Honestly, I spent more time enjoying the smooth movement than trying to follow the plot. Despite the lackluster narrative, the game's strengths more than compensate. The excellent mechanics and addictive gameplay loop make it incredibly enjoyable. [h1]Key Points:[/h1] [b]Gameplay:[/b] [u]Excellent[/u], responsive, and satisfying. [b]Mechanics:[/b] Work [u]superbly[/u]. [b]Story:[/b] [i]Strongly average[/i]. [b]Platforming:[/b] Highly enjoyable, [b]far above average![/b]

Could be fun, but there is motion blur or framerate locking going on that makes it a smeared mess while moving. If you get headaches with blurry content, or find it annoying to have to choose between moving or reading the screen, then pass until they fix it.

I enjoyed the game and finished in the first difficulty mode. You start with a spellblade, you will unlock 2 other characters later which have completely different skill trees, which means you can personalize the gameplay of each. The game is not voiced, I skipped the all the text/story (no problem for me) There is no level design/back tracking, no secret this is not a metroidvania (I actually appreciated this). You loot items and you can modify them to make them beter too. Game is challenging at first but once you have the barrier (assistant skill from skill tree), the game become easier. After you die, you keep your items. Which means you will be overpowered at your next runs with useless fight until you reach back where you died. I didn't like the balance of the game, once I started a new run with the berserker class, I saw 800% critical damage. I thought it was to compensate being full melee but no, you can hit from far like a ranged character too with the right skill. I had a bugued skill with no cost which hits from far with 800% critical damage kinda oneshooting everything except bosses (where I had to use a barrier to spam that skill). As comparison, I was doing 1500 dmg with my spellblade with my best skill which had a cooldown and 15k dmg with my berserker at the same area of the game and without cooldown (and not ressource cost but that was a bug). I was disapointed that the game became too much an easy hack and slash once you have good gear/skills/artifact I will try the nightmare mode to see where is goes. I still recommend it if you're ok with the cons

This game is SO underrated. It is beautiful, controls like a dream, I've had no bugs and no performance issues, the art is jaw-dropping, the boss fights are amazing, it's so, SO good. It is heavily "inspired" by D4's skill tree, but apart from that it actually is a pretty good ARPG on its own. It has decent itemization (better than D4 imo), The only downside is that some builds are completely broken right now. Maybe nerf cooldown reduction? I was able to trivialize the entirety of the game's content by reducing cooldown every time I dodge. Plus, the dialogue could easily have 3-4 times less lines and deliver the exact same amount of story, there's definitely some editing needed there. This is a LOT of fun and I highly encourage everyone remotely interested in ARPGs and Rogue-lites to support this game and help the devs bring it to 1.0! (Also the name isn't really helping, is it? It sounds a bit stupid, ngl.)

This game is incredible! I'm so glad I bumped into it. It has itemisation which shits on even the likes of Path of Exile, with items which feel insanely exciting and are easy to build around not just "5% attack when dodging into a pool of water" but actual run defining items which vastly change the way you play. Its a rogue-lite with gear being preserved (you lose other power upgrading items from a run, but a gear which makes a big difference stays with you, making each run faster and faster) BUY NOW!

[h1]TL;DR[/h1] Too Janky for a 1.0. Buy on sale. [h1]The Good[/h1] I love the Art, I love the gameplay loop. I love the characters have meaningful differences [h1]The Jank[/h1] The Platforming is hit of miss... literally. Half of the time I will fall through platforms without knowing why. I'm not even touching the left thumbstick. I just wanted to jump and attack and then I fall through the platform I was on originally. Some platforms feel just a tad too high, needing a pixel perfect double jump in order to reach. The game might benefit from having input queueing. Way too often, I would press the attack button only for my character to simply stand still and not doing anything, because when I was pressing the button, they were in the last 2 frames of their previous animations. The Diablo 1 gold coins sound is cute during the first run, and become very annoying by the end of the second run. It's mostly an RNJesus issue, but it seems that the synergy I want never comes out. I deck my character with cold legendaries, but the cold synergy artifacts never come out, no matter how many time I reroll. Enemies constantly stunlocking you get old very quick.

TLDR; I think it's an okay buy for like 5$ but if you're looking for a story and deep game play you won't find it here. The game has been in development for a long time and it does not seem like they will be successful in addressing the core issues since that is a substantial undertaking of redoing quite a bit of the game. A lot of the negative reviews for the game have touched on it already but, this game lacks substance. The narrative is weak. There's no exploration. The game stats initially feel deep but half of them aren't implemented well nor are they clear what they do. Like for instance the resistances in the game don't really feel impactful or do much. There is a significant lack of build variety. Legendary items are uninspiring, etc. Enemies are repetitive and simple. Combat is mostly a stat check. One time I made it to the final boss and had to fight them for over 25 minutes of repetition because I didn't have enough damage. The amount of RNG is insane for drops. The endgame loop is also very...boring.

TLDR - Wait for a balance patch. For the Diablo Players, imagine if, on higher difficulties, you got loot which was basically the same as normal difficulty. The game become quickly very very boring, with everything taking dozens of hits to kill. My main grievances with the game are related to the roguelite nature of the game, and end-game content, which I'll try to keep spoiler-free. Once you finish the game for the 1st time, you get a chance to increase difficulty mainly influencing 3 options. The main issue is that the loot does NOT IMPROVE considerably. The basic item will give for instance, +15%-+30% lightning damage. The end-game variant will give you the same % range. Each "extra" loot level gives you 1 (one) extra damage, which means NOTHING, as the lowest end game modifier DOUBLES the enemies' HP. One of the modifiers is "environmental damage", which you assume increases damages from traps, etc. No. It's simply a semi-tracking orb that appears from nowhere to damage you. I've never seen such an annoying implementation of difficulty increase.

This game really starts to open up and become more fun after the first couple of hours. I wish the weapons had more weight/impact behind them, though. Especially weapons like maces. Your physical hits just don't feel that impactful. But the magical skills and abilities are fantastic, and the build crafting is excellent, with lots of very powerful weapon/gear/skill combinations to try. I especially like how your gear carries over, creating a very satisfying power progression that allows you to absolutely plow through the beginning enemies and bosses after a few runs. It's nice to play a 2D game like this that isn't a metroidvania for once, and I'm glad I gave it a try. It's a solid rougelike.

Very good game but super buggy, no discord to be seen and devs dont respond to post on the forum.

It's a good game hidden behind a walking simulator. 50% of every area is empty space that serves no purpose. Their are waves of enemies in certain spots instead of just filling the map with them. You can fall through platforms randomly that you were supposed to land on, several at a time even. Character changes their facing randomly when you are trying to attack. It has a lot of problems that should have been sorted out back in the alpha.

The game is fun if you dont expect to much i liked the bosses some of them were really fun and interesting other bosses mainly the first two were kinda boring, the game can get a little repetetive but thats very common in rouges games, i would give the game overall a 7 out of 10

My playtime includes early access so it's nice and quick to finish, the price is reasonable to boot. The itemization is awesome, skul does this to some extent but it feels a bit more strict but combining the gear + relics really makes this game so a joy to play. To give you an idea of games 2D games I've enjoyed so you can get some direction are these: Dead Cells, Skul the hero slayer, blazblue entropy effect, Dragon Marked for Death, Blade Assault, Astral Ascent and GetsuFumaDen. Highly recommend if you enjoy 2D action games. BONUS EDIT* It has native playstation pad support now which most games not even AAA are bothered to do. Big thumbs from me devs <3

Big fun. Some quality of life / translation issues would be welcomed

This game is everything I wish Dead Cells was - I really wanted to like Dead Cells but it was not for me, way too difficult without any way to mitigate the challenge through progression (well, there was but it was very limited). Plus, the difficulty and learning curve was really steep. This is not the case with Dragon is Dead. If you are familiar with ARPG games like Diablo or Path of Exile, you can optimize your character to make the game much easier. Plus, everything about this title is top notch - the vibe is very Berserk-like, dark fantasy with some asian folklore thrown into the mix. Combat feels great, really polished and progression is extremely rewarding and meaningful. Totally recommended, great game that is much more Roguelite than Roguelike.

The game is good, 8/10 or 7.5/10. It could use some quality of life (like allowing for some sort of quicker travel in the hub), bug fixes, and more monster variety. If you get those things in, and maybe some alternate bosses as well, and you have an easy and strong 9/10 for fans of the genre. Recommended if you like games in the vein of Astral Ascent but with itemization clearly inspired by Exile-like ARPGs.

A good story and a fun leveling system. A great little metroidvania roguelite

I've been having a ton of fun. I paid about 15.00 for this game. and So far got about4 hours of fun, and I'm not even close to being finished. Props to the developers!

Adding more characters will make this game high replayability. The skill sets of every characters is unique on their class. More characters more skills = recommended

"Mostly Positive" sounds about right, though I'm not sure I would recommend the game in its current state. I'm enjoying it so far, but I can see where it could benefit from improvements—and why I'll eventually drop it: - Not a Metroidvania, weak as a Roguelike – I normally avoid roguelikes, though I suppose it works here. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fully embrace the genre. The game is pretty linear, as opposed to offering a pick-your-own-path approach, and the levels could benefit from being more procedural to add variety and replayability. I'm also not a fan of the Doom-like mob waves and would have preferred additional, fully populated rooms instead. - Not as polished as I would expect from a 1.0 – It could definitely use more polish, from the movement (which looks out of place compared to the character and level art) to the lack of a functional minimap. The absence of voice acting also makes the lengthy NPC speeches feel like a chore. - Base game too simple for its overall complexity – They introduced all kinds of systems, borrowing from Diablo, but layered them onto a very basic game. It's a linear adventure where progress depends more on your gear and build than on player skill. I quickly reached a point where I found myself thinking, “I need to farm more,” instead of “I need to get better.” I would’ve liked to see a better balance between gameplay and systems, rather than having the systems become the game. TL;DR: Blasphemous meets Diablo in a roguelike—but it doesn’t necessarily take the best of all worlds. Recommended with a grain of salt.

Very fun game so far, but it is still being worked on which was a shock considering that it was an early access game for a long time and was marketed on the store page as being complete. It has a story and it has a final boss, but the there are things that are obviously missing from the game. It's clear that there are still stages on the map that are not yet reachable and there are also passives for ultimate skills that are not yet in the game when looking at the skill tree. There are 3 playable characters although the Berserker feels extremely weak and squishy. Calculations for equipment and skills appear to be broken in many ways as well. With that being said, the game is fun to play and has great art and overall tone. It's clear that the developers were going for a Diablo 1/2 aesthetic. If you like CSoTN and Dead Cells, you'll like this game. Hopefully the developers will continue to work on and update the game.

Solid Metroidvania with good meta progression. For me personally, games in this genre live and die by their controls. I was pleasantly surprised to find snappy, responsive controls. Generally speaking, I've found some pixel art games to look beautiful but feel sluggish. This is not thew case here. Snappy controls and a fun game loop. Definitely happy with this purchase.

This would have been really good if the concept just like Blasphemous. Rogue-lite makes this boring. But, well...

Honestly I was kinda surprised I hadn't seen this game prior to 1.0 because its right up my alley. The core gameplay loop slaps pretty hard, though there are a few hurdles to get past before you really get the hang of things. There's some odd little quirks in the games dialogue, if I had to guess I'd say its likely a result of an imperfect translation. The game also advertises itself as a Metroidvania game, but it doesn't quite fit that genre in spite of it's obvious aesthetic inspirations. the big thing that distinguishes it from Metroidvania is that you don't spend time unlocking new movement tech in order to reach previously inacessible areas.

Interesting idea and nice artwork but the game feels unfinished.

This game for the time been plays more like Dead cells. I just hope that it gives up ways to go back to stages to grind rather of dying and restarting from the very start in which it makes it annoying for some players. I hope the devs add a save feature when it is launch.

It's aight. Certainly some fun to be had here, with the Diablo-esque gearing and skill system, combined with the roguelite ability to try different skill builds on different runs. Ultimately, I tried to get into it, but it wasn't sticking for me. Some will enjoy this one, most likely, but it feels like there are better games in the space, especially considering that each run feels basically exactly the same, with no interesting Dead-Cells like branching paths. It's possible this changes later into the game, but the map appears almost completely linear, so I don't think so. My big complaint is with the lengthy expository dialogue, with EVERYONE. It doesn't actually take that long to skip through, but it's almost comical how long-winded random NPCs that you need to interact with are. It's certainly to the detriment of the game, because it leaves me not engaging with the dialogue that I DO need to pay attention to. Please, I don't care about the self-conscious ramblings of shopkeeper who is also a father, and also has a few things to say on the nature of magic, politics, and forestry OH and also there's an important mechanical note in the middle of all of that, but you'll miss it because you're clicking through his fourteen consecutive lines of dialogue. It's like that with everyone.

The game is super fun. The English translations are ROUGH. Really good diablovania implementation. Buy it so they can hire someone to do proper skill tooltips in english. Easy recommendation if you don't mind experimenting a bit to figure out what a skill ACTUALLY does. Luckily, test dummies are plentiful to check actual numbers. And it's a roguelite, so you can always correct a mistake next time, with better gear.

Do not sleep on this side scrolling roguelike!!! Me personally, I put it up there with Dead Cells!! Extremely great roguelike, for real!!!! Play it! You will see!!

Hesitant yes to get the big point out of the way: This is not a metroidvania. You're looking at a roguelike along the lines of Koboo or Skul where you go forward through a set of combat challenges and get some random rewards per room to boost your stats - the route's the same every time, the fights are the same every time, but you can pick different skills and such. This feels undercooked to some degree but the skill tree is interesting enough to keep it fresh between runs for a bit the roguelike part is you reset to level 1 and lose all your gold when you die - this is made up for by equipment being permanent (and a diabloesque gambling/reforging system you spend your permanent currency on) - this part has interesting stuff, equipment that modifies your skills, turns the first several areas into a breeze, and so on. So, if you want a *metroidvania*, it's a no, but if you want a pretty solid (albeit rough around the corners) hack-n-slash roguelite type game, this is alright and worth the asking price, I think

- This is the worst Engrish I have seen in a game in a very long time. Gameplay is tight but I can barely understand what the writing is trying to convey at times, and it's riddled with mistakes that Microsoft Word would have pointed out with a simple proofread. - Game is pretty unoptimized. Just moving side to side in the screen can cause some lag/delay. (I'm running an I9-9900KS at 5.4 ghz with a 4090 Trinity OC - my rig is definitely not the issue here.) - At the end, when I was done, I went to "Quit" and it said "Progress is saved when you quit the game, you really want to quit?" and I went, "Yeah, duh". Then it put me back to the main menu. That's not the point of quit - the point of quit is "Hey, close this game". Thing is, is the save ONLY triggered upon usage of "Quit"? If I alt+F4'd would I have just lost all my progress? - Lack of tooltips is annoying. I have no idea what the stats actually do - you would think STR would increase HP or damage, but there was no difference to either. - Training dummies are nice but a poor substitute to actual data to provide to the player (see previous comment) I'm overall not impressed with this game. The name itself was pretty weird but I liked the premise. Unfortunately it's just not for me. Am I nitpicking? Maybe. But I can't help but think, if these glaring issues were not identified and resolved, then what might I be missing that would evolve with more gameplay? I'd give this an average 5/10 any day of the week as it's nothing special. This is fully released, not early access, and I'd expect a polished product. This dragon surely is quite dead. Let it lie.

This game is great. If you like Castlevania and roguelikes you'll have a good time!

Dragon Is Dead caught me by surprise. It has that gritty, gothic vibe that instantly reminded me of Castlevania, Blasphemous, and Dead Cells, but with a personality of its own. The combat feels solid, and there’s already a surprising amount of variety when it comes to weapons and skills—which keeps things fresh and encourages different playstyles. Sure, it’s still very much a work in progress. You can feel that some pieces of the puzzle are still falling into place. But honestly? That’s part of the charm. You can see the care and effort going into it, and I’d much rather see a game take its time and get it right than rush out something half-baked. Huge respect to the devs for their dedication. The pace may be slow, but the direction is right—and I’m excited to see where it goes.

Weird 60fps lock or something. Hurts my eyes and gives me a headache to move around. Game's mid. Keep the Jesters coming, boys. Sorry your eyes are used to smear filters and low fps slop. Game needs 2025 settings for it's 1.0 release.

Pretty solid metroidvania rougelike with bit of diablo sprinkled in.

The lovechild of Dark Souls, Diablo 2 and Castlevania

No controller rebinds. Yep that's the only reason.

This game seems like it could have potential, but I would not recommend it in it's current state or price point. This feels like it should be priced at $15 max, and even then only bought on sale. A clear example is you have no ability to remap buttons for a controller, which is not a feature that should be missing from a 1.0 release at this price point. I could see trying it if you really love the genre and have played all other games into the ground, but even then it might be better to wait and hope they finish the game and make it more worthy of a full release.

Love this, makes the wait for silksong much less painful

Needs a tool tip. I had to google what overwhelming damage was. What is considered magical damage? Why does my sword make core skills cost 0 energy? Seems like there are still some bugs and features needed.

Great metroidvania style game.

It's like a mix of Diablo and Castlevania

I LOVE IT. Playing on Steamdeck

very good, don't listen to the bad review

Took a while for it to click

awesome so far cant wait to play more

good game