

And "better" guns and items are all but guaranteed to only drop on later levels, the same levels that most players will need the good items to even get to.

The core mechanic of Enter makes its returnthe abundance of different guns the player can. Most guns are about as weak as your starting gun, and that's only IF you get a useful one from a chest. The goal is simple: ride the elevator to the top of the Gungeon while shooting everything in sight. Item unlocks shouldn't feel pointless, but they do. Enter The Gungeon is a brilliantly tactile, endlessly replayable twin-stick roguelike that sits right up there with the very best indie games on Nintendo Switch. You shouldn't have to mag dump all but the most basic enemies to kill them. Health bonuses shouldn't be gated behind not needing them. Why am I going to try to grind runs when every run feels the same as every other run, other than the minuscule chance that I'll find one of the guns I unlocked (that turns out to be even weaker than my starting gear)? Enter the Gungeon is a bullet hell dungeon crawler following a band of misfits seeking to shoot, loot, dodge roll and table-flip their way to personal. Same with Rogue Legacy, Hollow Knight, even Binding of Isaac. Dead Cells always feels like I'm making progress, even in failure. Other games in the Roguelike genre always make the player feel like they're getting somewhere, even if a run doesn't pan out. Enter The Gungeon is here to join them, adding a bit of sprite-swaddled goodness to the mix. It's not the Roguelike or Bullet Hell elements that are putting me off the most, it's the fact I never feel like I'm making any sort of headway. Too much of it is just feels tedious instead of challenging. I like the aesthetic, the sound design, and the bones of the game, but there's too many frustrating elements to the game for me to enjoy it.
