Curse of the Dead Gods is one of those rare games that has proved its worth towards its expectation. It creates a perfect blend of fast-paced combat, a risk-reward system, a big arsenal of weapons and combos. Unlike other Roguelikes which only feature one weapon at a time, Dead Gods allows you to wield 3 weapons at the same time creating endless opportunities for your combat style and approach. Backed by a straightforward yet impactful storyline, Curse of the Dead Gods is a game that deserves its own page in the history of video games.
The Cursed Temple
You seek immortality, treasure, and divine power and hence make your way inside the not so very suspicious temple which decides to lock you in permanently. But this is not just a temple to walk in, steal the riches, and walk away. The temple holds the darkest secrets that are still unknown to humanity. And trust me when I say, it is better that way because this temple is filled with darkness, corruption, monsters, and deep levels paths locked away by the dead gods. The temple stands ground to three gods – The Jaguar God, The Eagle Goddess, and the Serpent Goddess. These gods have their own labyrinth of challenges that you need to conquer until you finally face and awaken the gods to make the final offering before taking on the one and only – God of Death, Guardian of the Dead Gods. With almost 27 different types of monsters and bosses, the Temple of Cursed Gods is not ideal for the faint of the heart and the people who can’t take a challenge.
As you make your way climbing and exploring each room of the temple, you can earn gold, Jade Rings and Skulls and offer it to the gods. The pleased gods in return will bless you with power, new weapons, and divine blessings. Making your valiant effort in conquering the temple much easier. But what makes Curse of the Dead Gods a very different Roguelike on its own is the Corruption. Just like stacking perks, you’ll be stacking corruption which will make your journey increasingly harder as the corruption continues to take you over. You can be corrupted in many ways, but primarily this takes place whenever you pass through a door to the next room or reach healing rooms which allows you to heal yourself at the cost of corruption. Be on the lookout, because once you reach the final level of corruption, your chances of success become almost inexistent.
A sword, a flintlock, and a big-ass Hammer
I like combat, I like fast-paced combat and it almost felt like Curse of the Dead Gods knew how I want to beat up enemies. The game allows you to wield 3 weapons at the same time which includes a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, and a third heavy weapon. You can individually use these weapons but if you blend the combination of the primary weapon and the second one into a combo, you’ll be making the most of the weapons you wield. However, the backbone of the entire combat system is well if you would have guessed by now is the ‘Stamina’ function. The feature is straightforward, you have 5-6 (can be increased with blessings). Each time you use your secondary or heavy weapon a chunk is utilized, also every time you dodge a chunk will be used up as well. But you haven’t spotted a negative tone in the review yet, right? That’s because the game offers you several ways of gaining back the chunks apart from waiting for it to refill back up.
Perfect dodge, Perfect parry, and enemy elimination credits stamina and allows you to continue creating havoc without backing off. The curse of the dead gods allows you to wield a variety of weapons in all the slots. Of course, each weapon is designated to its own place, but the variety and the type do justice to the restriction. Instead, you using an ideal sword, you can wield daggers, kunai, hammer, mace, and my favorite – Claws. For the secondary weapon I ideally insist on creating combos with the pistols, but I will never let down an electric whip. (Boy-oh-boy it slaps hard) (On the enemies. Just making it clear.) And as for the Heavy weaponry, you can equip bows, spears but I will of course take the heaviest spark hammer.
The variety of the enemies will of course make you question your choice of playing the game, but each time you start reading enemy attacks and start parrying and destroying the core out of the enemies rendering into chain Greed Kills, you know you’re having a great time. I’ll be honest, the exploration is minimal, you only need to clear small rooms, but it is layered with traps and a horde of enemies. As for the exploration, instead of finding the exit, you’ll be crossing rooms after rooms. These rooms will, of course, lead to the final boss but it cuts out on pointless exploration, and instead gives you an option of choosing your next choice of rooms which will hence lock away the other options and the ones that lie next to it.
So, you going in?
Curse of the Dead Gods minimizes a lot of factors that prevented me from playing roguelike games, and at the same time adds its own uniqueness and challenges to the game. The visual design is detailed and worth applauding. Being a minor dabbler in the 3D dark arts myself, I can tell how much effort has been put into just putting it all together and I can only say that it couldn’t have been done better! The lighting factor that is both a game mechanic and a visual feature is one of the major highlights for the game. Backed by a rewarding storyline, multiple upgrades, and efficient combat system, and of course enough health to not make me rage, Curse of the Dead Gods is a solid 4.5/5.
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