Gods Will Fall has surprised me with its approach to the game; an exercise in originality full of good ideas that, despite making some mistakes that weigh down the experience, deserves the players’ attention.
Forsaken of our gods we leave our homeland in search of a better place. The wrath of the divinities lashes the sea, our ship sinks, sinks and our crew begins a diaspora at sea from which only a few will emerge alive. On the shores of a mysterious island a group of surviving warriors mill about; Tired but determined, they take the first steps towards their uncertain future, one that they will forge themselves. They will never again let any deity rule the laws of their destiny.
This is the premise of Gods Will Fall, a video game developed by the small independent studio Clever Beans that we had barely heard about, although Technoeager had the opportunity to see it in action a few weeks ago. Perhaps that is why it is so surprising to find your original proposal. In this action game with some RPG and rogue lite touches. You do not manage a single individual, a magnificent hero full of power or tools that make him a solution and part of all the problems that the adventure poses. The perspective of Gods Will Fall leads us to control a group of 8 shipwrecked warriors, whom we guide all at once on the map that shapes their world. This scenario, from which we move from one dungeon to another, acts as an over world in the purest JRPG style and the possibility of interacting with the elements of this mapping are greatly reduced to just a couple of pleasant surprises.
This very particular way of approaching displacement has a playable justification: in Gods Will Fall we must end the 10 deities that inhabit the island we are on so we can call it home. Each of these gods lives in the heart of a dungeon, but not all dungeons are equally difficult. Where to start? It is something that you will have to discover yourself.
The truth is that we are not looking at anything new, but it is always interesting to find this approach, especially in a much more limited experience and above all, because we do not have countless continuations to discover it. Only one of our warriors can enter the dungeon. If it falls in combat, it will be trapped there until another member of the group manages to defeat the monster that inhabits it. Things are starting to get interesting; the shadow of losing our entire group if we insist on advancing through a dungeon for which we are not prepared is constant. Which one do I decide for? There is no way to know, there are no clues, no indicators, or levels of the monsters that let us know if we have entered a too hostile place, and what is worse (better): there is no exit. It cannot be abandoned, there is only one way to get out of there and that is with victory ahead.
In Gods Will Fall if you lose, you start over
I have loved this proposal, the feeling of permanent tension that this generates, the overwhelm of seeing how our group is diluted or seeing helplessly that we are leaving many companions abandoned in different dungeons and that we do not know when we will be able to return for them, or if we ever go back, it’s a great feeling in terms of tension and getting the player more involved with their surroundings. The permanent death and lose the game flies over your mind in every fray. Now stop and think, you are at home, with the controller in hand, something to eat and a drink, and with all the game it gives you that feeling. Now let’s take it one step further: imagine how you would feel if you were one of those 8 castaways.
What would it feel like to lose someone you love? How would you stay when you see that when the dungeon door opens there is no one behind? What degree of confidence will you acquire in the face of a good streak, could it blind your blood? These are just some of the assumptions with which Gods Will Fall brings another of its good ingredients to the table. The members of our group have their own relationships and react to what is happening to themduring the adventure. If they are victorious they increase their vigor or strength, the morale of the group rises and the warriors who go to combat gain skills, but Gods Will Fall does something very well at this point, there are consequences that are unpredictable. In this way, it does not have to end up being good for an individual to be the only one who carries the weight of the fighting and risks entering the dungeons, spending time in it waiting to be rescued can end up having mixed consequences or a dream can determine a better or worse predisposition to some situation.
I really liked how this idea is expressed in Gods Will Fall. However, it remains in the purely statistical section of our characters, but neither does the program offer more layers in the narrative, which would have given it greater depth. However, all these nuances have a direct impact on how you determine the path to follow or who to choose at any given moment. Entrusting progress to a single character can have very good consequences in that they will grow in power and abilities quickly and it will be easier than others to get out of the dungeon alive. However, not managing the rest of the group properly can make us weaker than we might think in the long run. Each game is different, there are many factors that interfere in its resolution creating a very original proposal.
The combat in Gods Will Fall
These factors add up to a challenging combat system that is different from what can be seen in other games of a similar cut. The enemies that we find scattered around the stage do not usually appear in large groups, mainly because the rhythm of the fight flees from the frenzy to delve further into the tactical aspect. In most dungeons, the path to the final boss undermines his forces, creating an experience very similar to that of a boss rush.. Eliminating the very varied cast of rivals that the game boasts is optional, if we prefer we can run to the meeting with the final boss, running the risk of not having weakened him enough, so that the first blind encounter with him can kill our hero in the depths of the grotto.
Normal and strong attacks that can be combined with jumps, dodges, and picking up and throwing the weapons of fallen enemies are the basic tools of the player, although eventually we can collect some items such as traps, throwing knives or a bow which have limited uses. There is no fixing system that allows you to focus on a specific unit, something that is fully justified by the remove ( parry ) system that Gods Will Fall has. To cut off the attack of an enemy we will have to dashdirected towards it at the opportune moment to launch its attack. This mechanic is the central core of its gameplay because the life (vigor) that we have varies depending on the unit chosen at any time and the blows of our rivals do a lot of damage.
At first, this health bar can only be filled by finishing with more units and doing the remove at the right moment, with this, this bar will be filled again, but not in an active way; to recharge health we will have to use the roar, a kind of battle cry with which our avatar rages, and it is at this point where another very interesting factor comes into play. We can choose to keep our health bar level, healing ourselves every so often. However, the game invites you to take risks, since the greater the amount of life in reserve available when doing this roar, the bloodlust will be activated, a berserker mode that remains active for a limited time and that gives us bonuses in combat.
With all this, it is still the player who has to make the decisions, always weighing the advantages and disadvantages of taking certain risks in a proposal that remembers, saving the distances, as seen in games like Bloodborne. This is in addition to the progressive loss of warriors, which makes each face-to-face, even against clearly inferior units, take on a huge dimension in terms of tension and complexity. When we emerge victorious from the dungeon, we will gather new and better weapons with which to equip our fierce Celtic heroes, as well as the few healing or bonus items that are scattered throughout the dungeons.
An RPG that could have done some things better
These errors overshadow the good work carried out in other areas such as the design of the dungeons. Each of the eleven that are presented in the title (I tell the tutorial here) has its own design and artistic style, in all there are small variations in the playable that you will have to discover for yourself and that make the experience not turn at all repetitive despite its limited duration that does not exceed, in any case, 2-3 hours of play per round . It is true that, once all the bosses are discovered, those that come after the first one will not enjoy the same interest, although if we vary the order we can see some different enemies in the dungeons.
Another problem that I have experienced has been the crashes that have occurred during my game playing the PS4 version on PlayStation 5 thanks to backward compatibility, which has taken me out of the game too many times with the terrible consequence that, when counting With just an auto save slot, the game has been corrupted at times so I had to pull the PS Plus cloud backup to continue without having to restart the game from the beginning. It is a serious failure , which I do not know if it is occurring only in my particular case, or is something generalized due to the pre-launch state of the game , but in any case, it cannot be missed.
Gods Will Fall has been created from the Unity engine and that shows in its textures, somewhat hackneyed in more independent games. However, the studio has worked with dedication to give the game its own personality, something that it achieves partly motivated by its sound section. The game comes with voices in an ancestral language and texts in Spanish, accompanied in the dungeons by tribal and primary sounds where percussion stands out, which adds an extra epicity to the combats although we are not facing a very extensive repertoire of themes. Isometric perspective makes use of a fixed camera to which roll and blur effects have been added in moments of exploration and combat that feel great to you.
Gods Will Fall is full of good ideas, such as its combat system, balancing the benefits of taking certain risks, the evolution of our warriors, the management of the group based on external factors and how they affect them, or the design of the dungeons. However, its failures in the collision system, an enemy AI that can be improved, some crashes and the possibility that it will unbalance its difficulty too soon, dilute the good feelings that it transmits in its first bars.
5 Things you should know:
- It is an action game with RPG and rogue lite touches in isometric perspective.
- It allows you to move freely from one dungeon to another and create your own path.
- You have a group of 8 warriors who, one by one, can be defeated and lead you to start over.
- Warrior stats vary based on what happens in the game.
- Despite his good ideas, he does not get the best playable result in some facets.