DurDanto

DurDanto - Steam (Early Access) I played this game in EA, so I will update this review as needed when the full game is released. All in all, what I got to play showed promise. I do have to admit that it was a bit frustrating and challenging getting to the first boss with limited health and abilities. I found that cheesing the minions with arrows, as opposed to full-out melee combat, was the most viable strategy because it allowed me to conserve health and make progress. Once I took out the 1st boss though, the game got a lot more fun! The abilities/mechanics available in EA offer a nice twist. The enemies and level designs are also fairly unique. However, I felt that there was a pretty large difficulty gap between the (MV-style) overworld and the (Rogue-style) dungeons. Even with the suped-up difficulty of the dungeons, I made it through almost 4 of them before getting locked out of progress due to a glitch that the dev's aware of and working on. I am excited to finish the game once the fix/update drops! I'm sure there will be plenty of other exciting new abilities to discover, as this game has potential for sure!

I know I haven't played this much yet, and I'll try more later, but this game just isn't good. I can already tell. The combat is just straight up bad, clunky simple and boring. The level design is simple and boring, honestly boring is the best way to describe everything. Even toggling the attack styles/elements for other abilities feels slow and boring. Enemy attacks are hard to dodge because it's hard to tell they are about to attack, and hitting them makes the attacks delay, sometimes. It's unpredictable really from what I can tell. Even the video shows the total world map. The zones are effectively linear. I wouldn't say they are a straight line, there are some jumps in there... but it's kind of a straight line. No sense of exploration. I could go on. I'm sure people would say "it's only early access" These level of problems don't seem like something early access time would fix. Maybe their second game could be better when they learn lessons from this attempt. Sorry, but I really don't think releasing this in early access was a good idea.

The game indeed shows that this is still in the Early Access stage. There are many side of gameplay mechanism needs to be polished, especially the combat mechanics. As far overall game is concerned, this is a promising one, mainly because the game tends to balance itself between metroidvania and roguelike. However it neither has full metroidvania experience nor roguelike experience, if I understand after playing this game for couple of dungeons. That being said, the game is difficult in normal setting and I think its meant to designed in that way. So newer players should be prepared to die a lot. There are checkpoints all around, so players do not necessarily start from the beginning. Level design is nice and the lore is pretty interesting. The pixelated graphics and music are nicely done. I hope with further improvements in gameplay, the game will stand out very well.

Lot of fun. Has a cool old school feel to it. Should definitely give the early access a shot and watch this game grow.

Really enjoying the game. The combat was entertaining enough to keep me focused on this game. Even though this has roguelike dungeons, the metroidvania world had a good amount of exploration and there were secret items & relics to collect from different places. Boss fights & soundtrack of this game are phenomenal. The dev did put a lot of thought on this game & after playing it, I'm certain that the final version will be a good one. If you don't mind supporting, then purchase the EA. Atleast it's worth the price imo.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game. Durdanto is great as a metroidvania medium & roguelike medium both. The roguelike elements are only limited to dungeon areas so it's a relief the metroidvania world stays the same. I'm playing on "easy difficulty" just to get checkpoints inside the dungeons which is a very nice feature for non-roguelike gamers like me. Highly recommend for anyone looking to begin with something robust when given the time.

To get it out of the way, yes, this game is incredible and well worth the $20 asking price as an EA entry. The story is compelling, atleast it makes you keep thinking "what the hell happened here?". I found the combat very enticing. The stellar soundtrack, beatiful biomes, glowing vfx styles altogether makes this game a competitive metroidvania title. I'm really looking forward for the next contents. 7.5/10 from me!

This is a fun metroidvania with a beautiful art style and neat soundtrack. Overall difficulty depends on how early you can master the dodge mechanics in this game. Once you figure it out, you'll find the rest of the game relatively easy to finish. The abilities, biomes, lores are quite unique and so far I never got bored with this game. I'm still venturing, finished 2 dungeons & 3 bosses, my overall experience is really good. Atleast I'm now excited for the next content releases. If you don't mind buying early access games then this is a good one to grab!

The character, Game-play and the map was really awesome. What I liked the most is the enemy is not cheap and a bit hard to fight. Gives me a good vibe. I love how the game upgrades the character using equipable items without telling the stats. The player must figure it out using the item descriptions.

EDIT (14/2/2025): Given the game's complete lack of updates for quite some time now, I am switching this to a non-recommend since I'm, as of now, unsure whether it will be completed. There has been information that the developer does intend to finish it, thus, when a new update releases, I'll switch this back to a positive but, for now, the change stands. Hello everyone! I have created a video review with my impressions, which you can watch by clicking on the link below: https://youtu.be/toPWPnY3dNc For those who do not wish to watch the video: My Playtime: 8 hours My Early Access Completion Rate: I estimate over 90% Pros: - Intriguing story that presents itself as a grand myth - Excellent music composition - Simple and fun battle system that makes you feel powerful once you get used to it (though it takes a moment to get used to, especially when it comes to avoiding enemy attacks and counter-attacking) - Increasingly challenging platforming that makes you feel great once you conquer it - Fun ability-gated exploration that relies on different elemental forms you can switch on the fly to acquire different abilities (as well as powerful offensive magical attacks) - Engaging boss fights - Dungeon runs that can feel very "high stakes" since death means starting the dungeon over ( In order for you to progress the story and obtain important abilities and items, you’ll have to beat certain dungeons that can be found across the map in the form of portals that you need to go through. Once you have entered a dungeon there’s no going back, with your only way of leaving it being either death or completion by defeating the boss waiting for you at its end) - Dungeon-specific currency can lead to some interesting strategic decisions during your run (Dungeons contain a special shop that works with a specific, dungeon-only currency that you obtain by defeating enemies, introducing a nice element of strategy where you sometimes may have to fight enemies you don’t want to in order to get the gold necessary to buy an upgrade that could save your life later on or risk it and go on without this upgrade, potentially dooming yourself) - The roguelite element of the game isn't that intrusive (that's neither a pro nor a con, but I place it as a pro here since I understand that roguelites are not everyone's cup of tea. The roguelite aspect appears in the case where you die during your dungeon run, and what it essentially does is that it changes the dungeon’s layout when you try to beat it again, thus keeping things a bit fresh during your re-run. This roguelite element is not that intense, since, for the four dungeons I experienced here, they each contained about six to eight different area pieces that where shuffled during each death, so while the order in which the pieces appeared would change, I was still familiar with each isolated layout and how to progress, meaning I never really felt lost. I do need to clarify that this reshuffling is only relevant to the dungeons themselves, not the metroidvania overworld map, which thankfully remains the same throughout your playthrough) - Worthwhile exploration that yields some very useful equipment pieces - Diverse biomes Cons: - The first two dungeons felt a bit bland visually, and easy to beat - Sometimes the camera works against you (There are specific situations where the camera doesn’t keep the protagonist at its center, meaning that you get a blind spot either above or below, which in turn results to you not being able to spot enemies or traps until it is too late. You do have the option to try and move the camera up or down if you tilt the controller stick in that direction, but the camera movement is slow and, in certain situations where speed is of the essence, can result in hits or deaths that may feel a bit cheap) - No fast-travel system (at least none that I could discover during the Early Access playthrough) - A couple of bugs (One bug I found was during the main menu opening. More specifically, when I would get to the load screen, most of the time the game wouldn’t allow me to use the D-pad or analog stick of my controller to select my save, and I had to do that with the mouse. The second bug was in the dungeons, specifically when I would go to move from one dungeon floor/level to the next. Right before you are to travel to a different floor of the dungeon, you are given the option to select between two upgrades that you get to keep for the rest of the dungeon run. The problem here was that I would have to press the collection button many times before the input was finally accepted to get the upgrade. Now, that in itself wouldn’t be very problematic, but the issue here is that the same button used to collect the upgrades would also correspond to the usage of certain consumable totems you can buy in the dungeon shop, meaning that I was forced to use one such consumable before I could collect an upgrade, which was less than ideal) - Insta-death pits (that wasn't really a con for me, but I understand that a lot of people dislike it) Overall, very solid Early Access outing, looking forward to full release so that I can finish it!