Dead Cells VS Hollow Knight VS Bloodstained?

[Kanye's Bottle of Adderall]

Out of these three, which one did you enjoy the most and how do the other two compare to Dead Cells? Hollow Knight in particular is getting a *STUPID* amount of high praise from people around the net like at Reset Era.

I've only played BloodStained out of the three so far but I loved it. If I loved BloodStained(or any of the other Igavanias for that matter) would I like Dead Cells?

Oh and one last question....does Dead cells have RPG elements? Can I level up my character?

[bobhome2]

I never played Bloodstained (though I've seen enough of the gameplay), and Dead Cells is the one I enjoy most.

Hollow Knight and Bloodstained are tilted more toward Castlevanias, with longer play times and lots of exploration needed to unlock stuff.

Dead Cells runs can be about 40 minutes to an hour and a half long, and if you die, you're back at the beginning. Its focus is more on smooth movement and combat with a variety of weapons you pickup/unlock along the way.

They all have some platforming elements, though, so you may like it. When I saw some gameplay footage back in the day, I was pretty sure I'd like it - and I have probably like 500 hours in it now...

[Phirestar]

Hollow Knight strikes a pretty perfect balance between exploration, platforming, and combat - in comparison to Dead Cells, which is about 90% combat.

• If you are looking for pure action, with one of the best combat systems ever, go for Dead Cells.
• If you're looking to uncover secrets, fight (a lot of) memorable boss fights, and be immersed into a fascinating and mysterious world, go for Hollow Knight.

Between the two, I have played Dead Cells about twice as much - 498 hours v.s. 221 hours. That being said, I still love and rank Hollow Knight above it, due to all of the stuff it offers that I mentioned above. (For me, exploration is what drives many of the games I love most.) And that primarily comes down to it being a fully hand-crafted experience, which can offer many more unique encounters / events.

I cannot say anything about Bloodstained, since I haven't played it yet, but I would imagine that it could be comparable to Hollow Knight in its design (though more on the 'vania' side of 'metroidvania').


On your comment regarding RPG elements: Dead Cells has a very basic stat system. There are three classes - Brutality (red), Tactics (purple), and Survival (green) - and all gear in the game scales with either 1 or 2 of them, illustrated by the item's color(s). You gain scrolls along the way that let you increase one stat at a time, which grants a +15% damage increase to all items of that color, and a health increase with diminishing returns. That's it.

[bobhome2]

Originally posted by Phirestar:

Hollow Knight strikes a pretty perfect balance between exploration, platforming, and combat - in comparison to Dead Cells, which is about 90% combat.

• If you are looking for pure action, with one of the best combat systems ever, go for Dead Cells.
• If you're looking to uncover secrets, fight (a lot of) memorable boss fights, and be immersed into a fascinating and mysterious world, go for Hollow Knight.

Between the two, I have played Dead Cells about twice as much - 498 hours v.s. 221 hours. That being said, I still love and rank Hollow Knight above it, due to all of the stuff it offers that I mentioned above. (For me, exploration is what drives many of the games I love most.) And that primarily comes down to it being a fully hand-crafted experience, which can offer many more unique encounters / events.

I cannot say anything about Bloodstained, since I haven't played it yet, but I would imagine that it could be comparable to Hollow Knight in its design (though more on the 'vania' side of 'metroidvania').


On your comment regarding RPG elements: Dead Cells has a very basic stat system. There are three classes - Brutality (red), Tactics (purple), and Survival (green) - and all gear in the game scales with either 1 or 2 of them, illustrated by the item's color(s). You gain scrolls along the way that let you increase one stat at a time, which grants a +15% damage increase to all items of that color, and a health increase with diminishing returns. That's it.

Well said, Phirestar.

[Yvanoff]

Bloodstained was meh, imho. I actually didn't finish it, which speaks for itself. An interesting game with interesting aspects, and other aspects that are half assed.

Hollow Knight is certainly a superior game to Dead Cells, though I have, like Phirestar, spent much more time on DC (500 hours on DC v 100h or so in HK). I agree with all of his points regarding HK v DC

Just to add something: imho Dead Cells is mostly an orgasmic gameplay with a game around (and not a very good game at that, there are a lot of questionable design decisions in it).
Hollow Knight by contrast is a complete game. It does everything, and all of it well. The gameplay is not as satisfying as Dead Cells's, true, but the rest.... It's miles above Dead Cells for everything but the gameplay.

In the end, though, HK and DC are very different games, imho. A Bloodstained v HK comparison makes much more sense. And I'm not afraid to see I prefer Hollow Knight by a wide margin

[Gem of Temporarity]

If you wanna enjoy both HK and DC, play the HK first, so it's ♥♥♥♥ in comparison to DC's movement won't throw you off like it did with me. Haven't played Bloodstained, so I can't compare stuff to it.

Originally posted by The best of Itchy and Scratchy:

Oh and one last question....does Dead cells have RPG elements? Can I level up my character?

Not in the traditional sense - your character doesn't get indirectly stronger by just killing enemies. They do drop a currency you use for permanent unlocks(and obviously this-run-only gold) and items do have hack'n'slash-like affixes and levels(higher leveled items deal more damage/grant more damage reduction and have more affixes), though.

The closest to that apart from the above are scrolls which you pick up and you can increase one of your 3 major attributes - Brutality(also known as red), Tactics(purple) and Survival(green) - which items scale with(some are, depending on their strict to one, some pick the higher one of 2, and "colorless" ones pick highest of all) and increase your HP(green>red>purple).

A reminder: this is a rouge-lite, not a metroidwania, while there is some permanent progression, after failure you start a new run with most things reset(gold(upgrades let you save some), items, stats(scroll stuff), boss kills(you gotta kill'em again)) instead of backtracking.

[runemaster]

Here's an unpopular opinion for you: I.....didn't like Hollow Knight....
I don't know why exactly, usually I love these kind of games, but I only played HK for a couple of hours and lost interest. However I enjoyed Bloodstained so much that I played through it at least 3 times and unlocked all achievements.
I played Dead Cells almost from the very beginning and just started playing again recently, since there was so much new content for me to experience.
I think Dead Cells strikes a perfect balance between permanent upgrades in order to make things a little easier for the player and letting you improve as a player by having short gameplay sessions and learning enemy patterns. It's really easy to learn, but leaves room for further improvement. I can recommend both Dead Cells and Bloodstained.
When it comes to Hollow Knight, well a lot of people seem to like it, but it's not for me.

[Ysen]

I'm not as keen as most people on Hollow Knight either. The combat and plaforming are fine, but don't really stand out from anything else in the genre for me. I also found the pacing too slow - it's a bit stingy about giving upgrades that I often didn't find interesting or useful. The art and sound are great, though.

Dead Cells is a very different game from Hollow Knight, it's much more focused on action and juggling builds and resources, and it's a roguelite format instead of the more traditional Metroidvania.

[Montenico, Lord of Boxes]

Hollow Knight and Dead Cells are really different games.
One is a vast game centered around exploration and finding secrets, like most Metroidvanias are. Of course there is a pretty good combat and great boss fights, but most minor enemies can just be ignored and the only thing you will be losing is money.
The other is a rogue-lite that has a few metroidvania elements here and there and is mostly centered around combat, while exploration and secrets are in the game, it isn't the main focus and you will only get different equipment for that run or some unlockable.

Having said that, I love Hollow Knight and think it's worth a try. It is a complete game with good combat, beautiful art and music, good platforming even though it doesn't get to shine until a pretty late-game area. The game is full of secrets that reward exploring, be it by giving upgrades or lore, and has a few characters that I love (God bless my boy Quirrel).
However, Dead Cells is a lot of fun to play and I also think you should get it. It feels nice to play, it looks nice and is definitely worth a try.

[mfndonut]

As an avid metroidvania player I was disappointed with bloodstained.

I've put most of my time into dead cells, however, Hollow Knight will always be the game I recommend people go to first. Dead cells takes a different kind of attitude that not many people have toward gaming anymore.

[jurries21]

Originally posted by runemaster:

Here's an unpopular opinion for you: I.....didn't like Hollow Knight....
I don't know why exactly, usually I love these kind of games, but I only played HK for a couple of hours and lost interest. However I enjoyed Bloodstained so much that I played through it at least 3 times and unlocked all achievements..

For what it's worth, it didn't necessarily hook me immediately either (though I loooved the look of the game), but a few upgrades in and I started getting really addicted. May be worth another shot!

To the original post, they're both really fantastic games, for similar but different reasons. I will say that I have almost 400 hours in Dead Cells and I still absolutely love the game - once you get going, it's a perfect pick-up-and-play game!

[runemaster]

Yeah, I might actually try HK again sometime in the future, but right now there is just so much good stuff to play for me

[Leoscar]

Hollow knight: Metroidvania, extremely polished, it is a great game no matter how you look at it, a must play. I always have problems with controling the character, it's floaty and controls do weird ♥♥♥♥ sometimes I never wanted to do, but that might just be a me problem.

Dead Cell: Rogue like, very polished game, grind in order unlock permanent upgrades and stuff. When you die, you start over with a bunch of items randomly picked from your unlocked pool. You can get a lot of playtime out of this one if you don't mind starting mostly over everytime.

Bloodstained: A good metroidvania, if you like Castlevania SOTN you'll like this one, they are the same game with a different map, essentially. I'm not fond of the grind to craft stuff and to get new/improve abilities. A few weird progression choices that could lead you to being clueless. Not to mention the visuals are meh. Still a good game but out of the three, personnaly, it's the weakest.

[🦜Cloud Boy🦜]

They are different games.
Hollow Knight/ Bloodstained are metroidvania games where you need to explore the environment, figure out the correct route, lots of backtracking, open closed gates by gaining new powers, huge and complex level design /map where stages are interconnected. Etc. You need to put lots of stuffs in your head while playing.

Dead Cells is kind of NO TENSION combat focused simple "run and kill".
Just complete one stage and go to next one.