Death Howl is a deckbuilding RPG that promotes itself as a soulslike, and 11 Bit Studio and Evolve PR were kind enough to send me a copy so I could find out just how accurate this was. Spoiler alert, it is a fair assessment.
Fill disclosure, this was one of the hardest games I ever had to review, not in the sense of the game’s difficulty, but in the sense that I work very hard not to spoil anything in my reviews, and I found everything I wanted to tell you fell into this category. The story is beautiful and heart-wrenching, but I can’t tell you why. The symbolism and such are also amazing, but I can’t explain that to you either. Suffice it to say, if you have ever lost someone you loved, and I feel like that is most of us, this story will hit home pretty hard in a lot of ways.
The battle system is where it matters, however. After all, if this is bad or just not fun, what is the point of such a touching and beautiful story? There are no random or surprising battles here, really. You can look at your map and see where they all are, and even teleport to spots you have unlocked to heal. Doing this will, of course, revive all enemies. This is a soulslike after all. Enemies won’t try to ambush you like in Dark souls however. This is turn-based combat; you will pick where you start from a select number of spaces. From what I can tell, each battle has specified opponents. Ran into two crows in a spot last time; that is what will be there next time. This allows you to grind out Death Howls and items for new cards easily.
This is where my only issue comes from. You can do a lot of work in each region, grinding out Death Howls from enemies, and getting all the cards in each region, and in the next region, you are essentially back to square one. Yes, you can bring those cards with you, but using one region’s cards in another makes them more expensive, bringing their usefulness way down. This forces you to restart in each region.
This gripe aside, the game is a lot of fun and quite challenging. It is an 8/10 experience that fans of card games and soulslikes should check out. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
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