DEAD OR SCHOOL

Within the first twenty minutes of playing Dead or School, I found myself pissed off at the amount of cutscenes and tutorials I had to sit through before I actually got to play, and being my ADHD self, I uninstalled and shelved the game back in 2023. That was a stupid decision, and one that I regret. But that was me a whole three and a half years ago. Fast forward, it's now 2026, and I am a new and totally different person; one who has an abundance of patience, maturity and understanding. And so, last night around 2am I reinstalled the game again -out of boredom- and I am happy to report that I accidentally played it until 7am. But i was off the next day, so its k. Anyway, Dead or School is stellar in the weirdest way. It is so uniquely Japanese and clearly developed by a tiny team, but it's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good. It's a genius mix of Metroidvania, JRPG, and action adventure where you recruit a team and try to fight your way to the surface of Tokyo. Along the way you loot tons of weapons, upgrades, and modifications from enemies you defeat, and then progressively upgrade your gear and character as time goes on. Although it can sometimes feel janky and unpolished, it almost contributes t…

I want to be fair. The developer had good ideas. That's my review. Highly not recommended. But also want to be sincere: Unity slop; asset flip galore; feature creep extravaganza! After this it suffers from all the classics, horny bait without commitment (there is no nudity or mechanics attached to the clothes, you are either on critical state with teared clothes or you are an anime schoolgirl, which for me makes no difference but it may be what you are looking for in this side scroller game), disorganized and poorly delivered story, ZOMBIES, DO YOU LIKE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSES, KIDS? WELL YOU BETTER OR ELSE... Unhinged balance when it comes to weapons, enemy health pools and SPEED, this bosses are always in a hurry doing PK speedruns, you either killed them in one hit or you wait for the loading screen (wait for it... no, not yet... wait some more). The grinding gets insane after mid game point and there is no school only pain.

For a game developed only by three people, what started as a crowdfunding project ended up becomming reality due to the passion of game developers. I respect that alot. Graphics are very basic, but its unique, not for everyone but it works for me. It does contain alot of typical fan service, if you're into that. For a 2d style platforming action shooter its really fun. If you want a game that you dont want to take too seriously, lay back in the couch and launch it on the TV, its great and will give you a fun time, it is a bit hard even on normal mode, but if you're up for the challange it brings great satisfaction when completing one train station section. One annoying thing though is that the enemies do respawn everytime you get into a safesone to recharge your health and ammunition. It kind of defeats the purpose of shooting and slashing your way through the section only to retreat to recharge and have everything spawned back again. This game forces you to push through even with low HP until the next checkpoint, which can feel frustrating at times. 8/10 id say, thanks for reading! I dont really do reviews but eh gave this one a shot. :)

8.5/10 Completion time(Hard Mode): 42.9 hrs

Finally after all these years I beat the game. Solid Metroidvania. 7/10

I really liked the variety of puzzles, levels, characters, and weapons. the combat got a little repetitive tho