![]() Image: Counterplay Games / Gearbox Publishing via PolygonĪnd that’s all before you look at the equipment screen. I only resorted to the tactic because I didn’t trust the fight to be fair otherwise. During a double boss fight, I lured one enemy away from the boss arena, picked him off alone and then beat up his friend. So when I’d get pelted by a barrage of lasers that seemed unavoidable at first-a feeling I get a lot in action games-instead of trying to learn the “right way” to counter it, I started looking for ways to circumvent it, because I didn’t trust the fight to be fair. Once Godfall lost my trust, it never came back. These kinds of issues pick away at the trust you need to have with a good action game in order for unique enemies and bosses to subvert your expectations and test your understanding of combat, you have to trust that the rules are consistent. There’s little sense of actions flowing into each other logically, even if the animations behind them look impressive and nimble. The window is miniscule, but in a game that’s otherwise pretty responsive to your inputs, it’s excruciating. It helped me out, but it broke the illusion of the game’s “feel.” There’s also just enough of a delay between actions like attacking and using a healing item that I’d take damage, roll away, hit the healing button, and watch as nothing happened - I had to wait just a moment longer before pressing another button. Attack ranges feel off I lost track of how many times I tried to dodge out of the way of an opponent’s giant swing and got hit anyway (my bad), only to immediately recover as if I hadn’t gotten hit, letting me hit my opponent’s weak point as if I’d properly dodged. Leading your attacks, dodging the telegraphed swing of a warhammer, and parrying predictable moves with your shield all look cool, and you even have some interesting tactical decisions to make in combat your slower heavy attacks aren’t an alternative to your faster strikes so much as a way to cash in on the bonus damage that your faster attacks build up, with the risk being that you might get hit.įor the first few hours, this shiny coat of polish does a great job of hiding how Godfall’s combat is full of holes. Doing well feels good because of all the cool animations that play out, and getting hit feels bad, because of how enemy attacks will stagger you and slow you down. Your attacks land with the weighty, satisfying thunderclap of colliding metal, and your movements look both tightly choreographed and fluid. You also see that kind of expensive beauty at work as you start hacking away at the rats and soldiers you have to mow down on your way to Macros. Image: Counterplay Games/Gearbox Publishing via Polygon (I played it on a mid-range PC and still got a kick out of how good everything looks). At every turn, Godfall uses its impressive tech to flex just how powerful the hardware it’s running on is, which makes sense for a PlayStation 5 launch title. You’re rewarded for looking around, too, since an infinite horde of collectible resources, items, and chests are littered everywhere, with some chests asking that you look around further for nearby symbols to break before you can open them. If you stop admiring your character, it’s hard not to look around and appreciate the fantastical forests, ornate temples, and colorful landscapes in Godfall as well. Orin’s magical Valorplate armors (which affect whether Orin presents as feminine or masculine) are full of shiny overlapping plates, sharp angles, and bright linings meant to catch your eye. ![]() That high-concept premise lets Counterplay Games go wild on the art direction, leading to a game that loves to show off how good its tech is. ![]() Orin quickly picks themselves back up with the help of a sentient library called the Seventh Sanctum, hellbent on taking revenge on Macros and stopping him from performing the Rites of Ascension that would elevate him to godhood. After helping rid the world of gods called Archons who perpetuated endless wars to settle their petty conflicts, your player character, Orin, is betrayed by their brother, Macros, who plunges Orin into the ocean and leaves them for dead. Godfall’s setup is as grandiose as you can get, with nods to religious creation stories like Paradise Lost. But they clash much more often, leading to a cluttered mess that strains under the pressure to turn all its disparate ambitions into something greater. I can see all the things Godfall wants to do, and at times, these desires complement each other. It also wants you to play it for dozens of hours looking for the perfect piece of loot. ![]() It also wants to be a tight, melee-combat action game, a reprieve from the endless tedium of open-world fetch quests. Although it’s developed by the relatively small studio at Counterplay Games, it wants to entice you with the kind of visual spectacle big-budget video games excel at delivering.
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