Godstrike | PS4 Review

Freedom Games, for whatever reason, decided to make their game all about the boss rush. A boss battle twin stick shooter with roguelite features, and a timed gimmick. That and a story about Gods, their heralds, the herald's masks, and precious time. 

In the world this game's story takes place in an all powerful being and creator of all things created masks known as heralds which where tasked with finding human vessels fit to govern the world, and bring to it peace and prosperity through their control. As with most things the pathway to death and destruction is paved with good intentions though. Both the heralds, and their chosen vessels became greedy with power as the powerful often do. One such herald assimilated other heralds, and in doing so became the biggest threat to face the people of Eonora. 

Sacrificing time, the remaining heralds joined together in an attempt to seal the greedy herald in a timeless prison. Only to have that attempt backfire upon them as they were drawn into battle over a mysterious plague that was destroying the land and it's peoples from underneath. Ultimately loosing from it's prison the once imprisoned herald, and destroying all but one tribe of people. A tribe in which a lone female villager set out to find a cure for the corruption they now faced. Finding along her journey, in the midst of ruins, the last unclaimed herald. In turn becoming one with the herald as the last herald, and remaining hope. The only herald left to stand between the wayward army of heralds, and their intended destruction of humanity.

In Godstrike the player gains immediate access to four modes of play including Arena, Story, Daily Challenge, and Challenge. Each with the same underlying roguelite mechanics centered around a time gimmick. In each mode the player, and their controlled herald has access to two tomes of abilities and passives that each allow for the assigning of four perks. The time costing perks, which run on collected souls dropped from damaged bosses, are accessible and assignable from the Arcane tome. The other four passive perks which grants passive abilities costs no time from your time meter, and can be assigned and freely used in battle. All perks tie into the shmup inspired theme gifting the herald various mobility, defensive, offensive, and time managing bonuses that change the approach to boss battles, in general. This of course all plays into the time meter, and how it effects your heralds fight. Time, as it were, is the herald's life bar. When you take damage the given amount of time depletes. It also depletes over time, and when you use an Arcane ability. Once fully depleted you can take only one more hit before you are forced to retry. Making time spent via the assigned Arcane abilities, and time spent in battle crucial to success.

With each mode, access to these abilities and passives are restricted to a point. In Story mode, for example, you only gain access to the abilities and passives you have unlocked by beating the bosses. Each boss unlocking one new ability, and one new passive once defeated. In Arena mode though everything is unlocked from the start. Both in the Arcane, and Occult tomes. In that particular mode you can only fight against bosses you've beat though, and can choose from them freely once you've beaten them in story mode. In Daily Challenge and Challenge modes these options are limited in comparison to the other two modes, and gives the player only access to that mode's challenge based ability and passive selection. Making it a challenge about learning how to best utilize the available Arcane abilities, and Occult passives in a given boss fight. Where the two challenge modes differ is with the number of bosses. Daily Challenge is a singular boss rush with a single try. Challenge however is the usual series of bosses but with access to a SEED code if you want to continue on the same randomized playthrough.

When it comes to controlling the herald the gameplay functions like a twin stick shooter with the right thumbstick for moving, and the left thumbstick for multi-directional shooting. Basic shooting, and its additional shmup based mechanics are tied to and effected by the Arcane and Occult assigned abilities and passives. Which are, in turn, assigned to the top four shoulder buttons for ease of access. It's not hard to control, and as one would expect it's the bosses, and their attack patterns that offer the bulk of the challenge. Learning how to best dodge the bullet hell, and physical boss attacks while best managing your time meter alongside your abilities and passives is the key to success.

The Verdict ...

As much hope as I had for Godstrike that hope was dashed to bits at the second boss in story mode. A boss battle made unfair by visual coloring. It made it unfairly difficult to dodge the beginning bullet hell, because that bullet hell was hardly visible against the background. It is this artificial difficulty spike that made me abandon trying to complete story mode early on. It was too frustrating, and off putting. While the game has potential elsewhere getting there requires getting past that ridiculous roadblock, and that's a chance I'm not willing to give the game. What good is a shmup where you can't see the bullet hell well enough to dodge it? Not good, in my opinion. And that's where my verdict on this game lies. It had potential, but it threw it all away by a poor design choice. I felt the bosses were properly challenging without the developer having to throw artificial difficulty into the mix via something as unfair as masking bullet hell with background colors.