i might be one of the 17 people in the whole world to think this one is just as good as the first one.
its way more ambitious, the levels have a different design philosophy to them which makes it so you can just rush through the stages carelessly, you have to take a balance between quick thinking, fast reflexes and recklesness, which in turn makes it way more satisfying to get an S rank on almost every level.
Contrary to popular belief i think the levels with beard are actually pretty solid even tho they're by far the weakest ones in the whole game

fuck the Genocide achievement tho
that shit can go suck my nuts.

After 25 hours I can certainly say this is one of the best games ever made.

I finished it on both Normal and Hard mode with Dante and I'm currently playing as Vergil (which is fucking cool as shit to play as) and finishing as Dante on Very Hard.
The combat is surprisingly deep, and if you master Royalguard while playing you can feel like a literal god, Swordmaster is probably the most fun style to play with, Gunslinger is the most useless, but I still liked it. And Trickster is the best for newcomers.

My complaints: For as much as I like the campaign, playing it over and over can be kinda tiring. I wish Vergil's campaign wasn't just Dante's campaign again.
A potential remake could tweek alot of stuff in the story to make Vergil a more active player in the story, giving him unique missions and bosses to fight.
Another thing is that Vergil's combos feel kinda lacking, you don't have different combos for the same weapon depending on the timing you press the buttons. You just have one combo (which sucks).

Footnote: I love the little detail they added in the memory card for the ps2 edition where there's a little Jester plushie as the placeholder for your save files.

This game might seem repetitive at first but once you dig deep into its systems you realize how all the variety and high replayability you'd expect out of a roguelike IS there, you simply just have to work for it.

Dead Cells respects the fuck out of your commitment to it as a player, giving you more and more weapons, mutations and skills that make each run exponentially more unique and interesting from the last.
And if that wasnt enough, the game also shows each blueprint you complete in the very first area of every run, serving to proudly display your progress and motivate you even further to complete it all.

It's this mix of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation Dead Cells has that compels me to keep further engaging with it even after beating it 4 times in a row

It's such a ridiculously unoffensive game that, while i completely agree with many of the criticisms this game gets and totally understand what makes it such a departure from the previous titles, it still boggles me to no end how so many people have such passionate hatred for it.
Fallout 4 a painfully mediocre albeit superficially fun shooter where nothing really stands out at all when compared to the older, more in-depth titles of the franchise.

(for the record I have not played Far Harbour or any of the other DLCs for this game)

the gameplay is smoother than a baby's face covered in butter. Holy shit is it satisfying to play.

Also the game's easy as fuck to get all trophies in.
Multiplayer is the weakest part of it and it still slaps hard.
The campaign could be a bit longer though
not really an issue but yea

It feels too self-conscious about its own plot to let moments sink in or for information to flow naturally.
Particularly in the class trials for each chapter, every tiny amount of bickering or doubt a character has becomes a gameplay moment that you have to get through in order to get the plot going. That makes the game a lot more draining to play than it should.
Each development in the mystery instead of making you go "oh shit that's cool" becomes a "I'm gonna have to explain the plot to this Weird Al looking dude again aren't I?".
Those are fine if you're inattentive enough to not figure out the twists before they get explained but if you're paying any kind of attention to what's actually going on it becomes grading and annoying.

The murders are kind of interesting though. They're convoluted and often times dumb but they're also enjoyable. It would be way cooler if the things you learn about the school compounded into each other as the murder trials go: The trash room, for example, is a vital element for the first murder. Going through the chapter you learn how it works, why the room is locked and that one person per week has the keys to open it and dump everyone's trash together.
That's a really important part of this school life yet they never care to use it again for the next murders, which not only is a waste of potential but also ends up making each chapter feel disconnected and repetitive.
You win a trial, the classmate that did the killing dies, you unlock a new floor and a new murder happens in one of those rooms you just unlocked.
Rinse and repeat until you're done.

If the game had more confidence to let the plot happen instead of forcing you to participate in every little thing and trying to game-ify the process of deduction the characters are going through it could be shorter and more enjoyable as a both game and narrative.
As it stands its alright.