It’s a bit of a shame that a majority of them are simply stat upgrades like a 20% increase to weapon damage, meaning they never did much to shake up my actual playstyle on a given run, but getting lucky by finding a rare tarot card to fully double the attack speed of my axe was still a lot of fun when it happened. These power-ups give you boons that can range from extra health to adding a projectile to your melee attack to making enemies drop fish when killed. With runs being so short, that means you frequently won’t even get a chance to find a workable replacement before the end, and having a go at a boss hamstrung by a poor roll at the very start definitely wore on my patience more than once.īut while you don’t get enough opportunities to choose your attacks, you are given plenty of chances to influence your kit mid-run through tarot cards. Similarly, some curses can be satisfying AoE blasts while others drop a pile of ineffective goo. While the default sword and harder-hitting axe are reliably great, the frustratingly slow hammer and the gloves (which deal most of their damage only on the final hit of their attack combo) are ill-suited against Cult of the Lamb’s fairly mobile enemies. The one major drawback is that you are given a random weapon and curse at the start of each crusade, but unfortunately you have no control over which ones you’ll see and the possibilities are far from equal. The different types of weapons, curses, and tarot card-based buffs you can find along the way can also help shake up each new outing as you work your way toward the end of the campaign. The dodge in particular is delightfully snappy, giving you a responsive way to evade the well-telegraphed attacks of enemies as you cut through rooms full of cultists and monsters alike. It’s not overly complex, with little more than a single attack button, a special “curse” power, and a dodge-roll at your disposal, but each of those elements are honed to an effective edge. That’s not to say the combat isn’t fun in its own right, though. That’s good company to be in regardless, and I enjoyed that my decisions out on the hunt were often influenced by the needs of my cultists diligently working back home rather than it always being the other way around. It’s safe to say that for all the DNA Cult of the Lamb shares with a game like Dead Cells, it’s just as closely related to a management game like Oxygen Not Included. Those short outings aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but they did mean I spent most of the 13 hours it took me to reach the credits building out my base and completing little quests for NPCs rather than swinging a weapon. You even pick between one of four disconnected areas to fight through at the start of every run, with a boss waiting to be beaten at the end of each one in order to complete the story, which means Cult of the Lamb lacks that familiar roguelike tension of seeing how deep into the gauntlet you can manage to make it every time. Each crusade is randomized and repeatable in the same way, but they are also far shorter – most take around just 10 minutes total. While Cult of the Lamb is a roguelite dungeon crawler that randomizes level layouts and the items you come across each run as you become progressively more powerful between them, comparing it directly to similar games like Hades or Rogue Legacy would be a bit misleading. That loop of gathering supplies, tending to your worshipers, upgrading both your character and your homestead, and then going out to do it again is extremely satisfying, with a charming art style and expressive animations that bring a bit of joy to every ruthless corner of it. Now it’s up to you to free your master by recruiting new followers to the flock, building a base for them to live in, and going on bloody crusades against the otherworldly entities that trapped him. Its adorable art style and surprising amount of side activities fill its relatively linear structure up with personality – and while its combat sections aren’t deep enough to keep me coming back after the credits rolled, this is a dark ritual I’m very glad to have completed.Ĭult of the Lamb puts you in the fluffy hooves of a cult leader newly resurrected by an imprisoned deity called The One Who Waits. This is a true wolf of a base-management game in the sheepish clothing of an action-roguelite, but it balances that unexpected mix of genres with grace. When I started Cult of the Lamb, I wasn’t expecting to be shoveling so much poop.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |