Dead and Loving It

Today we’re taking a look at the Nintendo Switch version of Curse of the Dead Gods, a game that looked intriguing to me and after playing it a lot and failing many, many times, I have to say that I still can’t put this down. that’s why it’s taken me a week longer than I planned to do this review. Full disclosure is that due to its difficulty I have not yet beaten this game, however since it’s a roguelite I do feel that I’ve experienced enough of it to form an opinion. Also, it’s my channel and I do what I want. So there.

Curse of the Dead Gods is a roguelite. As anybody familiar with these titles can guess, there isn’t much story here and you’re basically an adventurer in search of treasure, and you very stupidly decide to enter a temple where the doors close behind you, and you’re stuck. As I often tell my friends after they get their head stuck between the bars of a fence after many rounds at the bar, the only way out is through. Much like every Congress we’ve had over the last 100 years, the overall theme of this game is Corruption and Greed.

So basically you’re going to spend your time doing runs of each leg of the temple you’re in, trying to make it as far as you can before inevitably getting killed and having to start over. With each new run you can spend the currency you’ve picked up on perks and items to try and improve your chances the next time. If you’ve played games like Rogue Legacy or Dead Cells, then this is right up your alley and I think Curse of the Dead Gods is somewhere in between those in terms of gameplay and difficulty.

At the beginning of each run, depending on what you’ve unlocked, you can equip your perks, which the game calls Blessings, and those range from enemies taking more environmental damage from traps,more time to rack up combos, stat increases, things like that. There’s also weapon altars that you’ll want to unlock as well – up to 4 total – so that you have your choice of weapon sets that are randomly chosen before each run. Your default weapons are a basic machete and pistol and if you want to progress to the end, you’re not going to need to best gear you can get your hands on.

Speaking of weapons, you can unlock several dozen of them with Jade Rings that you’ll collect off bosses, and there’s some that you’ll have to equip during your temple runs to be able to unlock as well. The weapon variety in this is good and each weapon really feels different, so you’ll have your favorites. I personally dug the throwing knives the most since you can hit at a distance, but then you can also wield swords, bows, maces, and more. The rarer weapons in this will grant stat bonuses, special attacks, and perks like getting health back after dealing critical damage. This part of it was where it reminded me of Dead Cells the most. And just like Dead Cells, there’s some times where you’ll get dud weapons and just want to make due the best you can.

The temple runs are called Explorations, and when you start the game you’ll have the first leg of each temple unlocked, and earning Blood Emblems will allow you to progress further. The catch here is that you’re not just starting at the next area of the temple – you’ll just be able to progress past the first boss and onto the second, and so on. This sounds lame at first but the game is conditioning you for these longer Explorations because if you just had everything opened up right away, it’d be really discouraging to not even make it to the first boss and see just how far you still had to go. At least that’s how I look at it.

As you progress through each Exploration, you can choose your path you want to take and each symbol on the map stands for different things the room offers, like a health room, one that’ll let you get an upgraded version of your weapon, brand new weapons, attribute upgrades. This is a nice feature and lets you plan and prioritize your path leading up to each boss.

If you’d like to try and earn some more Jade Rings or the currency to unlock Blessings and Weapon Altars, called Crystal Skulls, then you can jump into a special Event that’ll reward you with more of these than usual. Each event has a different set of modifiers to change up the gameplay and challenge you, and you only get one shot before you have to wait until the next day for a new one. These are nice because honestly the Crystal Skulls feel pretty grindy to get, and you don’t get a whole lot of them unless you take down a boss. The Jade Rings you *only* get if you kill a boss, so all of these means you’re going to do a lot of Explorations.

Obviously the meat of the game will be your Explorations and the game is challenging, but fair. You have a few different things you need to keep track of and all of them have the potential to change over the course of your Exploration due to any curses you have. See, in addition to your health bar, you also have a curse bar in the bottom right of your screen. Taking damage from certain attacks or even opening doors will up your Corruption and by default, every time you get 100 corruption, you’ll get a curse.

Each curse usually has 1 negative effect and 1 positive. Some examples would be that you’ll lose gold in addition to health when you take a hit, but that you now take 25% less damage. Or that your torch no longer lights and you’re basically stuck in the dark, but that you no longer take extra damage from enemies in the dark. Even after you get used to most of the curses, you’ll still likely cringe a little at what your next one will be. Curses do stack, so by the time you get that final curse, you’re going to be in pretty rough shape with all the new rules you have to keep track of.

See, in addition to your health bar, you also have a curse bar in the bottom right of your screen. Taking damage from certain attacks or even opening doors will up your Corruption and by default, every time you get 100 corruption, you’ll get a curse.

You can lower your corruption by small increments a few ways. Killing bosses will remove an entire curse altogether, you can offer select weapons or items to the gods, or there’s some weapons that have a bonus where you’ll lose corruption by killing enemies. There’s a lot of times where even losing 1 or 2 corruption helps, and I promise you that keeping an extra curse off you for just 1 more room can be the difference between life and death.

Speaking of death, you’re going to die a lot. Like you’ll die so much even Sean Bean and Benicio Del Toro will be impressed. The game has an isometric view, much like Diablo or Torchlight, and hitting one of the face buttons attacks with that weapon. You can hold it down for a charge attack or rapidly hit it for a combo, and as I said earlier each weapon hits differently. You can also combo weapons together to stun enemies. All of this is basic stuff, but the most important thing you’ll want to learn are the parry and dodge. Dodging works a lot like it does in Dark Souls. It uses up a stamina point, and in this you’ll want to time it at exactly the right time to do a Perfect Dodge, which gets you a stamina point back. Dodging works in a pinch but you can’t rely on it all the time due to your stamina. Running out of stamina means you’re stuck with your basic run, and you’re gonna eat whatever attack is coming until that stamina recharges.

That is, unless you know how to parry. The parry system in this is what will keep you alive far longer than dodging will. Basically the enemy will flash when they’re about to attack, and then you have a small window to parry so that when it connects, it not only stuns them but also leaves them weakened so you can hit them harder. Just like the famous Daigo parry against Justin Wong back in EVO 2004, you can parry multiple hits or projectiles and you will feel like a badass while doing it. It’s really, really satisfying to block an attack from an enemy and then punish them for it. Killing an enemy starts a timer that allows you to get combo kills, which in this are called Greed Kills, and they award extra gold with each enemy you waste. You can keep that timer going by just hitting an enemy, and it’s really fun to see how many you can chain together before clearing a room out.

One last thing I want to to mention about the rooms and combat is that there’s a lot of traps you’ll have to watch out for as well. Frog statues that spew poison, dragon statues that shoot fire because what else would dragons shoot, and roots whipping you, spikes, everything is pretty much out to kill you. You can use all of these to your advantage though, and if you’d like to bait your enemies into following you into the line of fire of these traps, you can seriously hurt or kill them. Like one of the earliest Blessings you can get makes enemies take 100% more damage from traps, which almost guarantees a 1 hit kill if you get them hit by one. Some might say it’s super effective.

Graphically the game looks great and has this cool comic-booky style with dark lines and an almost cel-shaded coat of paint, however it’s very dark. Like, not in terms of content, though don’t get me wrong – we’re not playing Animal Crossing here – but like it’s actually dark and you can’t see a lot. As a parent I don’t like the dark because it means I’m about to step on a lego block, or a cat, or maybe an empty bottle of irish whiskey I forgot to pick up.

I’ve never been one to like limited visibility in games so the darkness annoys me, but I understand that in the context of exploring a giant temple that was made before the power company was able to go out there and install an electric panel, it makes sense. Keeping each room lit will help in lowering the damage you take as being in the dark means you’re getting hit for as much as 50% more damage, and healing does *not* come around often other than gear that rewards you with health for certain things, offering items to gods for health, or by going to these special rooms that let you get health back at the cost of raising your corruption.

There’s not much in the way of sound or music but what’s there works really well. Most of what you hear is ambient until you get into combat, and then it’s mostly this cool tribal drumbeat stuff. The enemies in this shriek and scream, and some of the noises they make are pretty creepy and whoever did the enemy sounds on this really deserve a pat on the back. Your character doesn’t really make any noise, but he does a lot of manly screaming. So I guess if you’re offended by manly screaming maybe don’t play this. I’m not, but then I’m told I scream more like a chimpanzee than a man anyway.

So Curse of the Dead Gods is difficult but it’s got a lot of layers to it that will feel familiar but that doesn’t make it less fun to me. You’re going to like or dislike the corruption system and admittedly there’s times where I just want to play the game all vanilla and not deal with the curses, but that’s not an option here so you’ll deal with it or you’ll be wasting your money. Also unless you really learn the enemies’ tells and learn to parry, you won’t get far in this game, and that’ll turn some people off, but learning it is really rewarding and it’s worth the time. It’s altogether a really cool game and if you’re into roguelikes then I totally recommend it.