Let It Die (Review)

~Let It die is a action hack-n-slash F2P game with roguelike difficulity developed by Suda 51's Grasshopper Manufacture Inc, and was released exclusively for the PS4 in 2016. Let It Die is a mixture of few things that when combined together leads to a very...interesting gameplay experience. First off, if you are accustomed to any of Suda 51's previous released games you are surely aware of his penchant for blood, hyper violence, and pure absurdity. This is combined with gameplay elements similar to that of the critically acclaimed Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Demon Souls series. In the end what you end up getting is a experience that will surely leave a mark on how you feel about it within a few hours of playing it. Now if that is a positive or a negative thing comes down to how you feel about the prior two elements, those of course being Suda 51 and Dark Souls like gameplay.

First off let me just get this across to you...THIS GAME IS BRUTAL and I mean that in both the literal and figurative sense. Beating enemies to death with such things as hammers, battle axes, baseball bats, long swords, butterfly knifes, hockey sticks with affixed blades, machetes, buzz saw brass-knuckles etc sends gallons of blood and kill coins flying through the air, and if you counter a enemy or simply confuse them you can follow with a even more brutal finshing move. It doesn't end there with those finishing moves either, they change depending on the weapons you currently have on hand. Add in even more weapons which include firearms, flame shooting staffs, skill mushrooms (which is a totally separate list in itself) ,flaming machetes (over 32 weapons in total) and stealth suplexs and hurricanranas you have all you need for a brutal gorefest. Two things I almost forgot about are the super moves which can be stored up by fighting enemies and eating food and mushrooms in the world (these moves are a spectacular and brutal burst of strength), and the fact that each of the weapons themselves can be upgraded by using them which leads to you learning new moves, using less stamina, and becoming stronger with that weapon. These two elements in my opinion help the games many fights from feeling stale.

Which brings us to the most important part, the gameplay. As I said earlier Let It Die plays very similar to the Dark Souls/Demon Souls/Bloodborne games. You cant just go in swinging unless you want to lose stamina or get yourself countered by a screamer (the enemies who populate the many floors of the tower of barbs), your weapons and armor deteriorate as their hit and you use them, npc's dubbed haters (these enemies are both players sent into your game to attack you by rival players or your own character who died while traversing the tower of barbs) lurk the floors hunting you and the screamers who they run into (this feature in my opinion makes the game that much more fun due to you being able to hide and let the screamers or the haters fight each other than sneak in and finish them off), and a series of elevators and escalators provide you a way of traveling from floor to floor. Which brings me to the next element of the game that helps add to the fights, every time you enter a new floor or reenter a old one the layout, the loot,mushrooms, and the enemies will randomly generate. Which means you can never get too comfortable while playing and should be sure to take a trip back to your waiting room, to heal yourself if you're out of healing items, buy new gear, add more money to your in game bank, add your newly collected materials for R & D to in game storage, or pick up a challenge to get more R & D materials/money/ or kill coins. Focusing on the R & D a little bit more you have armor and weapons that you will find throughout the tower of barbs. These items are found in chest or taking off of screamers and haters after killing them. However, These particular items will breakdown very quickly and most likely will already be pretty worn when you pick them up. But that shouldn't be too much of a problem because scattered inside of the game world are blueprints which can be used in combination with the collected R & D materials to craft stronger and longer lasting weapons and armor. These weapons and armor can then be upgraded again using more materials to make them even stronger and even create a totally different weapon or armor piece once you hit the lvl 4 R & D cap of a particular item.

Let It Die also has an online component that's pretty fun and is very reminiscent of the FOB system from Metal Gear Solid 5. The Tokyo Death Metro is where you go to get into some fast paced smash-n-grab action. You take the subway from your waiting room to a rival players waiting room, and once you get there you can smash their banks to take both their coins and lithium (currency used for R & D and upgrading your waiting rooms). However, players can set up a defense which consists of their created characters equipped with whatever equipment they have unlocked or are currently holding. These characters however can be knocked unconscious and taken hostage, sometimes you can even free teammates who have been taken hostage if they are present in the rival players waiting room. In addition to this players can also expand the storage of both their kill coin and lithium banks, increase the number of characters a player can have at one time,and expand their bathroom area which is used to house characters who have been taken hostage during one of the Tokyo Death Metro raids. As you attack other players waiting rooms and have your waiting room attacked your rank with go up and down depending on your successes and failures. Also, to make it even more of a rivalry TDM lets you group up with a region to battle it out with other rival regions. Once your region and another have fought each other enough you and your team are locked into a battle with that region until the time limit is up or you are killed during one of the raids. These battles and raids give the player more in game currency to upgrade weapons and armor and buy decals which can be used to give players in game perks to help them traverse the tower of barbs. Now I feel this is the best place to touch on the F2P subject so i'll try and keep it brief. Let It Die while it is a Free to Play game, in game transactions are NOT necessary in the least bit. You can choose to spend real money to purchase Death Metals which can be used to come back from the dead immediately after you are killed (instead of going back to where you died and fighting your haterfied character or paying a certain amount of kill coins to retrieve them with all your collected stuff), use them to speed up R & D, convert them into in game currency,or use them to expand your in game storage. You can also use real money to purchase express passes that give you access to the express elevator that lets you travel for free, ride the TDM for free,gives you more space to carry items and materials while climbing the tower and deposits a free item into your mail box each day your pass is active. At no point do these micro-transactions become a way of paying to win. This is because express passes and death metals can be earned by simply logging in everyday or completing a challenge that gives them to you as a reward.

Now I can't lie, Let It Die is kind of rough around the edges. Texture pop in happens, the frame-rate which is pretty solid for the most part does slow down sometimes when the massive clouds of blood happen and sometimes when playing TDM, enemies fall through the environment at times which prevents you from being able to pick up their loot, you have to stop completely after running to keep from getting tired or mistakenly doing a drop kick (which does hella damage if you land it but takes forever to get up if you miss), and the hit boxes on the enemies are kinda wonky. I've missed a few hits with my machete simply because the enemy was just outside of the swing. All in all these issues do not overly take away from the experience, and while the controls may take some time to get use to (the left D-pad controls the weapons in left hand and the right D-pad controls the weapons in right hand, you swing with L2 and R2 respectively). Also to completely back out of the games rolodex which lists weapons mastery,collected stamps,etc you have to hit Square after hitting circle to back up. Once you do figure it out it'll become second nature.

In the end Let It Die is an extremely absurd, blood soaked, gore filled, curse word ladened (a skateboarding grim reaper name uncle death becomes the lest absurd thing as time goes on) experience you have to play yourself before you can truly judge it. Suda 51's Aesthetics mixed with gameplay seen in the Souls Series meshes together in a way that is crazy enough that it shouldn't work but some how it just manages to pull it off. Add in a soundtrack that will surely get stuck in your head and side characters who easily amp up the absurd nature of the game and you have what could be the sleeper hit of this gaming generation.

Pros:

-Randomly generated level design, loot, and enemies

-Persona like tower level design

-TDM/Raids

-Plenty of weapons and armor to upgrade and collect

-lots of collectibles

-Super moves

-Finshers

-Soundtrack is amazing

-Haters and Screamers fight each other

-Expeditions (send your created characters into your rivals world to harass them)

-Absurdity

-Hilarious side characters

-In game tips that are Actually useful

-Micro-Transactions are not needed to progress

-Intense fights

Cons:

-Enemies can fall through the environment which can prevent you from picking up their loot

-Minor technical issues, some slow down and texture pop in.

Score: 4/5

Let It Die, Grasshopper Manufacture, Hack-n-slash/Action/Roguestyle, PS4, 2016

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