Days of Doom (Nintendo Switch) Review

Days of Doom has a lot of great ideas, some blatant directions it should have gone, and some critical flaws. What is presented here isn't pretty; there are just too many things wrong with it to recommend at all, and short of a tremendous overhaul is unlikely to ever improve. Unfortunately, the premise is actually pretty good. A rogue-like where a random group of survivors who battle across a wasteland to try to make it to the promised land are controlled. The type of characters ranges from a big melee guy, to a fast gunslinger, and to magical units like a 'hydromancer' or a priestess. It sadly sounds a more interesting than it actually is. While each unit's starting position is slightly different, for example the gunslinger can hit an enemy at three tiles away, these small differences quickly fall away in the battle system and units do not upgrade or change in any meaningful way.

To explain this further, battles are conducted in a typical grid formation except the battlefield is very small, and units can on average run across half of it in a single turn. What that means in reality is target range and tactics are almost pointless. Zombies rush at the team and it turns into a slugfest. The only element that significantly counts is damage. To this end, many of the characters are largely imbalanced; for example the gunslinger does more outright damage, and because of this fact is completely better than some of the other units.

Days of Doom misses so badly anything that might have made it really cool. While units do level up, it adds a mere few points of damage and little else. No new moves, no unlocks, no picking a stat to focus on, nothing. It would have been so easy and interesting to have a simple skill tree system. Can the melee character get some new moves or auras, or how about the water-wielding mage get…well anything beyond a basic attack? The answer of course is no, and while there is a very basic item system, it is also forgettable.
It seems like the general insults to modern game sensibilities don't end anywhere, as even the rogue-like parts are boring. Any upgrades are very, very sparse, very expensive, and mostly meaningless. It might be something like 'gain +5% food' and several good runs would be needed to afford the starter unlock. It offers yet another reason to not want to keep playing.

Diving into Days of Doom the graphics, the genre, and the premise all seemed really impressive. But everything from its half-baked gameplay, to its lack of upgrades kills any enjoyment. The absolute worst part, is during the multiple (attempted) runs, there was over a 50% chance the game was going to crash after any victory in battle. In a way it felt fitting for the general incomplete nature of the game.