If you’re a fellow fan of the soulslike genre, you may have noticed that the offshoots inspired by FromSoftware’s punishing repertoire of games can vary widely in quality. Many such games struggle to distinguish themselves, instead falling victim to copycat syndrome. This is where Deathbound shines, however, as indie developer Trialforge Studio has taken that beloved formula and added their own spin to it. And I don’t just mean the death monk who fights using capoeira, although what’s not to love about spin-kicking abominations directly in their accursed faces?
You start Deathbound as Therone Guillaman, a crusader of the Church of Death who has been tasked with hunting down essencemancers: heretics who worship Lady Death’s twin sister, Life, and who have unleashed a plague of monsters from within the forbidden city of Akratya. A fateful encounter leaves Therone cursed (as he puts it) with an inability to die and a propensity for absorbing the essence of fallen warriors. Given the Church of Death’s obsession with, well, death, Therone’s faith leaves him feeling conflicted by this outcome.
Deathbound takes place entirely within Akratya, starting in hospital ruins overrun by monsters before spilling out into the city itself. Your journey will take you through war-torn city streets, a soccer-stadium-turned-fortress, and a luxury skyscraper, all with a dense post-apocalyptic atmosphere. While Deathbound’s graphics aren’t pushing any new boundaries, and some of the character models are a bit stiff and boxy, the environments are undeniably visually striking. The decay of civilization is readily apparent, as things have regressed to a medieval state under the Church of Death’s rule. It made me chuckle everytime Therone rode an elevator, looking entirely out of place and probably grappling mentally with having to use the first men’s heretical technology.
If Therone’s severe attitude and sword-and-board arsenal don’t appeal to you, you’re in luck! Throughout the game, you will encounter fallen warriors whose essence you can absorb and add to your party. Deathbound’s combat revolves around this party system, where you slot up to four active essences that you can swap between at will. Each party member has a separate health and stamina bar, encouraging players to frequently cycle between essences to keep the momentum going. This is especially true since if even one essence dies, it’s game over. And given that your maximum stamina is directly tied to your current health, it’s always a good idea to tag out wounded characters.
Combat encounters felt like a delicate dance when trying to balance the health and stamina of four separate characters, especially at lower levels when you are a lot squishier. Even in later levels, the added difficulty of denser crowds of enemies makes quick thinking and proper spacing a must. The tide of combat can quickly turn if you let yourself get stuck in a stagger loop or frozen with very little health remaining. You can’t simply swap out of such debilitations, and enemies are all too eager to take advantage of your vulnerable state.
While there is a dedicated health consumable, the essence extractor, I found that its drawbacks made it more of a last resort. It restores 80 health to your active essences when it’s used, but all inactive essences lose 40 health. It’s much more reliable to take advantage of the life-steal mechanic, where inactive essences regain health based on the damage dealt by the active essence. Damage also raises a shared sync meter that allows you to morphstrike while changing characters if at least one bar is full, with a 100% filled sync meter unleashing an even more devastating attack. Morphstrikes provide a brief moment of invulnerability and deal more damage than basic attacks, ending the fight more quickly while keeping your party alive.
You can unlock up to seven characters in total, each of them having a unique weapon and fighting style. Once I unlocked Iula and her spear, she basically never left my party. No more sword swings clanging helplessly against a nearby wall! Other potential party members include a cocky assassin, a magical prodigy, a hammer-wielding brute, and a regal elementalist. And who could forget the spin-kicking death monk I mentioned earlier? Of the bunch, I probably used the two mages the least, although their buff abilities created a nice synergy with other essences and their ultimate morphstrikes unleash a killer AOE attack that just obliterate crowds.
Beyond combat capabilities, each character brings with them a unique perspective as well as a trail of memories to uncover. It made me glad to realize that even inactive essences would contribute to party banter in any given situation, and I found myself looking forward to hearing the arguments that would ensue at critical story junctures. Deathbound’s story doesn’t just play out through environmental storytelling or villain monologues; there are fully-realized cutscenes in which party members readily make their opinions heard.
Having characters with synergistic or conflicting beliefs adjacent to one another in the party also provides corresponding bonuses (and drawbacks) to be taken advantage of. It only makes sense that putting someone next to the person who murdered their family would create an air of tension, after all. While I was initially put off by the drawbacks of having conflicting party members side-by-side, the min-maxer in me eventually tried to create as much conflict as possible to get that extra edge in combat.
While each character has their own base stats, your overall level and upgrades apply directly to all essences. While the squishy mage Haodai will always have less health than armor-clad Therone, their health increases proportionally with each health unlock in the skill tree. There are traits unique to each essence, however, which are unlocked using points acquired from memories throughout the world. My favorite trait was definitely the one that allows Iula to die twice, since it provided a sense of security when swapping to her and saved me from failing many a boss.
Essences are universally affected by equipped accessories as well, which include a single artifact and two ring slots. Each accessory has two interdependent upgrade paths, allowing you to upgrade one path, or both, up to a total of five times combined. There isn’t any way to undo this process, unfortunately, meaning if you upgrade one path five times and realize you would have preferred to put some points into the other path, there’s no way to change it. I was hoping I could circumvent this by acquiring duplicate accessories in new game plus, but you’re unable to acquire the same accessory twice.
Deathbound itself is not a long game, nor is it as challenging a title when compared to the classic Dark Souls trilogy. Soulslike veterans should have no trouble finishing the game in around 15 hours, but I was hooked throughout the entire ride. The world of Deathbound is intriguing and brimming with neat lore, like how the first men were once immortal and played a variant of soccer where using swords to dismember your opponents was perfectly legal. While the idea of twin goddesses of life and death isn’t unique in of itself, Deathbound’s presentation of these ideas through environmental lore, lost memories, and character interactions come together to create a compelling narrative, and there were enough twists and turns to keep me on my toes.
Austin reviewed Deathbound on the Xbox Series X with a review code.
