Love ’em or hate ’em, Soulslike are super popular with a whole host of gamers. But, in a slew of Soulslikes, it can be hard to get yourself noticed, particularly when you’re living in the Shadow of the Erdtree (a thank you!).
Enter Deathbound, the world’s first ‘party-based’ Soulslike game from Brazilian developer Trialforge Studio. They’re bringing something new to the table when it comes to Soulslikes with Deathbound’s innovate party system, and layered combat mechanics. Does it translate into a compelling gaming experience?
Hell yeah!
Have You Heard The News That You’re Dead?
The story is a tale of life, death, consequences of action and meaning in life. The inhabitants of the world, Ziêminal, used to be immortal, a gift from the Goddess of Death, as a consequence of deception by her sister, the Goddess of Life. In retaliation, the Goddess of Death took away this immortality, causing civilisation to collapse.
Now, centuries later, the Essencemancers are attempting to carry out a ritual that would restore this immortality, for a select few. The process of which has created an array of abominations that you will have to defeat throughout your time with Deathbound, as you try to stop the antagonists from succeeding. I found myself quite surprised at the reflective nature of the story, particularly as you enter into the final hours of the game and the characters are having to come to terms with the reality of the situation they find themselves in.
The dynamics between the characters are really interesting. Having them all ‘on hand’ in terms of narrative is a great way to tell the story. Each character has their own allegiances to the wider-lore of the game. Some are devout Church of Death followers, the leading religion. The others are ascribed to the scientifically leaning Cult of Life, a conglomerate of any all folk who oppose the Church of Death’s overbearing nature. As the story progresses, you’ll learn more from the different characters, particularly in the parts they played in the lead up to the current state of affairs in the game. Backstory is provided by a series of ‘memories’ unlocked by finding collectibles in the game’s seven areas and having the correct character in your party to unlock them.
It’s My Party And I’ll Die When I Want To
The unique selling point of Deathbound’s souls-y experience is its party-based mechanic. Instead of having ‘builds’, like you might in a Souls game, you have a range of characters to select from, each with their own unique abilities and weapons. You can have four ‘equipped’ at one time and you can easily switch between them using the D-Pad (or 1-4 keys on your keyboard).
At the beginning of the game, you start as Therone, a pious soldier for the Church of Death. Early into the game, you have a very Gandalf moment with an enemy, where you end up dead, but not. From then onwards, as you explore the areas around the city of Akryatya you’ll encounter similarly dead folk, whose ‘essence’ you can absorb. By doing so, you’ll be granted access to them as a playable character, as well as rekindling their soul, and they have a lot to say about it as they try to figure out what’s happened and how they might undo whatever magic has entangled these souls together.
Before long, you’ll have a rogue type, equipped with a dagger and a crossbow, an ‘Essencemancer’ who can throw ranged poison like attacks at enemies, a spear-wielding warrior and more. There are seven playable characters in total, including the much promoted capoeira melee fighter, a magic wielding mage, and, one of my favourite characters and incredibly unhinged hammer wielding armour-clad warrior.
Fight To The Death
When you first unlock the additional members of your party, and start to get to grips with the combat it does feel a bit alien. The combat is quite layered in how it works, and although at first you’ll likely be thinking ‘I’m not sure about some of this’ if you embrace it, you’ll have a blast with it. I know I did.
In combat, successful hits build your ‘sync’ meter. Full bars allow you to use both ‘Morph Strikes’ and ‘Morph Dodges’, this is where, following an attack, you can switch to another member of your party mid-combat. There are a number of benefits to this.
First of all, it allows you to continue you to attack or dodge. If your previous character’s stamina has run out, switching to another party member means you can continue to engage in combat without waiting for your stamina to return. Secondly, you can perform a Morph Strike, which brings in another member of your party with an attack that makes you briefly invulnerable, whilst dealing additional damage. This is preferred to just switching to another character, which has a delay in doing so.
At Death’s Door
This is additionally vital as your health is an important, and different, factor in Deathbound. Your health and stamina are linked, your health level is the same as your stamina, the lower your health, the less stamina you have. You can regain health by using ‘Essence Enhancers’ but the inactive party members lose health at the same time. You can also regain health for your inactive party members by successfully attacking. The balancing of health and stamina in combat ensures that you’re regularly switching party members and playing dynamically. You can’t, and won’t succeed by mainlining one character.
And it works incredibly well. I noticed, by the last boss, after a couple attempts of course, I didn’t even need to use my ‘Essence enhancers’. The flow of combat, and switching it up meant I was able to keep my health up (for the most part), and it was super fun too. It’s certainly not easy in terms of combat, some of those enemies hit hard, and you’ll need to dodge and parry accordingly, but it is super satisfying once you’ve locked the combat mechanics down.
That being said, I did occasionally end up on the wrong end of a weapon due to a panic or hitting the wrong direction on the D-Pad and summoning a character in with next to no health and paying the cost for it.
The allegiances of the characters also plays into combat. If your party members agree with the Church of Death for example, there’ll be buffs applied via ‘synergy’. For example, +20% health. However if there is a conflict between characters, you’ll get a different buff, but usually with a debuff too.
Getting Away With Murder
There’s a good mix of enemy types. The designs are really eerie, a result of the experimentation of the Essencemancers; a lot of these creatures have biological adaptations. For example, rather than wielding a crossbow, an enemy is the crossbow! You’ll see them loading a ‘bolt’ down their gullet before firing it at you.
Some of the bigger and wilder enemies you’ll encounter certainly carry an air of ‘oh god’ when you see them too. A number of times I found myself saying “what the hell is that” out loud. Many have status affecting conditions too, you can be poisoned, burned, frozen or given bleed damage.
I think the bosses are a mixed bag. You’ll get the big beasties to fight, alongside more elite humanoid enemies. Overall I didn’t struggle much with any of them, though there were two instances where I felt particularly underleveled after getting spanked a couple of times and therefore needed to go do a bit of levelling up before returning. There is a decent variety in the types of bosses. I particularly enjoyed the final boss fight, as well as your ‘nemesis’ who presents himself throughout the game in several guises which was good fun, and harrowing on occasion.
Instruments Of Death
Of course, you’ll have a whole host of tools to take on your increasingly abundant enemies. Though there are no new weapons to find for your characters, there’s an array of consumables and throwables to assist in battle. Applying buffs to yourself, and status ailments to your foes is a particularly welcome, and recommended ways of facing your enemies. As I noted in the Deathbound preview, definitely embrace and use these items, particularly in appropriate boss fights! Little tip, ‘bleeding’ is your friend!
You can upgrade your party members when you collect the aforementioned memories in the game. These unlock ‘Memory points’ which allow your buff your characters in certain ways (add corruption or bleeding to weapon, increase damage for a certain amount of time after performing a perfect block etc.).
You’ll also receive buffs and bonuses via rings and artefacts that you can collect throughout the world. These can be upgraded from collectibles materials you find in the levels, either through exploring or dropped by enemies.
Levelling up works a bit differently to classic Souls titles. Instead of investing in levels of ‘strength’, ‘dexterity’ or health etc., you have upgrades that are set and apply to all your characters. Some are more applicable to all than others, for example ‘+8 to reload speed’ can only really apply to the crossbow wielder. (and to be fair, it is in her upgrade section). You still have to harvest ‘essence’ (souls) to pay for any upgrades / levelling.
Joys Of Life
Deathbound is unlikely to win any awards for graphics, but they are great at creating the varied and atmospheric world. From when your start in the ‘Essence Labs’, through the underground and street areas; there’s a different look and feel to each place. The levels aren’t open-world, they are quite linear, but with space to explore. There’s great detail in the characters design, accessories and outfits really portraying a varied cast. Although the the character models themselves aren’t anything to write home about.
I find myself less bothered by the graphics of the game if the gameplay is good and the look of it works in the context of the game. And they absolutely do. The pulsating green eggs, the stadium on fire, the devastation across the lower, and upper streets, all paint a picture of civilisation gone to hell.
Smart level design is abound too. Many routes lead you back to the phylacteries (save points). It gave me a good sense of where I was in the world.
Sound design is satisfying too, ambient noises fill the levels, alongside the clanging of steel as you tear through your enemies (or they you). I’m a little in the middle with the voice acting. Some of the characters are very well realised, shout out to Agharos of Meriva who is voiced superbly well as a deluded killing machine. Certainly not someone you’d want to go to the pub with, but great for crushing skulls. Others didn’t feel as strongly performed (again no real problem but enough to notice the accents being a bit jarring).
Life Is A Rollercoaster
I encountered a few issues along the way in my time with Deathbound. First off, as I noted in my preview, my first three or four hours with the game were lost when my save was deleted, inexplicably. Thankfully, this did not occur again, though I was a bit anxious every time I loaded up the game that it would have gone again.
Another thing that happened on several occasions was that the game crashed and booted me to my desktop. I also experienced slow down and screen tearing at certain points in the game. Of course, I can’t say for certain that this isn’t a result of my PC build (I’m not a PC gamer by default so no idea in that respect). Outside of that though the game ran really smoothly.
I also encountered a couple of instances where my controller input stopped responding. I was playing with a wired Xbox Elite 2 controller and sometimes the game would not respond to button inputs (one time getting me killed). Unplugging and reconnecting didn’t always resolve it, and needed a game reset.
There were some on going instances where enemies also just froze in place. I noticed it a few times when once of the characters ability to revive once after death came into play. This was the more prevalent against a boss where the boss just stayed in place the whole time and let me just trash his three-quarter full health bar without batting an eye-lid. I mean, I’ll take the win, but it was a hollow victory in that instance. Thankfully, no other boss encounters had that issue.
Live, Die, Repeat
I managed to complete the game’s story in about 20 hours. I get the impression there might be at least one alternative ending, as the game does occasionally present you with decisions to make. There is a new game+ mode to get stuck into as well as collectibles to mop up (you need to have the right character in your party for them to be active if it’s related to them). For the price point ($29.99 USD) there’s certainly bang for your buck!
That being said, I wish there was a bit more to go at in the main story, I was very much enjoying it. Though I expect there’ll be new things to find in New Game Plus, as well as the upcoming DLC, Accepted by Death (release date to be announced).
Eulogy
Deathbound promised to bring something new to the Soulslike conversation with its ‘party-based’ mechanics. Does it succeed? Absolutely!
The combat in Deathbound is a layered experience that is a bit unusual to get to grips with, but soon finds its footing. Wrap that in an intriguing world, where Faith and Science are at ideological, and physical odds, and you’ve got a game that is well worth playing.
Challenging enemies, fun and thoughtful characters, and an obvious love for the genre has helped bring Deathbound to life. The occasional glitch or bug can’t take away from that either.
I for one, am going to play this to death!
Deathbound was reviewed on PC. I played using an Xbox controller. Deathbound will release on 8 August for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles. It is expected to be Steam Deck verified on launch.
Head over to my YouTube or Twitter account to see more vids / screenshots from Deathbound (when I get around to uploading them).
Many thanks to Trialforge Games and Tate Multimedia for the review code.
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