CotND: Amplified has finally been released and even though i had a review of the early access release on the blog not just by me, but 5 other people (Which I recommend you read here: https://necrodancer.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/73/), the devs have added a lot in the months leading up to the release and now with the full release out it’s finally time to give the dlc another look.

First let’s talk about the new characters, starting with Nocturna.

The Nocturna part of the review is going to be split into 2 parts: Story and gameplay. They both are a huge spoiler regarding story, so SKIP TO THE NEXT 2 CHARACTERS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED.’

Story: Since the story cutscenes are left very open to interpretation, I’ve compiled my version of the story below, but I recommend also checking out the beautiful ingame cutscenes compiled by BulletNick here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ika_-XC2S9c

Nocturna got bitten by a vampire when she was young and now has to be a servant of the vampire clan. She has to drink blood to quench her hunger but she feels wrong suffering an endless pain. She finds out about stories about the conductor and her bringing the dead back to life and wants to end the suffering of other beings like her. Nocturna explores the conductor’s labs finding corpses, who have been electrified by the lute’s energy along the way. The conduits are the lute’s energy flowing in the walls. Before getting to the conductor she has to kill Frankensteinwey, a stitched up zombie piano, who is trying to stop her from getting to the conductor. After defeating Frankensteinwey, Nocturna faces the conductor. She tries to speak to the conductor about her causing the suffering of the beings she creates, but the conductor tries to tell her she is creating miracles by creating life. After defeating the conductor, Nocturna get’s fueled with rage, thrashing the conductor’s lab, but before destroying the lute, Nocturna briefly sees herself as a human again in a reflection. She stops herself, and instead takes the lute with her, and flies away.

Now, gameplay: Nocturna has 2 main things to her experience: Her bat form and the zone 5 oozing into other zones. She starts with 3 hearts and a new weapon in the dlc: the cutlass, which allows the player to parry attacks like blademasters when attacking, making her practically invincible when played well. Nocturna has one of her spell slots permanently taken by her ability to transform. Her bat form makes all her items nonexistant when in bat form, it has 4 damage and the attack range of a dagger, you heal half a heart after every 5 kills and take half a heart of damage when turning back to Nocturna (The damage can be mitigated by using the spell while on exit stairs).

She, like Cadence, has 2 story end bosses: Frankensteinwey and The Conductor. Frankensteinwey’s fight is kinda similar to dead ringer’s with it having 4 shields in the room with each phase of the fight choosing one of the shields you have to disable to be able do damage to Frankensteinwey. During the fight the floor gets electrified with different patterns which deal 1 damage to you.

The conductor’s fight has 2 phases. First phase, where you have tho go along the conduit to charge up your hit and destroy the 4 golden instruments, after destroying each instrument, a miniboss and it’s companions in normal enemies spawn. After destroying each instrument, the second phase starts, where you have to discharge the conductor’s batteries by electrifying enemies while standing on the conduits.

Both of the fights are quite challenging and fun with my favourite being the conductor’s. They both require you to figure out the boss’ weakness which is a nice break from the old story bosses.

The full release also added 2 new characters, Tempo and Mary on top of Diamond.

Tempo has infinite damage and starts with a blood dagger, but has one major downside. He is on a constant timer to keep killing enemies to stay alive, with if you can’t kill an enemy every 16 beats, you instantly die.

Mary on the other hand starts with a spear and cookies (No other reason than it being cute) and has a lamb following her at all times no return mode style. The lamb dies instantly when hit leaving Mary bleeding out 1 heart every beat. Mary can protect the sheep by walking on the same tile as it and tanking the damage.

Diamond can move diagonally. That’s it, but it’s an amazing thing to be able to do. It adds so much to the movement, making you be able to play really fast or really safe.

The other big part of the full release is the new modes of which there are 5

The new modes drastically change the way you play. Mystery mode gives all sprites exept the player a ? sprite, leaving you guessing about the build you have or the enemies you are fighting. Randomizer mode is a callback to a mod from the community, that randomizes enemy sprites and movements. The mode is a fun mess to play around with a lot of intricacies with some hair pulling moments included. Phasing mode is the same as you having a ring of phasing without it taking up a ring slot (Thanks Ryan for lessening the meaning of my last post). It’s a nice way to keep the old way of making characters easier in it’s own bubble. No return is basically an unbreakable shrine of no return red square following you at all times. Hard mode does exactly that, makes the game harder. It adds more enemies, 2 minibosses on every floor and an unbreakable sarcophagus in every room spawning enemies.

Now some misc rambling about the new stuff, because there is just so much, that we would be here for a while if I would write it all out.

The new boss Fortissimole is a nice addition to the roster of the already colorful crew. Fortissimole is a rapping mole, thus it’s song is the first song in necrodancer with a vocal part. The dlc has a new remix by OverClocked studios and new songs for zone 5 and all of the new bosses. All of the songs are amazing and my favourite thing has to be the 10% chance of death metal’s song being a polka version when playing with the FamilyJules7x remix.

The recurring theme with the new items seems to be skillful usage. Every item in the dlc seems to have a high level use or a weird interaction when used in unintended ways. My favourite items from the dlc are the earth spell, axe, throwing stars, cookies and snowbro (Just look at the guy).

In general the devs have done an amazing job with the dlc. If you like the base game at least a little bit, I really recommend getting the dlc. I bought it the second it came out ad haven’t regretted it a single bit. For a live demonstration of Nocturna by high level players I recommend looking at the Launch Tournament on the 15th of July at 2pm edt on twitch.tv/eladdifficult . Feel free to comment about what are your favourite parts about the dlc down below and on reddit. I know I missed quite a lot of the new things just because of the sheer amount of things added and the amount of time it was in early access meant the new things already feel so homey to me.