LogFAQs > #970627927

The hint could actually have applied to one other game on my list, but maybe that one's less popular :p

58. Cult of the Lamb (2022)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/2/6/AABKTfAAED2G.jpg

Y'know, I really liked the original Actraiser (played it on the Wii VC), and this feels like a modern equivalent to that. Half management sim (of a cult), half roguelike hack&slash dungeon exploration, CotL does a neat job giving us two entirely different gameplay systems to occupy the player. Unfortunately, even though it only took me ~13 hours to beat the game, it still felt like it got old long before that. For the first few hours, the upgrades to your town/cult are fun enough, since you get new buildings that add new systems and such, but then the upgrades get a lot more rote (instead of harvesting stone, you can harvest stone very slightly faster), and they turn into busywork, doing stuff like forcing you to talk to every single cultist multiple times, which I got tired of after a while. For the dungeons, there's not as much variety as a lot of roguelikes have, without a lot of weapons/upgrades. It's not like the dungeons are bad, but in a linear game you're not supposed to play forever, I feel like they could've just made bespoke dungeons that would've been more interesting than what we got.

The highlight of the game is the style. All the cult stylings, with unholy rituals and serving dark gods, are awesome. You can perform rituals to sacrifice your followers when they get too old to be useful (or just for fun), and your followers will love it if you've taught them that dying for the cult is for the greater good, since they'll be with their gods. The animations are awesome. Everything about this game looks very good. There's some silly stuff, like how your cultists will just poop all over the place before you build an outhouse, and you have to collect it to use as fertilizer, or how everyone gets sick from looking at dead bodies and such. That's what pushed me through. The story itself is good, serving one god to take revenge on the four who imprisoned him, but the writing isn't that interesting. None of the dialogue feels that great. This is one of those games where I felt like I was forcing myself to finish it, and almost dropped it a couple times.

Next game hint: what a horrible night to have a curse (2020)