Dex

Dex is a side-scrolling action RPG straight out of the 90s. It is, of course, not literally straight out of the 90s - it was released in 2015 - but everything about it, from its plot to its structure to its combat, emphasise what its inspirations are and what it’s hoping the player will draw from it.
You play as Dex, a woman suddenly and unceremoniously awakened and tossed into a world of omniscient AIs, all-powerful corporations, and hacker collectives determined to do everything in their power to fight back against the inevitability of the corporate autocracy. With the fate of free will itself on the line, it’s up to Dex to stop the corporations and save Harbor Prime.
It is, as I said, a plot straight out of the 90s. Hacker collectives, that the inevitable corporate takeover is, in fact, evitable, leather trenchcoats, it’s all very, very 90s. It is, in a way, deeply sweet, and feels like an artefact of a bygone age while still very clearly being a product of the modern world.
Throughout my Dex playthrough, the game I was most vividly reminded of was Beneath a Steel Sky. Like Dex, Beneath a Steel Sky is a sidescrolling action RPG set in a cyberpunk dystopia. It too features a protagonist who is the only one who can save his world, and it too explores how the dystopia came to be and the consequences of letting it persist and grow. Both also feature an expansive, engrossing world, interesting side characters, and a narrative that feels much bigger than it is.
At the risk of rehashing an old post, in my Beneath a Steel Sky review , I explored the nature of the game’s dystopia and what that said about how dystopias themselves have changed. Beneath a Steel Sky is a true 90s game, having been released in 1994, and its dystopia in many ways reflects that time period. It has an optimistic dystopia, one that can be undone with the right application of gumption, kindness, and prophecy.
Dex clearly emerged from the same vein as Beneath a Steel Sky, albeit twenty years later and with a whole world of game development behind it. Structurally, it closely resembles Beneath a Steel Sky, with its saviour protagonist and corporate dystopia. It’s in how it approaches this dystopia and what the future of humanity can actually look like in a post-autocracy world that the game’s true age shows through.
Part of what fascinated me in Beneath a Steel Sky was the optimism within its dystopia. The dystopia of Beneath a Steel Sky could be beaten, and a better world could emerge. This idea that a better world can be built from the ashes of the old is an almost uniquely 90s idea. It’s an ethos derived from the post-Soviet, pre-9/11 world, where the only thing we had to fear was another bout of the Macarena.
This is not the ethos of Dex. There is no rebuilding from the ashes in Dex, just the scraping together of what’s left of one’s humanity from the dregs autocracy has left behind. For all the lightheartedness and richness of the world Dex builds, the fundamental core cannot recapture the naivety that made the 90s what they were. The game’s ending and the inevitable march towards it are very much products of a world that understands there are no more happy endings, just variations on a sickening theme. As much as I enjoyed basking in the nostalgia that Dex built, feeling that ending creeping in served as a reminder that nostalgia is just that - a rose-tinted version of the past. There is no reclamation of that sense of innocence. There is no going back.
That inability to truly go back into the past doesn’t stop Dex from trying, though, both thematically and mechanically. Dex is, once again, a 2D sidescrolling action RPG, complete with the sense that the game is one long corridor. There is some verticality, and the game includes some light platforming, but the bulk of Dex’s time is spent running from one location to another, chatting with people, solving problems, and investigating the various mysteries she encounters. These are staples of the game style, and absolutely trigger that sense of 90s nostalgia.
She also gets in fights. The fights are awful.
Combat is a core part of Dex’s gameplay, with multiple quests focusing on eliminating dens of enemies, or retrieving something that can only be found on the other end of a gun muzzle. Combat takes two forms - physical, with punching and gunplay, and digital, where Dex delves into digital domains, fighting off viruses and retrieving data.
Much like the rest of the game, Dex tries to maintain a 90s aesthetic in its combat structure, though this is a bit easier with the physical combat than the digital. However, in both cases, combat is an absolutely tedious slog to the point where I did everything I possibly could to avoid it.
Dex uses both ranged and melee combat mechanics. Its ranged mechanics rely on a variety of guns doing the generic aim and shoot thing, while also having a variety of bonuses depending on the type of gun. Its melee mechanics follow a similarly familiar pattern of punching, blocking, and dodging.
Both are tedious and abysmal in a way that feels like the worst evocation of 90s gameplay.
Guns take an eternity to aim and load, making them useless in many fights. The melee alternative, however, is underbaked, with punching being the only option. While players can invest skills to improve both guns and melee, the cost of that investment is high, and, in the case of melee, slight. That there are no melee weapons suggests the devs fully expected players to play with the ranged weapons. However, with how annoying guns are to use, especially on touchpad, the incentive to actually invest the skillpoints into ranged skills is minimal. I ended up avoiding combats, just sprinting through to the objective as much as I could.
The digital combat system is the one area of the game that has not been dragged kicking and screaming out of its resting place in the 90s, instead being very clearly designed for this game specifically. In many ways, that works well for the game, with the digital system having more variety in its mechanics and fight structures than the physical combat. Here too, however, the combat gets tedious, with death being no real disincentive, and a limited number of only vaguely accessible abilities. This means that, much like with physical combat, I tried to avoid digital combat, and when it could no longer be avoided, I braced myself for a slog of an experience.
As charming as Dex is as a whole, it’s difficult to overlook the deep flaws that stem from its loving adherence to nostalgia. The reality of gaming is that we have moved past the mechanics and trends of the 90s. There is a reason combat is generally no longer fixed in 2D sidescrollers, and instead has become a more intricate and customised experience. Even then, Dex’s implementation of a 90s-esque combat system is shallow, leaving room for that fundamental mechanic to just be boring and annoying.
That’s the irony of nostalgia. As we don our rose-coloured glasses to look back at a more naive era, we see only the things that were beautiful. We see the optimism of Beneath a Steel Sky’s dystopia, but not the tedium of its moon logic. As Dex recreates the 90s, it does so by capturing both the positive and negative elements. Its story and world are lush and inviting. I wanted to get lost in Harbor Prime, and looked forward to loading the game up to see where the story would take me next. However, I also dreaded when it asked me to actually engage with the gameplay elements, like combat, knowing they were rough, and I would get frustrated and bored. The past is a multi-fanged beast, rolling over for belly scritches, but sinking in its fangs as soon as you try to capture that bliss.
If you enjoyed this review, please check out the full version . Thanks for reading!

bad ass progression in a cyber punk setting with good hand to hand combat, silent take downs, guns if you prefer more action than stealth the upgrades are something to look forward too. the story keeps you wanting to find out whats next and the actors do a great job, not a single silly dialog and i was waiting for it... overall a very enjoyable game and the only game i have gone out my way to purchase on steam, love this game :) .

Dex is a flawed yet entertaining title that fails to be anything more than mediocre. I was intrigued to explore the world of Dex at first, but as I got more familiar with the game, its imperfections became more and more obvious. Dex’s story is interesting despite the usual cyberpunk clichés regarding megacorporations and artificial intelligence, but is marred by bad writing and not-so-good voice acting. Likewise the world is gorgeous to look at with lovingly crafted environments, but the whole city is essentially one long corridor that becomes a chore to navigate later on. Controls are also clunky and combat sequences are essentially an exercise of button mashing. Dex tries to change things up by introducing a hacking minigame which is fun for a while, but becomes repetitive too quickly. Overall, for everything the game does right, it leaves a lot more to be desired. I wish the game had more polished mechanics to keep things interesting for longer. Despite all this, Dex can be a decent way to spend a weekend and some fun can be had here if you enjoy cyberpunk settings.

Fun little cyberpunk RPG that is much higher quality than what you'd expect from an indie studio. Music and voice acting are great (impressive that it even had voice acting at all), and combat was still a bit of a challenge even at the end game. There are lots moral choices and different solutions to most quests to encourage a replay.

A fairly short and sweet game. a little rough around the edges combat wise, especially at the beginning of the game. I barely used guns throughout the game honestly. I even 100% this game, but sadly 2 of my achievements got bugged and wouldn't register, even though I did what the game wanted...
Overall, for the heavily discounted price I paid, this was a fun little game that kept me hooked to completion.
If you want an easier start with this game, I highly recommend you put a point into AR as soon as possible. Hacking most bad guys will will stun them, allowing you to go right behind them and perform a takedown. This allows you trivialize most encounters in the game until you start coming up against heavier combatants; but by then, you should have a decent inventory and level-ups to compensate. After which, definitely try to get at least 1 point in Lockpicking near immediately, with maxing it out being a priority after the 1 point in charisma. Speaking of Charisma, get at least 1 point in Charisma as early as possible (it was my very first or second spent skill point spent). I also highly recommend a minimum of Hacking level 4 sooner than later. After which, you should have a good foundation for the rest of your playthrough.

An engaging fusion of metroidvania and beat-em-up with some ninja/assassin stuff and arcade hacking sequences combined with good story, character advancement and exploration elements. The controls take 15 minutes to get used to. It's pure joy to play and accessible to anyone with decent motoric skills, not just platformer fanatics.

Now the IMPORTANT part: SAVE YOUR GAME just about before finishing hack on the Eclipse level to avoid the very bad taste and uncalled for gotcha! moment. Otherwise you might have your experience and keyboard ruined just like I did.

Nice little Cyberpunk game. Side quests and voice actings are surprisingly good. Cyberpunk atmosphere is really good, you can definitely feel it. But some of the game mechanics are not good at all. I won't say terrible but not good.
Overall I liked the game. Especially if you have Steam Deck, you should consider playing it in your free time.