Gods Will Fall [Xbox]
Clever Beans’ Gods Will Fall is an inventive new fantasy action game (a roguelike-Soulslike, if you will) where you, as the eight last surviving Celtic warriors washed up on an island, must take down the Gods. With ten Gods spread out in separate Realms across the mysterious Isle, each of varying levels of challenge - both in terms of their skills/tactics and a randomised system wherein their difficulty is swapped between runs - it definitely proves to be quite the test.
The eight warriors you begin with are randomly assigned, with a bunch of different appearances, weapons, skills and backstories. Some may be family or friends, and others may have a hatred, fear or even a lust for vengeance against particular Gods, and these attributes will affect how they play in each Realm, as well as how they will react to victory, or the loss of a warrior to a Realm. Not only this, but it affects them emotionally as well - you’ll see them cheer and dance at a victory, or stomp their feet in anger and loss after the doors open and their fellow warrior fails to emerge. It’s really interesting to see, and adds a level of realness to the characters that I don’t think I’ve really seen elsewhere, in this way.
Each of the ten Gods have distinct appearances, not only in their own physical form but in the overall aesthetic of each of their dungeons. They are all fantastically creepy and dark, with designs ranging from terrifying bone-spiders to creepy long-tongued devourers. Even the vassals - the ‘normal’ enemies inhabiting each realm - are well designed, with themed appearances and a variety of weapons for you to utilise after slaying them. The Realms themselves vary from dank dungeons filled with viscera to bright, beautiful marble dungeons that look like they could easily have once been peaceful. The overworld is gorgeous too, where you control the group of eight to lead them to each of the Realm gates. These are all unique, and upon defeating the God inside, will crumble - closing off that Realm for good (until the next run!). Your tactics will change repeatedly throughout each Realm, as different Gods fight differently. The weapons you have, and the stats of your warriors must be considered when going into the Realms, as one might require you to be faster versus having stronger attacks, and using a Spear might prove beneficial in one but not the other. The fighting feels really well done, with all ‘classes’ of warrior having their own pros and cons. I must admit I became a fan of the Spear and twin-mace wielders early on, as utilising either of these depending on the God I went up against, made me feel stronger.
There’s also a Well that you can visit in the overworld, where excess consumables can be tossed down and then retrieved on a future run to give you a boost. I keep forgetting to utilise this, and being really annoyed at myself for it, as it makes things a little bit less stressful the next time round. So if you get down to your final warrior, and you think there’s just no possible way for you to manage, then chuck the stuff. You’ll thank yourself later. Sometimes all you need is a consumable to really tip the odds in your favour - with health related items being able to refill your Vigour when you’re waiting to get a few hits in, or even to start a Realm with additional Vigour pips available to you. When fighting against enemies you will build up bloodlust, and activating this via a Roar will replenish some (or all) of your health, depending on how much you built up. It can also offer other buffs, too, if your roar is big enough. Slaughtering all of the Vassals of the Gods is important, not just to keep your health up, but to knock the Gods’ health down, as more often than not they lose more and more health from their meter, the more Vassals you slay. It can be tempting, especially after losing a few warriors in a row to the same Realm, to just run in and sprint as fast as you can to the end to face the God - but doing so actually leaves you at more of a disadvantage than taking your time to check everywhere and kill everything, even if you do end up with less than perfect Vigour when you finally approach the boss.
Gods Will Fall is not an easy game, but the challenge that comes with trying to judge who you wish to enter each Realm, unaware of what awaits you on the other side, is what makes it very addictive. With each victory against a God, your band of warriors will receive various stat increases, making you stronger for the Gods ahead of you. This helps to balance the game a bit more for when you come up against Gods that are much higher on the difficulty scale, as attempting to take these on right off the bat is almost guaranteed to be a recipe for disaster. Every run is a gamble, as with ten dungeons of varying difficulty, you could easily send warriors in one by one to eight of the ten dungeons, discovering that they are higher difficulty than anticipated and being killed quickly. So you need to be smart about who you’re going for and what strategies you’ll use. My favourite thing to attempt would be to take on Morrigan early, making use of the Forges dotted throughout and increasing the strength of my weapon (although they do have a chance to make it worse). If you’ve got an Ingot available, you can use this on the main Forge, and it will massively improve your weapon. My warrior ended up with a 5-star weapon and I was destroying everyone with absolute ease, wiping out five Gods in a row and looking poised to take my 6th when I stupidly fell off a cliff. Every warrior died pretty quickly after that, and that made for an absolutely heartbreaking run.
At £19.99 on the Xbox Store, it’s a surprisingly low-priced title for the content it includes, and the hours upon hours of playtime you’ll get with its roguelite-ish mechanics and Souls-like difficulty. I’m really not good at it, with my best run being a max of five Gods killed - but the addictive quality and how good it feels to battle enemies has me coming back for repeated runs, feeling no less empowered each time. Overall, Gods Will Fall provided me with a lot of enjoyment, and it’s a game I can definitely see myself coming back to for a long time, slowly but steadily improving. If you’re looking for a challenge, I’d highly recommend you check it out.
In the end, we decided to give Gods Will Fall the Collecting Asylum rating of 9/10.
Have you played Gods Will Fall yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Koch Media for the Gods Will Fall Xbox review code!
