Playing enough games, and understanding certain aspects of how they are built, is a double edged sword. On one hand, it allows you to get into the mindset of the developers and see what they were aiming for, on the other it allows you to see the mistakes and call bullshit on some aspects of fundamental game design.
Curse of the Dead Gods, from developers PassTech Games is probably the optimony of this philosophy and it both elevates and pulls it down. This, coupled with the fact that it came after a game that radically altered how the rogue-like genre is perceived, means the critique of the game became just as fun, if not more so, than the act of playing it.
Of course, this doesn’t mean COTDG (as it shall henceforth be known) is a particularly bad game, and comparing to the aforementioned other game (Hades) is something that is more than little unfair because on a fundamental level they may be the same genre, but are doing different things. Where Hades focuses on story, COTDG has little to none. Hades gives you a gentle difficulty curve, COTDG is hard as sin from the off. Still, it was hard while playing not to compare, which is, as I say, unfair.
COTDG puts you in the shoes of an unnamed explorer tasked with finding a way out of the three temples of the titualar dead gods, There is the temple of the Jaguar, the temple of the Eagle and the Temple of the Serpent. Each one has its own unique enemies, traps and bosses along with a central theme. So the Jaguar temple is based around fire, while the Eagle temple is lightning and the Serpent temple poison. Coincidentally, these are also the three elemental damage types you can wield.
The game is a rogue-like, so the main loop is the same as all these types of games: run the same level over and over again until you beat it and can move on. This involves picking a set of weapons from an altar at the start, picking which temple you want to run and then playing until you either die or beat the final boss. Each room will give a specific reward, either a new weapon, weapon upgrade, gold or improved attributes. More types are added as you get further in, but these are the main four.
Unfortunately, design problems start to crop up almost from the start of the game. It’s tutorial sections throw so much at you straight away that it's very difficult to take everything in and I got to the point where I just buttoned through with the reasoning that I will figure it out on my own. All this needed was a little spacing, not ‘here are eight things you need to know right this second’ even though you won’t actually use at least three of them for a few minutes into the first level. It was a terrible intro, and didn’t set the best first impression.
Some strange wording choices in the help tip texts didn’t help and proved confusing, though I will admit that it was my own issue with them calling everything an ‘action’ when it didn’t make any sense. These little things do however set up the game's major flaws, of which there are a few.
A lot of games give you the power fantasy, where you become this all powerful badass over their run. COTDG is not that, you are no bad ass, and the enemies are no joke. It's less Devil May Cry and more Demon Souls. The game is actively out to hurt you and make your life harder and harder, and it’s systems lean into this. Unfortunately it doesn’t go all the way, and it ends up having a combat system that doesn’t marry up with this idea. What it wants you to do is wait for your opportunity, dive in and deal a bit of damage, then back out and regain stamina a la Demon Souls. The problem is that mashing the attack button is a fast and fluid affair, with an off hand combo attack that swaps to your secondary weapon for extra damage. This means that most enemies are destroyed without having to worry about parrying or dodging, and if you do parry, the weakened effect lasts long enough that your remaining stamina is more than enough to take out a couple of enemies at least before having to back off.
This is compounded by the fact that one of the best weapon types in the game, the claws, just straight slices and and dices enemies, meaning your character swaps back to Devil May Cry. It’s a weird combination and the game would have been better had the developers picked one side of the coin and stuck to it, rather than trying to walk the line between the two. This leads into the game's most major issue: All the systems have one too many things on them.
What I mean by this is that, for example, the stamina bar has your attack, your dodge and your parry on it. Meaning if you are concentrating too much on attacking, which is extremely easy to do, you cannot then dodge or parry, leading to an annoying series of hits from enemies you should be able to easily deal with. Then there is the corruption system, which has attacks from enemies, passing through a door, curses, traps and upgrades all associated with it. Once you get corrupted enough (five rooms) you gain a curse, some of which are incredibly annoying and some give you a boon with slight downside - Dodging now makes you intangible but a perfect dodge won’t regain stamina for example.
It’s a lot to deal with, and it doesn’t help the game. Just taking the attack off the stamina bar would make for a more fluid combat experience, while making the choice for upgrades between gold or health gives it a more risk reward vibe that would fit into the game better in my opinion. To be fair on that last one, there is a curse that makes it so you can pay for upgrades and attributes with health rather than adding to your corruption meter, but it's not something you can rely on because of that.
All that said, COTDG is still a good game, it just takes a long time to get used to how the systems work, what weapons are best, the parry timing (especially the parry timing!) and everything else it throws at you. I enjoyed my time playing the game once I got used to it, but getting used to it took me a good ten hours, and even then I had to turn on the assist mode to be able to beat it.
The assist mode is really good to be fair, with lots of different settings that allows you to just make things a tiny bit easier or make it very easy to play. Honestly if I had turned this on at the start, it would have made the game much better, as it forces the game to lean into one side of the aforementioned coin on its combat and stopping it walking a line it just isn’t doing.
Overall, COTDG is a great game and a great rogue-like. It’s just trying to straddle a line with it’s combat that doesn’t work and has no story to counter that and propel you through. Put the effort in to learn how everything works and you will be rewarded, but, to be frank, turning on the assist mode even a little will remove that line and make your time with the game that much better. You just won’t get achievements, but honestly, who cares about them in 2021?