 Hello and welcome to 6 Reasons I Loved Dead Cells. This excellent new roguelite released just a few weeks ago and it is fantastic. IGN controversy excluded. I wanted to dig into some of the elements that make this new title so memorable and so enticingly fun. 1. A world that's fun to explore. I'm always surprised and pleased to know END, when a game with procedurally generated content makes exploration not just worldwide but incredibly fun. I've played through the first couple of levels of Dead Cells about 30 times now in the course of 10 hours. And no level of the castle I've explored has become boring to me. I've learned what to expect for the most part like the timing and location of the different levels' secret gates that only open as long as you get to them below a certain time threshold. For the second level that would be 2 minutes for the third, it was either 5 or 8 and so on which brings me to the second item on this list. The trade of between exploration and efficiency. What do you go for? To explore every single nuke and cranny or do you go after the shortest route? Taking the first route may earn you a greater amount of health, better weapons, arguably more food. Did I say food? I meant gold. Arguably more gold is what I meant. Whichever way you go you will probably be satisfied and as you grow more proficient in playing the game and expecting how every type of enemy will act and attack before they do, you'll be able to take the best of both worlds almost as well as I do. Number 3. The soundtrack never gets old. There is something in Prisoner's Awakening, the track playing in the background right now which helps me to no end. And the same is true of nearly every other piece of music written for the game. Here, listen to this. It's good, it's excellent. It keeps you going and heightens your experience and it makes me look forward to hearing more from the composer, Jørn Lohlen. Number 4. Combat and controls. The combat of death cells ties everything together with the tightest controls imaginable, with a plethora of enemies all very much intent on your visceral and horrifying death. And you will die at this start, unless you have plenty of experience with this style of gaming. I didn't and I had a dozen runs before I could comfortably get past the first three levels without constantly getting played alive. These runs were instrumental in drilling each and every enemy's attack animations in those early levels, in letting me expect and respond to a wide array of actions before they were even begun. Not always of course, I still am a sloppy sap who makes mistakes and occasionally bungles at the controls, but when I am in the zone and immersed completely, I will pull off beautiful, intricate moves and attacks which make me feel like a professional streamer or something along those lines. It's ridiculously exciting and of course the amount of weapons, shields, bows, grenades, deployable skills and all that jazz makes for an incredible amount of customization in terms of complimenting your preferred style of play. I personally rarely, if ever, use shields, the only time I could recall, other than one of my first runs to try it out, was when I got an incredibly powerful shield drop from the concierge. I had to change and adapt my strategy and my gameplay on the fly, because that kind of item you just don't pass, but I didn't have to pick that shield up, not if I didn't want to. I mean, I felt that I did, but you know, you always have the freedom not to. It was just that its stats were so good compared to everything else I had, that not to pick it up would have been a blast for me. Regardless of the quality of your run and the luck you have in item drops, plenty will depend on your personal skills I said before, and that you'll learn, once again, as you play more and more. Number 5. The Animation. Flawless, beautiful and fluid as all hell. This is probably my favourite game with pixelated graphics, and that is saying something. I play loads of these, let me tell you, and very few are as responsive, as fluid as this one. Yes, I've returned to that word again, because it's the best description of what's going on here. You've seen plenty of it already during this video, it's just so, so good and responsive. There's nothing more to say about it really. And last but not least, number 6. The Progression. Progression relies on your replays. You earn the sales that give this game its name, and invest them in all sorts of weapon blueprints, in having random weapons at the start of the game, at getting more charges for your potion, and mutating in new and exciting ways, which give you either very explicit bonuses, or some more implicit ones. A few runes drop from elits or bosses, especially early on, and give you permanent unlocks which allow for greater exploration and the unlocking of more of each level's secrets. The bad news is, if you die with loads of cells in your person, those are well and truly lost. So if you have over, let's say, 50 cells in your body, you better start playing a lot more cautiously, or you will be tearing out tufts of your hair to no end. I know that's how I got practically hairless. Oh the humanity. So what is the conclusion to all this? Dead Cells is an enormous amount of fun. Fun fun fun. The kind of fun you can easily get addicted to, especially if you love the 2D roguelaj genre, and the girls know I'm surrounded by people who do. Now, I only have to get them to play Dead Cells as well, and spread the misery, I mean fun. It costs 25€, or your original equivalent. I've played a mere 10 hours, and I'm already much improved. Dead Cells is also an excellent first foray for anyone who, like myself, doesn't have any experience with the genre of Metroidvania roguelajs, and is in my opinion one of the best releases of August 2018. Here is my heartiest recommendation in seal of approval. As for you, thank you for watching, if you enjoyed this video please like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, tell your mum, tell your dad, and as always, I hope to see you next time. Bye!