I can tell a good metroidvania from a bad one when I play one. And this here is not the former; a damn shame, really. The artstyle, the soundtrack, the setting, the climate, very interesting healing system... And the gameplay issues. Death's Gambit's problems with combat and general character movement cast a dark shadow on everything that's otherwise good about this game. The two critical gameplay aspects of your typical metroidvania experience are simply bad here. - CONTROLLER PLAYERS BEWARE - One instantaneous movement speed, and you move only once you tilt your left stick about 75% in. Generally you want to play metroidvanias with a controller, and this particular issue renders controllers gravely uncomfortable. The game directly converts controller input into WASD keys. Easily the worst controller implementation I've experienced in years. - No hit feedback. Apparently losing 1/3 of your HP from an attack is no reason to get staggered. It's honestly difficult to tell that you or the enemy may have been hit. Most of the time damage numbers are all hit feedback you get. - It feels like your character has 2 or 3 stamina points, it gets drained sooooo quickly, especially when you dodge. All weapons use about the same amounts of stamina and all feel equally slow. This, however, is not the case for enemies, who can just spam their attacks to no end. - In some cases there is no collision between you and your enemies when you attack. I've absolutely never seen this in a metroidvania. - Long dead animation frame windows. You frustratingly need to wait for attack animations to fully end to dodge or block. - Broken (and frankly, lakcluster-feeling) sound design. Certain attack sounds don't match what's happening on the screen, or vice versa depending on how you look at it. - Unfair traps that look exactly like fore-/background - something suddenly falls to oneshot you because you so much as walk under it, with no environmental indication that something's off here.
