One of the first next-generation games revealed to the public was Counterplay Games’ Godfall. Revealed with a visually-stunning trailer, Godfall generated significant hype in the months leading up to its eventual release as a PS5 console-exclusive game. Now Godfall is out in the wild, and fans can find out if it lives up to expectations.
Unfortunately, Godfall has some major drawbacks that keep it from reaching its full potential, though there is some fun to be had. One of the main issues in the game is its repetitive mission structure. Each of the game’s worlds may look somewhat different from one another, but they offer the exact same missions. The result is a game that struggles to stay interesting for long periods of time, and is best played in short bursts.
Godfall‘s missions include story missions, boss battles, monster hunts, and “unique” missions that mainly consist of players exploring the area freely in search of loot and new quests. Unique missions are essentially Godfall‘s take on free-roaming. Each mission type plays out the same, with recycled objectives that will wear players’ patience thin. Godfall players will lose track of how many times they’re asked to defend an area while a timer counts down or run endlessly across the map until coming upon the one enemy that’s being hunted. This repetitive mission structure would make Godfall a complete waste, but the game is redeemed somewhat by its mostly excellent combat system.
Godfall lives and dies by its combat, which is easily the best thing about the game. Godfall‘s combat has a lot of weight to it, and the simple hacking and slashing can be genuinely entertaining. There’s a cool system where players can build up extra damage on an enemy’s health bar, which they can then deplete all at once with a single heavy attack. The PS5 DualSense controller’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers make a world of difference, elevating Godfall‘s combat by making it more immersive. Bizarrely, Godfall skips the haptic feedback when players perform finishing moves on bigger enemies, which seems like a major missed opportunity, but otherwise it uses the DualSense controller’s unique features to great effect.
Godfall‘s combat is what fans would expect to see from a hack-and-slash game, with blocking, parrying, and some special moves thrown into the mix. Godfall players will use these attacks in battles against a variety of different enemies throughout the game, some of which will have abilities that will force players to change up their strategies a bit. Otherwise, Godfall basically boils down to hacking and slashing all the enemies in any given area and then moving on to the next place.
While moving through Godfall‘s world, players will notice that it is rather beautiful. There’s a lot of detail to Godfall‘s game world, with highly-detailed character models and impressive lighting effects bringing the whole thing together. The downside is that Godfall doesn’t have a lot of variety with its visuals. Everything sort of looks the same (later worlds do change up the color scheme, though), and so the game world becomes progressively less impressive the more players spend time in it.
Godfall‘s story does nothing to make its world more interesting, and honestly most players will likely have a better time with the game if they skip the cut-scenes. Instead of trying to get immersed in the game through its story or bland, one-dimensional characters, it’s better to shut one’s brain off and enjoy the action.
Godfall‘s story gives vague context for the goings-on in the game, with players exploring different worlds, completing missions, and mainly fighting enemies. Godfall is fairly flexible in how players experience the game, letting them decide between three different difficulty levels for nearly every activity that it offers, with higher difficulties offering greater rewards. This is great for replay value and also allows players to make things a little easier if they happen to be playing alone, but the downside is that the higher difficulty basically turn enemies into “sword sponges,” for lack of a better term. It doesn’t succeed in making the game more challenging in a satisfying, overcoming the odds kind of way. It really only makes the game harder by making it take longer to kill enemies, and in the case of the hardest difficulty, giving players limited lives to work with.
While Godfall players are hacking and slashing everything in sight, they will also be accumulating an absurd amount of loot. Godfall has a ton of loot, but not a lot of meaningful loot. So Godfall players won’t necessarily feel excited when they find new gear, as it means that they will be spending more time in the menus scrapping stuff for parts. A lot of loot-based games fall into this trap where players are inundated with worthless loot, and it seems Godfall is another one to add to the list.
Godfall describes itself as a looter-slasher, and as far as looter games go, it’s passable, but nothing special. Godfall players will have to deal with repetitive objectives and a lot of useless loot, all to experience a barebones story. Despite these flaws, some PS5 early adopters may still be looking into picking it up, if for no other reason than because the console doesn’t exactly have a wide selection of online co-op games available out of the gate. In fact, discounting PS4 titles, Godfall is one of the only PS5 games that offers online co-op at launch.
Godfall‘s major online connectivity issues have been resolved after a rocky launch, and while disconnects still happen, they’re not all that frequent or significant. Godfall‘s online co-op still has a major flaw, though, and that is the lack of matchmaking. Godfall‘s lack of online matchmaking is a huge downside, especially since it’s quite likely that many peoples’ co-op partners may not be able to get their hands on a PS5 at all. Maybe the developers will add matchmaking to Godfall‘s online co-op in a future patch, but for now, anyone getting the game may want to consider holding off unless they know some others that have it as well. It’s easy to go through it solo if need be, but playing in co-op makes it significantly more entertaining.
With friends or solo, it won’t take Godfall players all that long to complete the main story missions and move on to the endgame content. Godfall‘s endgame content includes the Tower of Trials, an endless activity where players kill enemies to proceed from one room to the next, and Dreamstones, which recycle content from the main game with slight tweaks. Godfall‘s endgame content is not that compelling, but on the bright side, it does allow players to continue enjoying the game’s quality combat mechanics while also going for trophies and other goals.
The endgame content isn’t that interesting, but Valorplates are something that may keep people engaged with Godfall a bit longer than they would have otherwise. Godfall Valorplates are impressively-detailed armor sets, each with their own quirks and style. Godfall players can use crafting materials to Valorplates and have specific gear tied to each one so that they can quickly switch between them in the hub world area. One might feel compelled to collect all of the Valorplates in Godfall, if for no other reason beyond that they look cool.
Like other looter-style games, Godfall could become a much more appealing prospect in time. Godfall‘s $70 price tag works against it big time because as it stands, it’s difficult to recommend such an expensive game to anyone when it recycles the same content repeatedly throughout the entire experience. Godfall‘s core combat mechanics are great and it’s a visually-impressive experience, but gamers may want to wait and see if the game gets some compelling post-launch content updates first.
Godfall is out now for PC and PS5. Game Rant reviewed the game on PS5.
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