Death’s Door is great, but…

Last Friday, I reviewed Death’s Door and while I loved it to bits, I had a few issues with it in hindsight that I couldn’t get into because of the review format. You see, when it comes to reviews I try to be as spoiler-free as possible. Personally, I read reviews to decide on whether or not I’ll buy or play a game. If it had spoilers in it, I’d be bummed out about that. With that mindset in mind, I read my own reviews before I publish them to ensure that there are no spoilers.

Meanwhile, because I want to get posts out on a daily basis, I also don’t 100% games for reviews. I try to play at least three to six hours of it. In Death’s Door’s case, I played about 10 hours of it and was nearing the end of the game, so I figured that’d be more than enough to cover it. Long story short, this post is about a few issues I had with the final boss and the post-game stuff. I mean, I love the game but… I have these issues.

I still 100% recommend this game, highly at that! I really love what they did here. The bosses’ animations are well-done and the music and humour are great. The art style is amazing. Can really recommend it!

From here on onwards there will be spoilers, though, so I’d recommend playing it yourself before reading ahead if I was you. If you already are playing it, don’t read ahead as I’m spoiling the final boss and as I’m discussing some stuff that bothered me. Once you get to that point in the story, feel free to come back and discuss your opinions with me.

Anyways, spoilers!

Death’s Door is great… but I hate the final boss. You see, the first two bosses were very much Zelda-like, I guess? The Witch of Urns, for instance, was animated very well and to deal some good damage to her, you needed to use your previously acquired fire spell, which was great and very much like Zelda bosses. I loved that personally.

The Frog King didn’t quite have that all that much. You had to make use of some of the previous area’s mechanics to beat him, which was fairly enjoyable and made you use your head. Both of these bosses were great, in the dialogue, the animation, and the mechanics department. Well done! The Yeti called Betty though was just annoying because it had none of that magic really. You didn’t use your newly acquired grappling hook for the fight and you also didn’t use any of the mechanics introduced in the previous fight.

On top of that, I didn’t feel like I had a reason to kill Betty apart from needing Betty’s soul for Death’s Door. It was annoying really and in hindsight, I felt bad for killing her. Meanwhile, the Witch of Urns had that sentiment to her: She’s evil because she’s turning people into Potheads and stuff. The Frog King was a tyrant and hence evil and hence needed to be killed. Betty the Yeti was actually quite good… so, that’s just sad.

Onto the Grey Crow who is just a bit annoying but not the hardest boss in the world. I felt like I was missing the connection there, too, and I, again, felt sad for killing him.

Then, we had to face off against the Lord of Doors who doesn’t even have a name. His fight is just very tedious and boring and annoying because you need to chase him, fight him, chase him, fight him, chase him, and then you need to fight him again before he powers up. Once he powers up, you respawn right there to fight him over and over again.

Before that, you’d have to do the whole chase sequence over and over again, which is more than annoying. It’s frustrating.

All the other boss fights were a bit more skill-expressive than that and made me feel good about using the game’s mechanics and my personal ideas and experiences from others games I’ve played… All of that in an attempt to vanquish these creatures and reap their souls. The Lord of Doors made me feel annoyed because it took so long to beat him. Eventually, he powers up and you get to fight him.

He uses the Castle’s laser attack, throws pots like the Witch, rolls around like the Yeti, summons bull-doors like previously, and he does a stomp-attack like the Frog King as well as a Silent Watcher stomp attack that you may know from the different optional trial bosses.

There are just way too many patterns in this fight and it didn’t feel completely whole. It felt like a mishmash of different fights in the game and while it was incredibly hard, it sometimes just felt endlessly frustrating.

Previously, fights felt hard but rewarding. Even after I beat the boss today, I didn’t actually feel like I was rewarded with anything. Sure, I got the “Crow Gamer” achievement on Steam that 23.3% of the players have… but I don’t feel like I’m actually satisfied with that end. It was just a very long mess of a fight. And then it was over. Kinda anti-climactic.

So, then, when you do that, you just return to the world and after burying him, you unlock the post-game and you can try and find the different secrets of the game as well as complete completely new trials by revisiting different areas at night time.

The completionist achievement is called “Lord of Chores” btw, which just feels like the devs mocking us.

One of the achievements consists of you beating the game only ever using the umbrella as your melee weapon, which is a weaker version of the sword. Another one of the achievements requires you to find all the seeds and plant all of them… Everywhere. I panted 45/100 during my playthrough and while I have about 7 to spare, I don’t really feel like it’s gonna be fun to go through the areas again and to look for the other 48 or so seeds and pots. Similarly, there are some fun achievements as well in the game but the Umbrella achievement might become a huge pain in the arse.

So, let’s sum this all up: Death’s Door is great up until the final boss. The final boss feels like a weird mix of everything that came before it, which is not good, in my opinion. Meanwhile, the post-game feels grindy and pointless in a way, apart from the fun achievements like Banging Tune and Plot Head. I’m not sure if I want to 100% this game. I’m not even sure if I want to go and search for the True Ending because… it feels grindy. I may post about it again if I really do end up doing it but I just felt like I had to state my opinion on these last few parts after finally beating the game.

But still, Death’s Door was a lot of fun and if you haven’t yet, make sure to check it out, wishlist it or even buy it on Steam. Hope you enjoyed this post! I know it turned out a tad longer but I couldn’t rest easy without having mentioned this. Death’s Door is still great and I’m still recommending it. The end-game or post-game rather is just a bit annoying, I would say, which is something that not a lot of games manage to do well, so… whatever. :)

Cheers!

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!