Godfall Impressions - Calling Mr. Bloom

CriticalGaming

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With this impressions thread I'm going to get right to the chase, no bullshit, no crazy jokes, no explaining brief histories. Just to the point....

Godfall is.......alright.

It's alright. It's not great. It's not bad. It's just, alright.

The game reminds me a lot of warframe. Your character exists in these suits of armor called Valplates? Wait. Valoran....no that's not right. They're suits of armor fuck it. Each one specializes in a slightly different type of ability. There is the fire armor, water, air, crit damage, shield damage, bleed damage, etc etc. In total there are 12 armors you can eventually unlock. However unlocking each armor requires you to progress to certain zones in the game to gather the materials required to unlock them. This isn't particularly daunting, and gathering the material is done in one or two missions per armor unlock. Not a big deal.

The problem with this is that none of the armors are really unique outside of their appearance. You see all these elemental effects that you armor brings to the damage all apply different DOT effects on your enemies, they problem is, all the dot's are exactly the same. Water, fire, bleeding, poison, air, void, all of them just do damage over time and that's it. It's like different colors of the same flavor of ice cream. It's not even different flavors, it's the same fucking flavor just in a different color.

Fortunately the combat move set is diverse across the six different weapons in the game. And there is a fairly large skill tree that powers up your chracter but also unlocks new movesets entirely which allows combat to further expand as the game goes on.

The combat itself is your fairly basic hack n slash, it's not anything really special and actually it might even be a bit below average due to how floaty it can feel from time to time. Enemies seem to be able to follow you a massive distance when attacking that doesn't feel right. And the game throws a lot at you at once, which can be overwhelming due to the camera being so close to the character. There are indicators that surround you warning of incoming attacks but there are so many flashy effects that all happen at once it's hard to see.

The game looks nice, but do yourself a favor and turn off the bloom and lens flair ASAP, because holy shit the lighting effects are bonkers, and not worth the effort. It's a blinding mess at times unless you turn this off immediately. If you are on console....I'm sorry.

Godfall is a looting game, ala Gearbox's other franchise Boarderlands, however the loot here isn't all that exciting. At least not in the first 18 levels i got over the 6 hours i played today. It's a lot of % based increases to your various attack types. Break damage, elemental damages, etc. Later one once you've gather stuff that all kind of stacks the same bonuses, I could see the loot being more satisfying, but early on there just is too much junk to deal with and none of the suppliments seem to make any difference at the early levels. There is potential with the system though and I'm hoping that the later stuff does improve and build upon what the early game promises. Unfortunately, I don't think it will change much.

Lastly, the game is fucking buggy. Moment to moment gameplay is fine, but there are lots of lighting issues (even with most of the extra bling turned off) as well as 6 total crashes I suffered in a single play session. As well as a few of the missions failing to load.

But despite that, I'm hopeful for this one. The enemy and character designs are really cool, and there are some awesome unique elite enemies that are exciting to fight. Loot is giving at a reasonable pace to keep things rewarding all the time. And I think with some more player feedback and tweaks it could be a really solid game at the end of the day.
 

sXeth

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The couple of videos I watched I was primarily struck that everything just seemed kind of weighed down. Not like a sense of weight, but sort of almost lagging in responsiveness. Without being hands on, my best description would be that it looks like the off-feeling that alot of Ubisoft's third person stuff has had in recent times.


The melee combat I saw looked really clunky. Like, not flowing at all, as if every button press was loading up a different animation.


Level design looked pretty boring. Oh yeah, shining, fancy lighting engines and all, but just dull. There was some weird teleporting mechanic that seems to be an awkward and unnecssary substitute for jumping.


It then wrapped up with baby's first boss fight. Big heavy dude with telegraphed swings who occasioanlly makes Red Circles of Bad to avoid.
 
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gorfias

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The reviews I'm seeing say the game is very Meh, BUT... like "Ryse, Son of Rome" it does appear to be a tech demo: showing us what the next Gen. will offer in graphics. This is the 1st game of which I'm aware that my rig, with an RX 480, does not meet MINIMUM requirements. You need, at a minimum! an RX 580. The trailers I've seen are very pretty and do look like something new. Other games like A.Creed Valhalla would play on my rig and are not, IMHO, next gen. Course, I need such excuses to say to my missus, "but honey, I have to upgrade! My rig will not play the new games!". Hee hee, I'm already saying that to her anyway :)


EDIT: This guy appears to be playing PC on the recommended hardware including a $500 5700XT.
 

CriticalGaming

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The melee combat I saw looked really clunky. Like, not flowing at all, as if every button press was loading up a different animation.
Combat itself is pretty responsive. However it does admittedly feel floatier than it probably should. The biggest problem I have with it is that your defensive options are not very good. The dodge is almost useless. But offensively you have plenty of combos and special attacks to weave around.

BUT... like "Ryse, Son of Rome" it does appear to be a tech demo: showing us what the next Gen. will offer in graphics.
Godfall is WAY better than Ryse. I dunno about tech demo either, because Demon's Souls looks WAY fucking better. This game has some great character and weapon art design though. But what puts it above Ryse is that Ryse was very much a one-trick pony. There wasn't much to it outside of the graphics, but Godfall is much more gameplay driven than that. You don't really notice the graphics that much during the chaos of the fights.

And Godfall's bosses are pretty fucking fantastic. Not the mini bosses that @sXeth said.
It then wrapped up with baby's first boss fight. Big heavy dude with telegraphed swings who occasioanlly makes Red Circles of Bad to avoid.
The first real bosses, and the real "hunts" in the game are much more wild imo. Tutorial boss is tutorial. But the real bosses do a lot of shit, minions, spells, teleports, grabs, combos, there is a lot to read with them and they make for fairly exciting fights.
 

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Here is a review that I found good. Do not confuse with Woolie Versus. I do want to play this game when I get a PS5 down the line when it and the console go on sale.

Combat itself is pretty responsive. However it does admittedly feel floatier than it probably should. The biggest problem I have with it is that your defensive options are not very good. The dodge is almost useless. But offensively you have plenty of combos and special attacks to weave around.



Godfall is WAY better than Ryse. I dunno about tech demo either, because Demon's Souls looks WAY fucking better. This game has some great character and weapon art design though. But what puts it above Ryse is that Ryse was very much a one-trick pony. There wasn't much to it outside of the graphics, but Godfall is much more gameplay driven than that. You don't really notice the graphics that much during the chaos of the fights.

And Godfall's bosses are pretty fucking fantastic. Not the mini bosses that @sXeth said.


The first real bosses, and the real "hunts" in the game are much more wild imo. Tutorial boss is tutorial. But the real bosses do a lot of shit, minions, spells, teleports, grabs, combos, there is a lot to read with them and they make for fairly exciting fights.
Thank you. I appreciate the honesty and details.
 

sXeth

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Combat itself is pretty responsive. However it does admittedly feel floatier than it probably should. The biggest problem I have with it is that your defensive options are not very good. The dodge is almost useless. But offensively you have plenty of combos and special attacks to weave around.



Godfall is WAY better than Ryse. I dunno about tech demo either, because Demon's Souls looks WAY fucking better. This game has some great character and weapon art design though. But what puts it above Ryse is that Ryse was very much a one-trick pony. There wasn't much to it outside of the graphics, but Godfall is much more gameplay driven than that. You don't really notice the graphics that much during the chaos of the fights.

And Godfall's bosses are pretty fucking fantastic. Not the mini bosses that @sXeth said.


The first real bosses, and the real "hunts" in the game are much more wild imo. Tutorial boss is tutorial. But the real bosses do a lot of shit, minions, spells, teleports, grabs, combos, there is a lot to read with them and they make for fairly exciting fights.

The other question I have, particularly with your clarifications there (and yes, I did only watch the tutorial basically).


Generally I noted the enemies didn't really seem responvie, it was just kind of chunking at kind of spongey health. Nor did there seem to be much defensively other then basic evasion going on.


Which kind of leads into the "what is the endgame". Its looter (seeming to owe itself to somethng similar to PoE maps at the end), but does the loot at all get interesting, or is just the blandy DPS race. I've seen a few reviews now note that the Valroants are pretty static, so thats out.
 

CriticalGaming

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Which kind of leads into the "what is the endgame". Its looter (seeming to owe itself to somethng similar to PoE maps at the end), but does the loot at all get interesting, or is just the blandy DPS race. I've seen a few reviews now note that the Valroants are pretty static, so thats out.
I'm not in end-game so I couldn't tell ya. The armor's have cosmetic options but i have no idea how to get them. But your loot doesn't effect the look of your armor in anyway. With the exception of the different weapon on your back.

Generally I noted the enemies didn't really seem responvie, it was just kind of chunking at kind of spongey health. Nor did there seem to be much defensively other then basic evasion going on.
The enemy diversity is quite nice, and they do a lot of stuff against you. The game likes to throw several enemy types at once, each type does something different against you to mix you up and force you to choose target priority.

Snipers that shoot you with bullets or spells, trapper enemies that try to cc you for a beating, straight up brutes that hit with lots of unblockable attacks, and a few others.

The problem is that your character's defense is really unreliable. Blocking sucks, and only works when you are facing an enemy, but attacks come from all directions, the dodge is useless as you cannot dodge out of any attack. If you are swinging, you have to wait until the swing finishes to dodge. But It feels like the game que's up attacks, so if you press attack twice before the first attack finishes then you'll automatically attack the second time, even if you are trying to dodge from the first attack.

Defense feels bad, which sucks because parrying is important. Which leaves your offense to be your primary deal, you are better off getting good at your various attacks and special moves to kill quickly rather than try to play defensively or evasively. This is a fundamental problem with combat imo, because there are elite enemies and bosses that simply cannot be zurged down, and you'll be forced to defend against them somehow.
 
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Bob_McMillan

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Huh I thought this was the creepy looking Dark Souls clone. Unless this is...?
 

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Huh I thought this was the creepy looking Dark Souls clone. Unless this is...?
There are some very minor DS elements, but the game mainly gets its ideas from God of War 4 and Destiny. If Destiny were a hack and slash and God of War had a multiplayer mode. Before anyone starts, I still remember the multiplayer mode from God of War: Ascension.
 
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gorfias

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There are some very minor DS elements, but the game mainly gets its ideas from God of War 4 and Destiny. If Destiny were a hack and slash and God of War had a multiplayer mode. Before anyone starts, I still remember the multiplayer mode from God of War: Ascension.
I did not know of this game! I think. I have a couple of G-d of War games on my Vita.
 

Bob_McMillan

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There are some very minor DS elements, but the game mainly gets its ideas from God of War 4 and Destiny. If Destiny were a hack and slash and God of War had a multiplayer mode. Before anyone starts, I still remember the multiplayer mode from God of War: Ascension.
The one I was thinking of had more of dark vibe than this game... Might have been an Xbox exclusive. Mortal Shell?

EDIT: Okay yeah it was Mortal Shell