Looking over at some of the concept art and pictures that came before the release of Gods Will Fall. One thing was obvious. Clever Beans took quite a bit of inspiration from every direction that they could and mashed it up into this monstrosity of a game called Gods Will Fall. The premise is simple: Gods were once mighty rulers over their worshippers, bestowing them with fortune and glory as they deemed fit. Though they didn’t do this free-willingly. For their boons, they requested tithes and sacrifices. For a while this was fine, but their hunger grew, and their demands escalated into an unforgiving amount of bloodshed until the people could stand it no longer. Clans and warbands organized and gathered with one sole purpose. To bring these “gods” down! So, they set unto the sea, where tragedy struck once again. The gods unleashed their wrath and sent massive waves crashing down upon the travelers, taking their ships down to the bottom of the ocean while drowning every soul that wandered the decks of these foolish boats… Or so they thought. For unbeknownst to them, some adventurers did make it to the shore of their island with just one goal in mind. Revenge their fallen brethren and lay down every one of these so-called gods. Would they succeed? Or will they follow the fate of their drowned companions? That? Rests in your hands and your hands alone. So let’s find out while we delve deep down into Clever Beans ‘s dungeon crawler, Gods Will Fall.
We played Gods Will Fall for 5 hours on Xbox Series X
What we liked!
- Concept: Conceptually Gods Will Fall is amazing. It lends a bit out of every genre out there. It’s kind of rogue-like, with every run having different kind of loot drops. It’s kind of Dungeon Crawler with you choosing a warrior to enter a dungeon and making you fight your way up to the boss. It’s kind of a resource-based game as well, since it gives you usable items during and at the end of the dungeon, if you were ever to succeed that is. While all of these things factor in for a great game, it kind of … falls short after a while. Though Gods Will Fall is an amazing proof of concept on paper, the execution is kind of wonky.
Honestly guys, my first few hours playing it, I was beyond joy because I was truly enjoying myself. But then that sweet honeymoon phase faded away, and I started to see the game ‘s true colors. And it wasn’t that pretty, sadly enough. - Random Crew: Each run you make will give you a different crew with different weapons and stories. Some are hidden and reveal themselves as either you succeed a dungeon or fail a dungeon. I had one crew member who got boosted to insane proportions after I lost one of my other crew members in a dungeon. Everything gets RNG rolled. Names, looks, weapons and statistics. These are important, for some gods will require you to have a tanky character to take them on, while other gods will demand a speedy character. One tip? If you go for Morrigan? Take a speedy character… But no matter how you look at it. You can go for every god the way you want. I had a huge preference for the spears, while other people might prefer the tanky yet sturdy warhammer wielding characters. Or maybe you’d feel more at home swinging a sword around or jumping right into their face while clubbing them down with dual battle hammers?
Somewhere between
- Music: Having just installed a brand-new home-cinema system I couldn’t wait to play Gods Will Fall. Those opening bass tones really put me into the mood. The eery and mysterious music drew me in to then… Wait? What was it that I was hearing? No, it’s just in my mind, right? Lets just continue playi… No, I’m not hearing this wrong. The music… it… it’s on a loop. Sometimes even so hard, that the song started, to start all over again because I changed scenery. What was this? Why didn’t I hear this in my first hour playing Gods Will Fall? And then it struck me. The game pulls you in with a bang, and then just teeters off, and fast. Laying bare some of its bigger flaws.
- Impossible difficulties: So, I know that Gods Will Fall has a thing with randomness, and that each god will have randomly generated difficulty stats as well. For instance, in one of my runs the first god that I went to had 2 screen spanning life bars. I hit a game over, so I restarted. Went to that god again and boom, 1 health bar this time. So, I get that this is a thing in the game that was put there deliberately. My gripe with this is, you do not get to see the God ‘s difficulty unless you enter that dungeon. So, sure you might say, I’ll just back out, right? Well, wrong. The thing with Gods Will Fall is that, once you enter a dungeon. You can’t come out. Either you kill that dungeon ‘s God, or you lose that champion until you defeat him with another champion. If you do so? You’ll get your lost warrior back. There is no indication outside that would even hint at how difficult a god could be. Sure, you could kill the god, but you’ll have a hard time doing so. For every creature will be equally power boosted while you might be going in there with just a rusty sword or spear. I’m not saying its bad. It just might turn off potential fans because they run into difficult bosses each time, while there are other gods out there that are easier and allow you to scale your group up as well.
- Static enemy positions: And while each run sports RNG based stats and whatnot? Enemy positions stay the same per dungeon. I mean, talk about lazy design. Some maps are massive, yet so totally under-utilized. I had parts where I didn’t encounter one enemy. Whilst turning around caused me to run away just as fast as I came because I encountered a wiener fest. And thus, I thought, hey, in my next run it’ll be more spread about, right? Wrong. After my Game Over, I started that same god, and met every enemy minion in the same place all over again. So, they randomized everything BUT enemy placement? Oh, come on…
- Tends to be quite short: Obviously when I hit my first Game Over, I was furious and went for a rematch! The first god? 1 health bar… Done! 2nd god? Easy! Third god?! Hah! Pushover… And then I noticed something… My timer counted 15 minutes. So, I did some quick math, if I am this lucky and continue? I could kill all 10 gods in under 2 hours and thus it struck me. Gods Will Fall isn’t made for a long play-through, but for short burst sessions and even then, it would amount into the same feeling. A feeling of quick boredom because there are only three to four enemy types per dungeon where some are just re-skinned enemies. Damn… What a bummer, and that for this price point?
- Hitboxes, what?: Dip Duck Dive Dodge… Sure that ‘s something worthwhile to do, if the game was just as accurate with how you do your hits. At times I could hit enemies with ease, while other times, depending if they were slightly elevated or I was higher then them, that same attack move wouldn’t even connect. While you see that it clearly goes through their sprite! Honestly, these things are all over the place. On normal enemies I had no problem seeing over these mistakes, but when it came down to god battles? Ooof! How it infuriated me knowing I hit a god and yet it went through the sprite, while I dodged a hit, and some sort of sprite lag caused me to still be hit! Nothing feels more horrible than a game with BAD hitboxes!
What we disliked
- Controls and Bugs: This is ground controller to celtic warrior, do you hear me, over? The amount of times that I got hit or didn’t jump because the controls are sometimes that sluggish are immense. And it’s not as if it’s my console or tv, because I was playing it on the Series X. No, this is just purely game based and unfortunately this is something that is coded badly. There are a few points in the game where I would run up a flight of stairs, and physically see my dude slow down because of some unknown reason. And maybe I thought it was just this run, but when I went into the same dungeon with another warrior and encountered the same “glitch” again? I just knew that there’s something wrong there. And sure, you could say but that doesn’t break the game for you right? Well… Unfortunately for me it did. Because I had this in Morrigan ‘s dungeon where I had to jump. Mind you, I was destroying this dungeon with ease. Up until I came across a jumping section. I knew something was wrong because there was an enemy across the jump platform, mirroring my every move, and normally they jump as well. This time I saw the enemy jump and get stuck on an invisible wall. So, no problem ey? He’s stuck so I can jump across. Well, ha ha very funny. Because that little prick was mirroring me, he successfully jumped as well, bumping into me, and letting me fall into the abyss. Killing me and making me lose my strongest warrior!
- Camera: My last final gripe with Gods Will Fall is a short but sweet one. Unlock the f*cking camera! At times the camera is your worst enemy! My god how I wished I could swing around my camera to check what was coming towards me. But, nope! Not here. Nu uh! And yes I know there are cameras out there that are locked in games that do an amazing job. Yes, but no. This camera isn’t locked but swings around FOR you. Making it even worse at times. So, Clever Beans? I wish for you to give us our own camera control because your “auto camera” just plain out blows. Making it more of a nuisance than a helping factor!
CONCLUSION
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