Curse of the Dead Gods

 

Reviewer: Carless Yen

Publisher: Focus Home Interactive

Developer: PassTech Games

Release Date: 02/23/2021

Price: 19.99 buy Here.

Description

You seek untold riches, eternal life, divine powers - it leads to this accursed temple, a seemingly-infinite labyrinth of bottomless pits, deadly traps, and monsters.

Your greed will lead you to death, but that is not an escape. Rise to fight again. Delve deeper again. Defy the malignant deities that linger in this place. Battle through hordes of enemies in dark, cavernous passages filled with traps and secrets of all sorts - fire-spewing statues, explosives, hidden spikes, and worse.

Collect mystical Relics and an arsenal of weapons to make yourself unstoppable. Corruption builds in you with every step - encourage or ignore it, but each powerful curse can be a double-edged sword.

- A skill-based roguelike exploring a cruel, dark temple made of endless rooms and corridors

- Swords, spears, bows, guns - wield these and many more

- Unique curses influence each attempt, putting a twist on every action

- Dozens of enemies, with powerful champions and deadly bosses to face off against

Screenshots

Review

    This will be a short written review since I spent a hour on a video review that shows pretty much everything. Like to still put into written words how much I really enjoyed this title. I might not go into depth about every single feature found in it, but I will express just how much I enjoyed playing it. It's one of those games that caught me by surprise. It's not typically my genre, but it has a lot of characteristics from games that I love like Dark Souls. It's some what of a Dungeon Crawler, but yet still so much more than that. I've heard a lot of people compare it to Hades, but to me it's far more in depth than that. Hades to me is just a hack and slash, Curse of the Dead Gods has to be approached with much more finesse. You can't take it to lightly and have to give it full attention. It can be difficult and the smallest of enemies or waves of them can take you out quickly if things go sour. It really reminds me of the first time I played Dark Souls and thought I could just dive in swinging my sword. It isn't going to go well for you if you do this and I'll dive more into that in this review. Don't let the talk of the difficulty scare you away from it though. It eases you in slowly, and really helps you understand what to expect. It  doesn't hold your hand though. Even the tutorial and first dungeon can test your skills. 

     The way it plays it really provides a different experience every time. In that way it really feels like Dead Cells at times. Every time you play you will have a different set of primary and secondary weapons. They really range in attack styles as well. From machetes to daggers, bows, spears, whips which is probably my favorite, and so much more. I love the different styles, and it just really changes ow you approach things. Same can be said for the Corruption and Stamina. We will talk about the Stamina first though. You have 5 diamonds below your name that shows your Stamina. Everything you do uses it from primary and secondary attacks to evading. Even parrying uses this. If you land a Parry though it will return some of it. If you pull off a perfect dodge it will as well. Having only 5 diamonds of Stamina really makes sure you don't go in there just hacking away. If you run out it takes seconds to recover it back, but you get caught that way in battle you are going to pay for it. Enemies and Bosses hit hard and in bunches. One mistake can end your game, and have you back at that door picking your next adventure. 

     Corruption I talked about earlier is another huge factor in this game, and it can even be a game ending factor as well. The way it works is going to be a paragraph in itself, and you can see why my video review was a hour long. It's a really interesting new take , and can be irritating yet still a fun idea. You can get 100 corruption before getting cursed by the gods. You can be cursed 5 times, but if you get cursed the 5th time it's a death sentence in my opinion. You lose health constantly without even being hit all the way down to 1 health which can leave you just trying to stay alive and dodge everything. You can recover health in game with certain weapons giving you some with kills, and health pits where you pay in corruption to regain some health back. It's really risky like everything in game. everything gives you corruption pretty much like if you don't have enough gold, you can pay with blood which adds corruption. There are weapons that take away some corruption with kills, but it's such small amounts. You can donate unwanted weapons and abilities to the gods some times to remove small amounts of it. You can also do this for gold and health as well. So each curse is different, and you ever know which you are going to get. Some do things like make enemies spawn other enemies when they die, make gold disappear quicker, mess up the look of the game like your stunned, and so many more. So you can have 5 different things just making it harder on you. There is even a curse that doesn't let you know what curses you have going against you so you have to figure it out on your own. Like I said really challenging, so you have to approach it differently every time. 

    Speaking of approach the way you move through out the dungeons is different every time as well. You start out with three choices of dungeons. Each has a different boss, enemies, and traps. You have to beat two of the three to advance to the next set of dungeons. as you advance though you have to face the dungeons and bosses of the ones before it as well. So you will get to where your are battling a few bosses to finish the game, and many many rooms. Being that every door you open gives you 20 corruption it becomes a even bigger factor. Each room will have something for you rather it's gold, health, ability, weapons, or weapon upgrades. You have to really pay attention and plan your route out. The less doors you have to open the better. The more gold you can collect so you don't have to use blood the better. The path is really up to you, and the way you like to play. A concept that adds replay value, and that I really love. There are even daily missions to keep it fresh as well. There is just so much here for a small price of 19.99 that is just mind blowing to me. I really enjoyed my time with Curse of the Dead Gods, and it really took me by surprise. I'll be playing this for a long time, and recommending to a lot of fans of this genre. So much to love about it. The music and sounds are outstanding. The combat smooth and precise, I love the animation in game and cutscenes. It reminds me of the old He-Man comics you used to get with the figures in the 80's. I just love the entire game design as a whole. It's is just laid out there to really give you a different experience every time you play it. It's a beautiful piece of gaming art, and I'm thankful to PassTech for sharing their art with us.

Beautiful to look at.

Really well designed levels, combat, and overall game.

Always feels like something different, loads of replay value.

Really quality music and sounds.

Addictive and challenging fun.

May be to challenging for more casual gamers.

Nothing really negative to say about this one. A great overall experience. 

Overall Impression

One of the best games I've played this year. I'd say it might be my favorite in this genre of all times. I'm not usually big on these type of games, but this one really left a impression on me. I'd certainly recommend this one over and over. So well designed and loaded with replay value.  8.8 out of 10

Video Review