Death's Gambit

To think I almost didn't give this game a chance. To think Death's Gambit was one of the lowest rated games in my backlog.
I loved this game. But I can understand some people's frustrations.

Death's Gambit is another game cementing the idea that a "souls-like" is a valid game genre. It's again so similar that you could call it a rip-off, but I don't personally feel like the (sub)genre is saturated enough to not allow for more good games, even if they play so much alike. Being 2D, it reminded me more of Salt and Sanctuary than Dark Souls, but the ideas are not so dependent on the dimensions of the game, I believe.

If you've played Dark Souls or a souls-like, you already know the gist of what the game is like. I won't explain it all again, so go look at the first two paragraphs of my Salt and Sanctuary post. It's basically more of the same, but there's less platforming.
There's actually less of a lot of things, which is where the game starts to suffer. Death's Gambit is only 10-15 hours long for the first playthrough. There's NG+, and some secrets/easter eggs, and an optional increased difficulty boss fight for every boss, but aside from NG+, they don't add too much extra time to the game. With less content, of course the map is smaller, there are fewer enemies, etc...
Most noticeably, however, there were just not enough items. With the exception of ranged weapons, there was one of each weapon type. Only a handful of various armors (of which only shields had any meaningful variety). They had an ability system, but that was underused - 2-3 abilities for each weapon, none really found in the world, just bought at the start from a vendor.
And finally, what a lot of people complain about - less polish. Animations not working, falling through platforms, the occasional bug that actually made you have to redo a significant part of previous content, and a lot more things that were just very rough around the edges, if not outright broken.

On the shorter but cheerier side, what the game did well in was immersion. Pretty much full voice acting, lovely attention to details and a plethora of non-gameplay events that made the world feel more alive. And when the game decided it was time to throw some insanity at you as a result of your death and undeath, it was downright unsettling at moments. It's all this that sold the game to me. I feel like the people who made it had everything they needed for not just a good game, but a great or an exceptional one, just... not enough time, willpower, resources, or I don't know what, to make more content and to polish it to really shine. Were they to make a sequel some day, I would without a doubt play it.

Despite it's relative shortcomings in playtime, build variety, and the overall production quality, I feel the core of Death's Gambit was outstanding. If you like souls-likes, I believe you'll like this one as well, and I would definitely recommend it. It has also earned a place on my more permanent favorite games list. If you play it, try to look past the rough edges and instead into the gleaming soul of it.