Death's Door: Switch Swings

After having completed Link's Awakening on the Nintendo Switch for the fourth time (and many times before), I felt like I'm in need for a new short and sweet Zelda game, where I can just pick up the game, complete it in one weekend, and feel great about it. Just something fun and simple, something to replay without any attachments.

And my choice in the future may fall on a game that doesn't have "Legend of Zelda" in its title: Death's Door. It's a great, little Zelda-esque game, where you can read all about it in my review from one year ago. All of this still holds, where I don't want to repeat much of it, but there are some qualities that make it good for replaying.

One is clearly the combat, where the game still managed to hit me hard, even though I've already beaten it twice, one time being the umbrella-only challenge. But I saw that big "DEATH" screen a couple of times, still. Especially the giant Black Knights still give me quite some trouble, I hate them so much. And while I managed to beat most bosses on first try this time, the final boss was still quite a challenge, where I had to relearn the fight. But it's very satisfying, because this game's combat is tough, yet fun. And things never get too crazy, like in Hollow Knight for example.

The game doesn't focus as much on puzzles and the confusing ones aren't an issue on your second or third playthrough, of course. There was a part in the Flooded Fortress that still had me go back and forth quite a bit, in order to find a sewer entrance, but that's because I was blind and didn't spot a lever. Puzzles can a be a lot of fun on your first time playing a game, but they tend to become a chore on repeat playthroughs. Either they are interesting and offer multiple solutions (like some Shrines in Breath of the Wild) or they shouldn't waste much of your time, where Death's Door definitely goes with the second route

The other quality is the backtracking. If you love this feeling of having obtained a new item and then going through the mental map of "here, there, and elsewhere I can now grab this and that", then Death's Door will have you covered. This is what I love about various Zelda games, like Link's Awakening, as well, but in Death's Door things are more condensed, because there are only three major items to find. Each of them also gradually gives you more things to do, where you can just focus on backtracking after finding the last one, before you head into the tougher boss battles. This round of scooping through the environments again and finding all sorts of goodies to become stronger is certainly very satisfying. But it can also be worth it to search for some goodies with the Flame and Bomb Spells in advance.

Every last bit helps, where the game doesn't give you all that much to get stronger. But this also leads to one of two complaints I really have with this game, which are spoiling my enjoyment a bit: the upgrades for your combat abilities just cost way too much soul energy. It costs 17,200 soul in total to maximize everything, where I was 4000 short at the end. And the grinding to fill everything is just not fun, nor is it worth it. At the same, in the early game it just takes too long to get these upgrades. It would be much better if they started at 200 and went up to 1000 souls in each category. With that amount you could also fill up everything by collecting all the orbs and defeating all the enemies in your way, without the need for grinding.

The other complaint is the slow walking speed, which can only be increased a bit with said combat upgrades. But you might have other priorities here, since they are so expensive. And rolling all the time is a bit annoying, where you should just go faster afterwards by holding the button (like in the predecessor, Titan Souls).

But this is really it as far as my complaints go. If it didn't have these two issues, then I would consider Death's Door to be a near-perfect game. And we are not talking about big issues here...

Now, I didn't just replay the game in the same way, instead I decided to go with the Nintendo Switch version this time, where I have one or two copies lying around. In the future I will certainly stick to the PC version, though.

The obvious issue is the performance. The game only runs in 30FPS on Nintendo Switch, which is fine for the most part, but can make a difference in the tight combat sequences against multiple enemies. The level of detail also had to be reduced quite significantly, which is most notable inside the Ceramic Manor, where most of the reflections on the floor are missing. They are only there for a puzzle that needed them. It's not terrible by any means and the game still looks lovely, but you will have a smoother and prettier experience on other gaming systems.

The second issue are the controls, where you can't change them and the default ones are a bit weird. Well, for the most part they are actually fine, because you attack with Y and dodge with B, quite similar to Hyrule Warriors for example. But for some reason the interaction button is X (to talk, use stairs, open doors, and so on), while your secondary weapon is used with the A-button. Why? Why would you not switch the two? Every Zelda game ever uses A for interactions.

Even if you were to go through the trouble of changing the button mapping via the Nintendo Switch system setting, then you would have to confirm things inside the menus with X instead of A, which is also confusing. And that's why games need the option to remap the controls. The PC version of Death's Door even has this, where the developers were probably just too lazy to port this... Makes you wonder how hard this actually is to implement on Nintendo Switch.

So, I don't really recommend the Nintendo Switch version, unless it's the only system that you have or you really want to play it on the go with something that's not a bulky Steam Deck. But this is of course true for almost all games that aren't Nintendo exclusive.

Next from the holy trinity of Indie Action Adventures, I want to check out Tunic, once it's on sale. It looks similar and I mostly hear good things about it, but I'm a bit stingy with digital purchases. If I like the game, I will be happy to throw more money at it, though, like I did with Death's Door, but I need to get there.