If you’re aDiablofan, you know there’s nothing like pressing a button and watching as 64 swirling blades of death launch out of your body and mow down a hundred demon imps, which then explode into pools of bone-melting acid. I take that back, there is one thing like that, and it’s called Dragon Is Dead.
Dragon Is Dead is all of the 2D roguelike action ofDead Cellswith the deep RPG and gear systems of Diablo, bound together in (un)holy matrimony. That’s not a combo you’d probably expect, given ARPGs are all about the long-term fantasy of over-the-top power progression (see: spinning death blades), and rougelikes are… well, not. But with a little finesse and a lot of loot, TeamSuneat has created something I never knew I wanted that I just can’t get enough of.
Fight, Defeat, Die, Repeat
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. You’re the last survivor of an ancient sect of deathless warriors, sent by the powers that be to slay a corrupted dragon and end its reign of demonic terror. To get there you’ll have to fight your way through a series of procedurally generated biomes, killing monsters and gathering weapons and abilities to create something resembling a build as quickly as possible. A series of mini-bosses stand between you and the dragon, and when you inevitably die, you’ll have to start all over from the beginning with nothing other than a little bit of knowledge, a little bit more experience, and if you’re lucky, a little bit of an upgrade to help you get a head start on the next run.
Here’s where Dragon is Dead breaks the mold: when you die and restart from the beginning you’ll lose all of your XP, your abilities, your gold, and your build-making artifacts, but youwon’tlose any of your gear. All of the legendary weapons, rare gauntlets, magic helmets, and common leather boots junking up your inventory are yours to keep, sell, or imbue with powerful effects even after you die. As a result, Dragon is Dead is able to deliver the ARPG power fantasy in a roguelike package, and boy is it satisfying.
The worst part of a roguelike is the dying, of course, but it’s a much easier pill to swallow when you know how much stronger you are than you were on the previous run. Just as you’re able to farm low-level zones on autopilot in Diablo, you will quickly trivialize the early zones and bosses after just a few runs.
One of my favorite legendaries is a set of boots that call down a lightning bolt every time you dodge. The first time I found these boots was on my fourth or fifth run where I managed to get to the eighth stage, and when I started my next run, the lightning alone did enough damage to one-shot most enemies. It took me an hour to get to the eighth stage the first time, but on the way back, I was able to spam dodge and clear every stage in moments with a near-constant barrage of lightning bolts. I didn’t even have to lift my sword.
That’s a huge amount of power scaling for this kind of game, and it’s absolutely intoxicating. Running through the same biomes and taking down the same bosses over and over doesn’t feel like such a chore when you’re effectively Odin, Aesir God of War and Death. I made a lot of builds with a lot of different gear, and I never had much trouble finding ones that made me feel incredibly powerful. Right before I died at the end of each run, I’d think to myself, “This build is broken, nothing can kill me!” And then something would kill me. Humbling, but also a great motivation to start up another run.
Because you get so strong so quickly, you progress through the levels quickly, too. For the first few runs, I’d die to every new boss I encountered. I’d take down one, then the next one would stop me, and I was only progressing one zone at a time. But on my fourth run I took down the fourth boss, then kept pushing all the way to the eighth. I hit more walls along the way, but every time I broke down a wall, Ipulverizedit, making huge leaps in progress and growing exponentially stronger with almost every run.
Deep ARPG Build Crafting
While your gear establishes your power level, the choices you make during each run will determine how much of that power you’ll actually be able to utilize. The main build-making system that resets each run is centered around artifacts that provide stat increases, passive abilities, and powerful set bonuses.
There are a dozen set bonuses spread across lots and lots of artifacts, but you’re only able to equip nine at a time, so you really have to strategize which set bonuses work best with your gear and your playstyle, and focus on acquiring those artifacts. As action-focused as the combat is, the way you put your artifact sets together is the real skill test in Dragon is Dead, and you’ll have to develop a strong sense of how your entire build works together to eventually get to that final perfect run.
That’s a lot easier said than done. Between a dozen gear slots filled with customizable armor and weapons, nine artifacts, four essence (another ability-modifying item), and as many stat-increasing runes as you may find, your late-game build is going to end up being extraordinarily complex. There were times when certain affixes I had on my gear wouldn’t proc the way they should, and I couldn’t figure out if it was a bug in the game, or if another effect somewhere else in my build was negating them. Dragon is Dead is very hack-n-slashy moment to moment, but it also has a surprising amount of gear evaluating and menu navigating between battles that tends to really slow down the pace of the game - at least until you become Odin, One-Eyed All-Father.
Getting nitty gritty with your stats is all part of the ARPG experience, and it’s what allows you eventually to click two buttons and watch an entire screen filled with baddies get instantly deleted. Dragon is Dead nails the spectacle you want from a Diablo-like with plenty of flash abilities and powerful skills.
The starting class, Spellsword, has a skill tree divided into three basic elements: fire, ice, and lightning. you may combine these elements however you like (and you probably should), or if you prefer, you can go full pyro and shoot fireballs out of your hands while calling down meteors from the heavens to demolish your foes and burn away the evidence of your deeds. One of my favorite builds was focused on filling the battlefield with lightning storms that would stun enemies so I could quickly finish them off with an electric dash, just likeOdinStorm from X-Men.
I love how powerful Dragon is Dead lets you become, but after a few hours, it will start to become more obvious why other roguelikes aren’t like this. Later boss fights become pure damage checks, with little opportunity to outplay or outmaneuver because you’re both filling the entire screen with so much BS that all you can do is hope your numbers are bigger than theirs. As fun as it is to go back through the early stages once you’ve become Homelander, seeing the entire world as ants for you to step on eventually loses its novelty and just makes you feel a little empty inside, kind of like Homelander.
There are a lot of levels and a lot of bosses, and not a lot of opportunities to skill past them once you’ve proven you’re strong enough to kill them blindfolded. Dragon is Dead is one of those games that gets worse the deeper you get into it, but luckily, there are multiple characters with their own gear and skill trees, so you get that initial power fantasy over and over.
It’s a gorgeous pixel-art game that liberally borrows from Diablo in all the right ways, and as a big fan of both ARPGs and roguelikes, Dragon is Dead was a refreshing mash-up of both that ends up being greater than the sum of its parts. It doesn’t quite hold up into the end game, but by that point I’d had so much fun cosplaying as a certain Norse deity that I found it hard to complain.
