I adored the Black protagonists, magic, world design, and the cat-and-mouse multiplayer is genius, but the game suffers from one massive glaring issue: Dinga Bakaba didn’t play Mooncrash. That is, the Arkane Lyon game director tried not to be even remotely influenced by the Arkane Austin game that used a nearly identical framing structure. And as a result, Deathloop doesn’t learn from the problems Mooncrash solved, like not relying on a massive convoluted menu / loadout system that keeps you looking at menus for nearly 25% of the game. And the levels feel completely disconnected from each other in Deathloop, whereas the whole world is perfectly integrated in Mooncrash. Simply put, Deathloop should have had an interlocked “Metroidvania” world design. The world could have felt more integrated in the player’s mind, but since Monseur Bakaba wanted to “not be influenced,” the design felt obtuse and disjointed. Also the endgame “perfect loop” completely lacked player choice and exposed the game for forcing players to “tick required boxes.”