Having just got a PS5, I wanted to immediately play something to other than a PS4 port, so I downloaded "Godfall" which was the free game available on PSplus this month. I had a nice couple of hours with the game, but then, for various reasons, I'd decided I'd had enough and deleted it.
"Godfall" is a hack and slash type game, with increased RPG elements than you might otherwise expect from that sort of game. You play as Orin, a king who is betrayed by his brother and expelled, who must convince various leaders to support his return to power. As well as collecting XP by defeating enemies, various loot comes your way, this may take the form of currency, weapons, magic orbs or various materials to help build or improve your existing kit.
At time of writing, "Godfall" has been a rather controversial addition to PS+ this month. Usually a full game is provided, but here the version made available allows you to play through the tutorial mission, but upon completion of that, the rest of the story is locked behind a paywall. Instead your character is upgraded to one comparable with someone who had finished the game and you can go on the "raid" missions, hunting for trophy kills or further developing your characters arsenal and armour.
I quite enjoyed the tutorial mission. It's quite lengthy and took me about 90 minutes to get through, exploring quite extensively, as I like to do. The controls are slowly revealed to you and you learn basic combinations and the techniques you need to make progress. It's a really beautiful looking game, with a pleasant, if not entirely fresh level to walk around. The controls worked quite well and once I had my little attack strategies down, I felt capable and the game was fun.
But then I finished that mission and it was the upgrade that really did for me. Suddenly I had new moves, and button presses that I was using now did entirely different things. This wouldn't be a problem in the full game, as I'd just have continued with the linear progression (I assume) but suddenly I'm made into an all powerful badass, with the enemies suitably powered up to be worthy of me, but I don't have the skills to operate it. The analogy I'd give is if you were to give a formula one car, to someone who had just passed their driving test.
I was also massively overwhelmed by amount of RPG elements in the game. Weapons, stats, effects, augments, accessories, valour plates - all of which are upgraded or replaced as the game goes on and very little of which I could really tell you what they did. This would probably have come if I'd kept going with the game. However, after another couple of hours messing around on the raid type missions, I'd decided that I was no longer enjoying playing it and It was never going to come back around, so I deleted it and moved on.
I think perhaps I'd have liked this more if I'd been allowed to play it properly and learn the game as I played, but I can only review the version that I was given and that felt like the fun dissipated as soon as the tutorial level was over.
