It's missing that variety element that makes rougelikes replayable. It's classes feel very limited. It's narrative feels undercooked. I managed to clear a full run on my 6th attempt. It then unlocked a harder difficulty and a horde mode. Doesn't seem like there is much more besides that.

But the moment to moment gunplay is great. It's very Doom 2016 and that is 100% a compliment. Abilities work great in tandum and I found the enginneer class to be my favorite. Visuals are nice and I enjoyed the music. I can see myself jumping back to it in the future to just play a couple runs but not consecutively. I don't feel that "one more run" sensation with this one.

Maybe if this was a full blown shooter campaign over a roguelike I would feel very differently. With runs over in a heartbeat and meta progression lacking it's tough not to think the idea of making this a rougelike might have been an afterthought.

An incredibly entertaining rouge-like fps, with a level of energy that is incredibly entertaining. It definitely has some short comings, but any issues I have take a backseat once I'm a few levels into a run and I'm shooting and dodging my way out of some of the most hectic firefights ive played in recent memory. The game does about everything you expect a game like this to do, but unfortunately not too much more than that. There is a level of variety to be had in how you create your builds each run, but a large pool of both weapons and upgrades seem incredibly situational or pointless. It can be exciting during the game, but due to it's inability to be anything more than what the rest of the movement shooter genre is doing at the moment, it's not a game I'll be racing to replay anytime soon.

Um bom jogo de Rogue-like com fps e mecanicas de doom, onde quando mais tu é agressivo e criativo pra matar mais recompensador é, o jogo tem bastante builds para cada jogatina e tbm com o sistema de upgrade que melhorar ainda mais as builds e variantes doidas na suas runs.
O jogo tem um grafico bastante bonito com o tema de cybepunk,mas mesmo com esse grafico bonito é uma desvantagem pro jogo pq o efeitos visuais podem chegar uma hora á atrapalhar no meio da doideira.

A única coisa negativa desse jogo é falta de mais variantes de salas, bosses pois fica bem repetitivo e não mt a explorar pra achar um miniboss ou uma sala secreta pois o jogo tem uma sistema de x salas que tu pode explorar,fora isso é um bom jogo de rogue like com fps :)

I'm gonna mark this as "recommended" just because of the gunplay. It feels so freakin' good.

The game is really good for the first two out of four levels. It's manageable, you can pick any build you want, and it feels satisfying when you finished a stage. ( A level consists of several stages )

There are classes and many guns to choose from, and it's a bliss. Almost every gun is interesting and fun to use. It's my type of thing, where it can make me think, "I wonder what i can do with that?". Even you're underpowered in a stage, you still can make it with pure movement and aim skills, and it feels very satisfying to pull it off.

But, the last two levels are...not good. Enemies are becoming more annoying than challenging, bosses starting to feel like gimmicky, and not picking the right build is more punishing than anything else.

Only some builds work, and you have to prepare it from the first time you entered the first level. It gave you an illusion of free choice. It's a major problem for games like this, since you want to overcome the enemies by simply being good at it and having an at least decent build, but those are being negated by enemies that can one shot you, if you make only one mistake.

But, it's a roguelite though, not a roguelike. It's in the same vein as Hades, where you can unlock upgrades and can make things easier for the next run. I haven't unlocked all of the upgrades yet, but i feel like that won't help the problems i mentioned earlier.

Still, a good output from an indie studio. They clearly care and passionate about this game, and i hope they can fix things to make it even better. Masterpiece, even.

Note : this game is so much better than Gunfire Reborn though. It shares similarities but Gunfire Reborn sucks

Deadlink is generally alright in every meaningful metric. The only weak spot is that the game is afraid to make the player powerful. The game's difficulty doesn't come from rooms or enemies or hazards requiring high levels of execution to beat. Deadlink just keeps you on training wheels more or less the entire run (assuming you aren't lucky to roll a bunch of synergizing implants, but that's not a skill issue).

I'll come back around when Deadlink is out of early access, it could really use the time.

i love eating bricks for 4 hours before I get a fighting chance, man does the metaprogression feel bad

pretty competent otherwise with ways to cook a build that breaks the game in half if you are so inclined and the dice rolls agree - though does it take its time to finally let you do it

doom 2016 is pretty close to what's going on there I'd say, but roguelited those arenas into 3+0.5 biomes of low variety between runs, this game is starved for any kind of variety on the map front

is alright

A very fun FPS Roguelite!!

I knew very little about deadlink before its full launch but after its release I grew interested in it and got it through a bundle recently. Having little knowledge I was curious about what this game would be like and I am honestly really pleased with the outcome. This is a very fun , fast paced and challenging FPS game that will test your skills.

What makes it so fun?

I just think this fast paced style of FPS games works well with the roguelite genre. It gives you heavy doom reboot vibes which is a very good thing making you always focus during encounters. With fun gunplay , movement , build variety this makes for an overall great package that I 100% can recommend if it sounds like something you might want to try. I don’t really want to get too in depth with mechanics but there is 1 character to choose from in which you unlock 3 more as you progress and do multiple runs. While the game starts off pretty much unbeatable you quickly will level up your character through a perm skill tree that will make the game tons easier if you learn boss patterns. I have heard people complaining about how hard it is but honestly I did not struggle after a certain point until hitting the hardest difficulty which is pretty damn brutal. I just had so much trying out new classes , weapons , skills because as usual once you stumble across an OP build for a run it truly is an amazing feeling to shred everything. Each character plays vastly differently which makes for a refreshing gameplay loop if you want to try someone else out. A core mechanic across the board is shield regain in which when you use a specific skill on an enemy and by killing them they will drop shields. This is crucial as if you don't utilize this enough you will simply lose runs a lot more so make sure you build around your shield skill and use it at any given moment you can!. After trying each character I landed on Engineer which I found to be very fun / powerful and have beaten multiple playthroughs with him only. I won’t speak on the other characters as I didn’t play them nearly as much but for sure give Engineer a go when you unlock them. There is just something so exhilarating about high action / fast paced FPS games that always stick with me and this game simply hits the spot.

What I didn’t like?

I don’t have many complaints about this game past a few. To begin, The bosses do feel pretty basic and lacking; they don’t really try anything too crazy which makes them very easily learnable. This can become a problem because it hits a certain point where the bosses simply pose no challenge and most of the challenging will be within the stage by stage leading up to the bosses. Furthermore, the enemy variety is also lackluster as they just give them different looks in each area past a couple new enemies in the later areas. I didn’t really mind it too much but I do wish they would have created a more vast variety of them.


In the end

An overall great game I enjoyed my time with and probably will return to it as time passes on. This game has made me realize how much I would love even more FPS rougelike/lite games in this fashion because the 2 genres really do blend well with one another. The game imo is worth at full price for how fun it is and its replay value alone but I can recommend it 9439394% on sale.

So first things first, this game looks really good. It looks polished and all the levels look detailed and are fun to explore. The graphics are really the only thing the game nailed head-on.

While the levels look really nice, they tend to get repetitive really quickly. There also isn't really a lot to do or explore in them, besides a little glowing prop you can punch for an upgrade.

The bosses aren't really anything worth to write home about. There isn't anything special about each encounter and I also really despise the quips they repeat ad nauseam.

This also was really, really easy for a roguelite, I finished my first run in 4 hours. I didn't even unlock like a third of the perks you can get. The game isn't that interesting for me to really do multiple runs, I get the feeling that I saw everything there is to see. Maybe I had a lot of luck, or maybe the engineer class is overpowered, but I don't really see myself revisiting this game that often.

Man, what a JOY this game is once you figure it out and start playing the right way, get some builds going, and melt bosses.
It's resource management done right.

Also the OST is really damn good, I sometimes pause the game just to headbang to it.

The biomes are all great, my favorite is the third one, Interport, because of the atmosphere and enemies.

If you like FPS games or Roguelikes, do NOT miss this game.

my fav fps of 2023 fs
the way u can bind implants to ur abilities is a cool new concept
good movement
good gunplay
fuck the ceo
4.5/5

The gunplay is amazing. In my first couple of hours I tweeted that this was the best FPS of 2023, period. Sadly, the roguelite elements do not work as intended, I guess. I'm currently grinding the first two levels to see if, empowered by all the possible upgrades, I can beat the last half of this game.

I recommend it because the gunplay really feels very good, frantic in a good way. Both the soundtrack and visuals are cool. I like how you have to be active marking enemies in order to replenish your shield. I like how upgrades are tied in with trigger actions, so you're also taking this factor in account while deciding how to proceed in battle.

It's dead cheap, though. For what they're charging, this is very good. I hope they balance it, as this game has the potential to be, hands down, the very best FPS roguelite.

Best rougelike fps I've tried, which isn't saying that much, but this game is very good. It has a damn solid combat loop, gunplay and progress. I completed the maximum difficulty in i think 11 attempts, but I did play quite a bit the early access, so i had advantage you could say, so the game do has a quite big challenge.
Now for the bad, (which is more mediocre than bad) the visuals are just cyberpunk. Nothing less, nothing more. If you really like cyberpunk you will like it but it doesn't has anything interesting to me personally. My other issue is the different classes you can use. You start with the soldier and can unlock 3 more, the one with the revolver can do some insane damage, but even that doesn't seem to compare to the perfectly balanced soldier, and the other two are directly just bad, or at least that's my experience. I literally hopped with any other character that isn't the soldier and died in the second section, while with the soldier i sometimes could do even 3 sections without taking health damage.

In conclusion, Deadlink is a very fun shooter and excellent if you are into rougelikes, but I personally feel like its not a game I will particularly remember as I don't find the experience memorable enough.

Deadlink has strong core gameplay, but it's undercut by the fact it's another roguelite, and makes missteps typical for the genre.

The combat is great.
Movement is quick and mostly fluid (ledge grabbing is a little iffy), most guns feel great, abilities are active and not some boring temporary buffs, and the presentation does a great job of making all your tools feel as satisfying as possible.
The way the game handles mid-run upgrades is very clever as well. Implants can be slotted into slots that correspond to one of four actions - switching weapons, using one of your abilities, or destroying floating balls that appear in the levels and refill a bit of your secondary ammo (your main weapon has no ammo limit).
This means upgrades you pick during runs aren't just mindless improvements - you have to think about when you want their active effects to activate to make them the most useful, and adjust your playstyle to make the most of them.

Another cool mechanic regarding mid-run progression are permanent bonuses that you can only get if you can survive the next few encounters while having a debuff affecting you, like not being able to dash, double jump, or use grenades.
There are also weapon mods, alternative secondary weapons, and upgrades to your abilities that you can find, and you get to choose which reward you want to go for next.

Each of the 4 classes has a different main weapon, two abilities, and a secondary gun that can be swapped out during the run. The differences between these are definitely enough to make them feel distinct even though they roughly stick to one template, and I found all of them equally fun.

The enemy designs are solid. The most basic grunts don't vary that much, but every "biome" has a few interesting types of foes that switch things up.

The level design is fine. It's obviously pretty soulless and repetitive due to the roguelite nature of the game, but it doesn't get in the way of the combat, even if it doesn't introduce anything extra to the gameplay.
The only major problem I have with it is that the last area has fairly boring arena layouts - as your run reaches its climax, the rooms you fight in become more and more barren, to the point where you'll fight enemies in empty rooms with one pillar. From what I know, the good level designers were mostly let go long before development finished, which might explain the downgrade if the final area was created last.

So why not give the game 4-5 stars? Well, they messed up the roguelite mechanics.
Using roguelite mechanics is always a bad thing, but it can be handled better or worse. As I mentioned, the mid-run progression was done very cleverly, so it's surprising that the meta progression sucks.
As you play, you unlock straight up upgrades to stats. Not alternative weapons, spicy upgrades with downsides, alternative abilities - just ways to make yourself more powerful. It's pointless, it's grindy, and it sucks.
They're not all simple stat upgrades, but many of them are, and very few go beyond "that thing is better now".

The worst problem the game has, however, is the way the difficulty is tuned.
If you're powerful enough to beat the final boss, most of your run will be very easy. If the first half of your run is actually challenging and exciting, you will probably not finish the run successfully.
The second to last boss is a bit buggy and their attacks are hard enough to avoid that it functions as a bit of a stat check.
The final area, and especially the final boss, involves so much enemy and attack spam that mechanical skill ends up secondary to the game simply testing if your build ended up being strong enough.
More over, when you're underpowered, you don't only die quickly, but also kill enemies slowly. There's no excitement of having to play your best to survive - instead, the combat starts feeling worse and the game clearly communicates to you that your character is too weak and you'll probably need to try again.

It's sad because the issues with the game are rooted in very fundamental mechanics, so this isn't likely to improve with updates.
If you can stomach the bad parts of the game, there's a combat loop that can feel amazing waiting for you, but a lot of the time the game will sabotage itself in the name of crappy meta progression and a run-based structure.