How fun it is to play evil.
That is, as long as you don't take it too seriously what you're really doing, be it sacrificing your most loyal followers in tremendous torment to horrendous creatures from the deep, or naming your newest cultist “sunflower beauty” and forcing them to marry you, or just making your cultists eat pies made out of their own faeces. It's all in good fun, right?
And I did manage to approach it as such, seeing the cute dark nature of its cult management as hilarious in how horrendous it really is, taking the real life atrocities and lies of cults and adding to them actual supernatural realities. It doesn't really make it any nicer when you strangle your follower in bed for a quest or force your oldest member eat a potentially deadly dish in the hopes of a rare drop, useless as they are for anything else (my god how much ageism this game engenders), but it's far enough removed from reality to amuse instead of horrify. Content warning is still needed though, especially if you do have PTSD from similar experiences.
The combat part of the game is more hit and miss, managing to occasionally be fun but also somewhat chaotic, especially with its weapon selection. But in each and every aspect of its action, it pales when compared to something like Hades, and the crusades quickly come to be in danger of being something you do in order to unlock more things in your camp or to advance the story, instead of something you yearn to participate in.
Speaking of its writing, it isn't deep or particularly involving, but it is delicious in how darkly and forebodingly written it is, the beautiful and moody artistry allowing for more immersion within the Lamb’s eldritch world. I can't say I felt anything emotional at any of the story beats, but I did enjoy the writing for what it was, and I wanted to find out what exactly does happen when I kill the last false God.
The way to that point can be a struggle, and you'll probably fully upgraded all your combat and follower skills long before you arrive there (I hadn't even killed the third boss when I had already maxed them myself). The endgame base management can be a bit lacking then, relying on setting personal goals (e.g. get as many followers you can - quite difficult with the speed the fuckers keep dying) and a late-game free DLC addition (which, granted, is pretty fun, and adds more horrible and amusing options to the game).
But for a few weeks this game was what my partner and I kept returning to whenever we could, developing our cults and swapping tales of new discoveries and our horrific misdeeds. Whatever its faults, its pros are also many, first and foremost how well it suited us gaming together solo, bringing us together in how horrible we were to our poor cultists. For that alone it's one of my favourite experiences of the year.
That is, as long as you don't take it too seriously what you're really doing, be it sacrificing your most loyal followers in tremendous torment to horrendous creatures from the deep, or naming your newest cultist “sunflower beauty” and forcing them to marry you, or just making your cultists eat pies made out of their own faeces. It's all in good fun, right?
And I did manage to approach it as such, seeing the cute dark nature of its cult management as hilarious in how horrendous it really is, taking the real life atrocities and lies of cults and adding to them actual supernatural realities. It doesn't really make it any nicer when you strangle your follower in bed for a quest or force your oldest member eat a potentially deadly dish in the hopes of a rare drop, useless as they are for anything else (my god how much ageism this game engenders), but it's far enough removed from reality to amuse instead of horrify. Content warning is still needed though, especially if you do have PTSD from similar experiences.
The combat part of the game is more hit and miss, managing to occasionally be fun but also somewhat chaotic, especially with its weapon selection. But in each and every aspect of its action, it pales when compared to something like Hades, and the crusades quickly come to be in danger of being something you do in order to unlock more things in your camp or to advance the story, instead of something you yearn to participate in.
Speaking of its writing, it isn't deep or particularly involving, but it is delicious in how darkly and forebodingly written it is, the beautiful and moody artistry allowing for more immersion within the Lamb’s eldritch world. I can't say I felt anything emotional at any of the story beats, but I did enjoy the writing for what it was, and I wanted to find out what exactly does happen when I kill the last false God.
The way to that point can be a struggle, and you'll probably fully upgraded all your combat and follower skills long before you arrive there (I hadn't even killed the third boss when I had already maxed them myself). The endgame base management can be a bit lacking then, relying on setting personal goals (e.g. get as many followers you can - quite difficult with the speed the fuckers keep dying) and a late-game free DLC addition (which, granted, is pretty fun, and adds more horrible and amusing options to the game).
But for a few weeks this game was what my partner and I kept returning to whenever we could, developing our cults and swapping tales of new discoveries and our horrific misdeeds. Whatever its faults, its pros are also many, first and foremost how well it suited us gaming together solo, bringing us together in how horrible we were to our poor cultists. For that alone it's one of my favourite experiences of the year.