Death Howl Review: Dark Souls but Deckbuilding, It Kind of Works (PS5)

Video games are a fantastic medium with numerous combinations of themes to choose from. One popular genre is the souls-like, which indicates to players that your game will be difficult to some degree. Death Howl is a deadly mixture that wears the souls-like title proudly while also throwing in tactical grid-based combat, deck-building and open-world exploration.

I was interested in Death Howl for its deckbuilding and tactical combat. Even its premise sounded interesting, with you playing as a mother exploring spirit realms in search of her dead son. But what I found was a game that really wanted to test how much I love grinding for things, spoiler alert, I’m not a big fan of it. Luckily, Death Howl had enough for me to spend a good twelve hours before giving it a rest. 

Death Howl is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S for $19.99/£16.75.

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Story – A Mothers Desperation

Another aspect of a souls-like game that Death Howl adopts is a story that isn’t told in the traditional method. You get a brief cutscene in the introduction that shows the death of Olvi, the protagonist’s son. Afterwards, Ro (the protagonist) pleads to the spirits of the underworld to bring back her son. She is then thrown into the spirit world, seeking ways to revive her dead son.

After a few interactions with wandering spirits, Ro learns that she can resurrect the dead by killing spirits and collecting their Death Howls. With this knowledge, she is tasked with finding and defeating the four Great Spirits that are scattered in each corner of the world. Ro hopes that this might be the key to bringing her son back. 

Enjoy Ro’s desperate struggle to find her son in the spirit world

That’s mostly it for the story, since the rest is told through its environment and through NPCs you’ll meet. I’m usually a fan of these narratives because they let me explore the world and piece everything together myself. Death Howl uses Scandinavian lore while using themes of loss and obsession, especially with the world design.

However, the difficulty tends to get in the way of enjoying the story since it takes some time to get to the next sprinkle of lore. This would make an impact on me fully enjoying the narrative, to the point where any new details to the plot wouldn’t interest me. Though this led me to focus more on the combat and exploration which is the real star of Death Howl. 

Gameplay – Hardcore Turn-Based Action 

Death Howl mostly has two forms of gameplay: exploration and turn-based combat. On the exploration side, you can wander through the different environments with the analogue stick and collect items with the cross button. I enjoyed interacting with NPCs and parts of the environment, and Ro will begin a dialogue, whether it’s just one statement or a full conversation.

There are also some environmental puzzles to solve that can unlock small secret areas and boss fights. These were probably the most rewarding sections of Death Howl for me, other than defeating a frustrating encounter. 

While you explore, you’ll come across puzzles hidden in the environment

Regarding the turn-based combat, this is the meatier side of Death Howl and where the game’s difficulty kicks in. It’s built around a grid, a 20-card deck, 20 health points, and a specific amount of action points. Each turn, you draw five cards and have five action points to spend. Each card costs an amount of AP to play; movement also costs AP, which adds to the strategy.

Health in Death Howl doesn’t reset after each battle unless you rest at a Sacred Shrine, which functions like bonfires from Dark Souls. However, like Dark Souls, enemies respawn, so you’re constantly stuck going back and forth. This leads you to two options: gamble and try to progress with low health, or reset and grind encounters. 

Use your cards wisely to defeat each enemy

Speaking of grinding, you’ll be doing that a lot. Most areas have roughly three safe points, where you’ll often have to clear three or more encounters back to back to heal. Often, my runs would be bad from the first encounter, where by the second, I’ve got under 8 health points, making the rest of the run doomed.

This caused so much rinse and repeat, and eventually a grinding loop that felt more punishing than rewarding. It’s worse when the RNG hits you really bad with weak first few hands, causing your strategy to collapse. 

Explore each realm and plan your route accordingly for an easier journey

One of the biggest issues I had with Death Howl was navigating through the menu. With the PS5 controls, you can easily end up on the wrong tab, even with the shortcuts. There’s also the annoyance of not immediately knowing where your cursor is located, causing you to click on the wrong thing.

This sounds like a minor issue, but for a game where you frequently need to adjust your deck and consult the map, it’s easy to become frustrated. 

Deckbuilding and Strategy – Fun At Times, Though Mostly A Massive Chore

Within Death Howl, cards are themed after each realm, providing different actions during combat. Cards can offer traversal actions, mana abilities, close-quarter attacks, ranged attacks, and more. You can customise your deck to create numerous different strategies combining all types of cards.

Sadly, if you use cards outside of their realm, the AP cost goes up by one. This creates an annoying obstacle where you’re somewhat forced to leave one strategy for another, just to avoid that extra cost. On paper, this sounds like an interesting idea, but with some decks from one realm feeling superior to others, being forced to use cards from other realms can ruin your overall strategy, especially with tougher enemies. 

Unlock quest cards by interacting with specific NPCs found in each realm

This issue persists with certain special cards rewarded by NPCs, though it’s worse since they can’t be played outside their realm. Alongside this negative trait, you also can’t use fast travel while it’s equipped, creating an even more brutal experience.

Another branch of the deckbuilding comes in the form of the overall progression mechanic. With what howls you have left, you can bank them to create tears and spend them on realm-specific skills. These skills can provide an edge in combat, though, since you don’t get to keep them throughout each realm, you kind of forget about them. 

Graphics & Audio – Spiritual Pixels

The art style chosen for Death Howl is a pixel art style, with a deliberate choice of colour and shading technique, that works excellently to convey a spirit world. It comes across as an almost empty limbo of sorts, lacking much to look at beyond some scattered bits of land, such as trees and rocks. Character designs look unique, especially for the main character.

The monsters you fight are a mix of animals and mystical creatures that represent the dead. The spirit NPCs truly steal the show, with some featuring traditional mystical animal designs and others being utterly insane.

Audio also does good work here, keeping tension high without becoming too noisy. The music for Death Howl fits the atmosphere of the spirit realm, whether in combat or out exploring the world. 

Death Howl was reviewed on PS5 courtesy of a code from Evolve PR.