Dead Cells: The Queen and the sea (review)

Jan 6, 2022

Developed by: Motion Twin and Evil Empire
Released: January 6, 2022 (PC, Nintendo Switch, Playstation, Xbox)

In the past couple of years, the roguelike genre has become one of my favorites. One of my favorite games of recent time is coming out with its third piece of DLC and I was lucky enough to review this content. Dead Cells is releasing, The Queen and the Sea DLC, bringing new levels, weapons, and armor to unlock, and let me tell you if you were looking for a reason to jump back to this game, now it’s your chance.

If you are a fan of Dead Cells, you are probably already going to play this. For this review, I want to talk to those that may have jumped off the game and were waiting to come back or those that have never played Dead Cells and want to try it out now. In Queen and the Sea, you are treated to three new levels: an infested Shipwreck, a lighthouse, and the crown. Now, just for the sake of honesty, I have not been able to make it to the crown as this piece of content is one of the most challenging in my opinion, so I’ll review what I have seen.

New Challenges & Experiences

The Shipwreck feels like your typical Dead Cells level. You will go through it and fight tons of enemies and try to make your way out. The Lighthouse, however, is where Queen and the Sea becomes a little different. This level is not for the faint of heart. In the Lighthouse level, you will be treated to three mini-bosses. The catch here is that you have to keep moving as this lighthouse is on fire and your goal is to get to the top of that burning tower. Inside the Lighthouse level, you are treated to fast pace action. If you wanted a new experience with Dead Cells, this is it. Dead Cells is truly at its best at the Lighthouse level.

Within this DLC you will also get to unlock 10 new weapons and 15 new outfits. Now I have not discovered all of the new weapons, but the ones that I did were a lot of fun to play with. Dead Cells once again grabbed me with its addicting gameplay loop of unlocking new weapon blueprints and trying to get just enough cells to unlock these for my next run.

The biggest problem with this piece of DLC is how you unlock this content. If it hadn’t been for a review guide that was provided, I’m not sure I would have been able to unlock this content. Once I did unlock the content and knew exactly what I was doing I was able to enjoy, The Queen and the Sea.

Worth Playing & Coming Back For

If you never played Dead Cells, I suggest you go and try it now. The base game comes with 16 biomes and they have just added more with each DLC. Not only do you have plenty of biomes to discover, but you also have hundreds of weapon blueprints to unlock. The amount of content that’s found on this game, is truly unmatched.

In my opinion, Dead Cells continues to be the best roguelike game on the Nintendo Switch. The Queen and the Sea DLC just made it a lot better. 2022 is starting strong with this DLC.

Score: 9.0