Tomb Raider Meets Swords & Spells
A tribute to the early Tomb Raider titles, with a campy latex-clad dominatrix as your sword-swinging avatar (or a meat-headed barbarian). Don't let first impressions fool you: give it a chance and if you liked TR, you will probably like Deathtrap Dungeon too.
Stiff animations? Yup. Unfortunately gives an amateurish 1st impression. But like many old games, you get used to it. The combat animations and jumps/flips look fine.
Awkward controls? Yup. Remap default keyboard settings immediately! Joystick has some issues (possibly JoytoKey https://joytokey.net/en/ solves this). Combat in DTD is toggled: you are either in combat stance (which limits move options) or normal stance (mobile but vulnerable). This is frustrating... but you DO get used to it. Melee auto-targets the enemy you are facing (keep on the back-foot stance while pivoting). The advantage here is not needing to hammer at keys, rather simply holding a key unleashes a continuous flurry of blows... good offense is the best defense.
Quirky 3rd person camera? Yes. Pays homage to cinematic camera over seeing where you are going. This is actually identical to TR, but for some reason it rarely seems an issue in that game. Perhaps because combat in TR uses ranged auto-targeting, whereas DTD is often melee where facing matters. Also in TR you run-and-gun, but in DTD you must stop and fight, often with the enemy outside of camera view. Frustrating to say the least... but you quickly learn the default combat maneuver is 'block' which keeps you safe(r) while you turn to search out your foe(s).
Platformer challenge? Yes. There aren't quite as many options as in TR (no climbing notably), but in other respects players will need to master death-defying acrobatics.
Honestly once you get used to the controls and funky camera, the game is pretty fun/challenging. Level design is fun, quite like the later levels in TR2. Just remember the dungeon itself is designed to KILL YOU.
Overall, I like. Recommended if on sale.
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