This is a first for me and I don’t mean writing about TV Shows. I already did that first with “Steven Universe” and in retrospective, that sounds wrong. No, it’s a first that I’m covering a Kamen Rider show and well, Ex Aid is my first time watching Kamen Rider. For those who don’t know what Kamen Rider is, Kamen Rider is pretty an Japanese alternative to Power Rangers (known as Super Sentai in Japan) and I often use its music in my Inzektor videos (check out my YouTube channel if you are curious). Each series has a different gimmick but each one has the base plot of a guy gets the power to transform (or in the words of Kamen Rider, HENSHIN) into a Rider using a belt and whatever gimmick device they made for the season. If you can’t tell, I’m still an absolute noob to Kamen Rider since I was only introduced to the series this year and for me, it’s more a slightly more mature Power Rangers (fun fact: Super Sentai and Kamen Rider did have a crossover episode). Nevertheless, I am planning to cover more of this series in the future because I’m loving this series so let’s get into why I love it and of course, expect spoilers.
So Ex Aid follows our lead known as Emu Hojo who’s not only a genius gamer but is also an intern at the local hospital after being inspired to become a doctor in his younger years. There is also a virus going around known as the “Game Disease” which manifests itself in humans and becomes your typical villain known as Bugsters for that episode once they break out of the patient. Armed with this knowledge, a game company of all things known as Gemn Corp design the Gashats (pronounced Ga-Shat) and Gamer Belts with the gashats are games and allow them to turn into a rider based on that game via the belts. Using this, Emu can become Kamen Rider Ex Aid as he begins working in the special Cyber Rescue department who deals with the bugster menace. That’s my very basic synopsis of the first arc because despite being a kid’s show, the plots of the later Kamen Rider series are usually very complex which according to my friend who knows more on Kamen Rider and says it gets worse with Wizard so I guess we got lucky with this one. Nevertheless, I find the plot to be serviceable at the beginning since it just introduces the other riders such as Snipe, Lazer and Brave who have their own little gimmicks based on what gashat they use. If anything, the pacing is a little bit off because for a forty-five episode long series, it does feel rushed in places. Like, Ex Aid gets his first level three upgrade by episode six and then they track down a level five gashat by episode nine. It just feels like the plot is moving a little too fast in terms of progression but this is a kids show so I guess it’s somewhat acceptable. What’s not so acceptable is the flatness of all the characters in terms of personality.
This is a kids show so of course the characters will be very generic stereotypes. Ex Aid (yes, I will be referring to them with their rider names since it’s easier) is your good guy doctor who wants to save everyone, Brave is your cold hearted professional and Snipe is the anti hero. They are all very basic which makes story beats very predictable because you know what character is going to do next in the context of the story. It’s like watching a bunch of paper cut outs acting out a very predictable story but nevertheless, it’s still entertaining because the action distracts you from the badly written plot and characters. If you want some form of interesting characters, we have Gemn and he is just the god complex stereotype and Pallad who I think has the best character arc within the series but that isn’t saying much. He spends the first fifteen episodes just being an ass and then we spends the rest of the season being the actual main baddie with Gemn until Chronos shows up where he turns good because he is sick of Chronus’ crap. It’s all flat and that sums up my thoughts on the whole aspect. Keep in mind, the plot and the characters is only bad if you actually pay attention to it and nitpick because this is a kids show aimed at slightly older children so the action is what’s worth talking about so with that said, let’s talk about the production values.
I am going to say it now, I love the production values and that’s just Kamen Rider in general. Of what I seen in Ex Aid and clips of other series, Kamen Rider has incredible production values for not only a TV show but for a kids show. I usually expect crap from these kids show but Kamen Rider’s high production value and standards is probably what makes it popular with more mature audiences. The fights are not only well choreographed and keep you hyped but the music they use is just the cherry on the top. The music used in the series is just brilliant and I still listen to it in my daily life. While there is a lot of good songs in just the Ex Aid run, my personal recommendations are “Crazy Paradox” which is Pallad’s main song and “Wish In The Dark” which is Gemn’s main song. They are both amazing, especially Wish In The Dark and are great for self hyping. Back on the topic of the production values, I think the special effects are also well done. While it’s a little jarring at times, I think the CGI holds up most of the time especially during the first episode because that’s just an amazing fight scene for the pilot. With that all said though, I think Ex Aid has one of the weaker transformation sequences in the series.
You see, when a rider transform, it’s normally this amazing and over the top sequence which pretty much defies how good that rider is outside of their costume design and finishing move. For me, there is only three sequences I like which is Gemn’s Dangerous Zombie, Pallad’s Perfect Knockout and Chronus’s Kamen Rider Chronicle and while they aren’t as cool as Zi-O’s, I find them amazing and always find myself getting hyped but those are for the bad guys. For me, the supposed good guys are all very boring when it comes their transformation and this counts towards their costumes. Brave’s design is just a very generic knight design and Snipe has that stupid ass cape that looks weird on him and their level 3 forms are ehh but not mentionable but level 50 forms is where it gets effy. While Brave gets this cool demon king looking form with Taddle Fantasy, they just strapped parts of a battleship for Snipe’s Bang Bang Simulation and don’t get me even started on Ex Aid’s form. Shakari Sports is just a bike strapped to him, Geoshiki Robots is just a red metal arm and his Mighty Max form is just clunky and ugly like the rider’s level 1 forms and I am not going to bring up his god form. If I was to give any props to Emu’s Rider outfits, Mighty Brothers XX is cool with the inverted colour pallets for the brothers and I do kind of like Juju Burger even if it’s a one off form and don’t worry, the costume designs for the remaining riders aren’t too bad. I mean, Gemn before Dangerous Zombie is just Dark Ex Aid, Graphite is a little weird, Pallad’s switching between Perfect Puzzle and Knockout Fighter was cool in the ways he changes forms but gets much better when the gashats become one and Chronus will always be a badass with his trench coat look. While I haven’t seen not much of the other series outside of the first episode of Zi-O and an AMV of OOO (pronounced Oz for some reason), I feel like the custom design is lacking for both riders and the bugsters but I will return to that thought at a later date once I have experienced more of the series.
For me, Ex Aid is serviceable at worst and a great addition to the series at best. While what I seen in the first episode of Zi-O outshines the entire Ex Aid series (especially the transformation sequence. That was just so satisfying), Ex Aid is still fun in its own rights. I am going to give this the 6/10 with a solid recommendation from me. As for what newcomers to the franchise should watch, my friend recommends Build since it’s the latest completed series and the new series of Zi-O is just full of references that only long term rider fans would know. What I personally recommend is Ex Aid because I think it has a very simple plot to follow and the production quality is better than whatever Power Rangers make these days. Next time we visit Kamen Rider, I will be tackling Amazons (not Amazon) because my friend says it’s non canon and it has gore so I am excited for it. As for the next review, definitely a manga review because I have things to say about a very popular manga series and no, it’s not One Piece. I am not reading all +900 chapters for the 10th time just for reference. As per usual, if you want to see my other content, check out the side bar for my YouTube channel where I make badly edited videos and my steam profile if you want to donate something for me to review.
Yes, I know I promised to do Kamen Rider this week but as it turns out, trying to fit 48 episode long series within a week with still enough time for school, writing, making videos and living in general is pretty hard. So yeah, the Kamen Rider review has been pushed back until next week but don’t worry, I had this as a back up. So one of my friends on steam has saw that I had Dead Cells on my Wishlist and instead of gifting it to me, he just gave me his account details and let me play it on his account. I meaN, it’s efficient but it’s still pretty risky to trust your details to someone else but who am I to complain? I get to try before I buy so after violating his steam profile, I downloaded the game on my laptop and played it while watching Ex Aid and well, don’t expect this to be pleasant review like every other review outlet has done so far. Also, I have very limited knowledge on Dark Souls so if I make any references to Dark Souls, feel free to correct me where I am wrong but don’t do it in that normal Dark Souls way of screaming it at the person in an aggressive manner. With that out of the way, let’s get ready to die and die over again from boredom.
Dead Cells’ plot is like UBERMOSH’s plot which is means it’s super vague. To my understanding, a kingdom gets messed up by this virus that makes everyone into monsters and I think the king is to be blamed. Our character is a weird moss thing that keeps attaching itself to the same deheaded body of a prisoner and his goal is to make it to the kings room to probably kill him, I don’t know. I only have it made as far as the castle once because of reasons I will rip into later but it seems like you are harvesting cells to give to this collector guy which helps you unlock new equipment for later runs. It’s all just super vague and this is what I pieced together from the very little lore given to us through the t two runs, the area descriptions and whenever the game decides to spawn in a bit of background for our character to gawk at. While the plot isn’t very necessary, I’m going to bring up my original complaint from UBERMOSH and say that they should of made the lore a lot more accessible and not make it super vague but now I will add the additional compliant of don’t make it RNG based. I will be getting into that RNG thing later but the fact that the lore is tied to RNG is very annoying and unfortunately, that’s not the only thing that’s RNG.
The gameplay is pretty much Dark Souls except it’s 2D which means you don’t need to worry about dodging attacks on an extra axis and you still have the metrovania style of gameplay. Pretty much, you just slash at something until they die and you can dodge their attacks if you somehow can time it right considering everything has a delay to them. Yeah, I’m going to complain about the controls now because I hate them because everything has a delay which makes combat very annoying. I was playing this game at a nice smooth 60 FPS and there was this very annoying one second delay between my input and the command being executed. This makes dodging near impossible unless you have near future sight and if you are using a shield (because bows are for sensible human beings who like using range to their advantage), you might as well be rolling an dice when you wanna parry something. It’s just something that makes combat very tedious and means you are going to be burning through your health flasks quick. Alright, tangent done, let’s talk about the equipment you can get. You have constantly five slots with two slots dedicated for your melee and ranged weapons which includes your shields and two slots for your throwables with one slot for your health flasks. The melee weapons have the most diversity amongst them since you can choose whips, swords of different sizes, spears and hammers if you get lucky while your throwables range from grenades to turrets. Now, I don’t mind this approach because it allows the player to dedicate their style of approaching the combat but there is one little tiny thing that just ruins it but we will get there. This being a very metrovania style game, you can explore the randomly generated levels and dictate your path to the King’s Throne. On top of this, you are getting Cells that allow you to use them to unlock equipment for later runs and even runes which can What I also don’t mind is the fact they reward speed running with timed gates which can be unlocked if you reach them before the time is up and here’s a very helpful hint: Don’t even try to get to those gates. You will get more out of your run if you take the time and explore so it’s nice idea in concept but it’s horrible just like my main problem with this game.
A quick diversion before I talk about my main issue with the game and before you all ask, the graphics are fine. The cell shaded style makes the game look ok and while the character and enemy design can be a bit bland, I find everything else quite serviceable what it sets out to achieve. So what is my main complaint about this game? Simple, it’s too hard. Before you all give me your biggest Dark Souls “git gud”, here’s my reasoning why. To my understanding, everything in Dark Souls is hard coded from what you find in what area to where secrets are with the only RNG being attack patterns so it takes knowledge to know where these sort of things are and make your experience easier in later runs. Dead Cells has none of that. Yes, it does have RNG when it comes to attack patterns but the RNG doesn’t stop there. This game is a rogue like dungeon crawler with RNG elements and that’s what makes this game hard, especially as one that tries to ape on Dark Souls. Your equipment that you start with and you find is randomised, the level layout is randomised and what you can buy in shops is randomised. This level of RNG ruins the game because it now makes your preferred playstyle hard to achieve and this can make your run either much more harder or a cake walk. You know why I only got to the castle once during my many and many runs? It’s because I finally got lucky and for the equipment I needed to get that far but consider that only happened because of a one in million chance happened after hours of grinding cells. This RNG paired with the very annoying one second delay I mentioned earlier makes the combat very frustrated and turns what should be a skill based combat system into a DnD battle and that is what makes boss fights so frustrating, especially against Conjuctivitus. That boss is near impossible with the one second delay.
I would be probably been a lot easier on this game if I wasn’t in a slump right now but my point still stands. Even if they fix that one second delay, the RNG is rooted into the game mechanics which means unless they end up rooting the whole thing, it’s going to be permanently ruining the game. If you still wanna try it, go ahead but I don’t really recommend it. If you want a Dark Souls like game, just play Dark Souls or wait for “You Only Die Twice” next year. If there was a sale for the game, go get it but not at full price because this here is a solid 4/10. Next week is Kamen Rider Ex Aid and after that, maybe Fire Force. Until then, just check out my YouTube channel in the side bar if you want to see my other content and also my steam profile is there if you want to donate me anything for these reviews.
