Touting itself to be the best-looking game of the newest generation of consoles,Godfallset an incredibly high bar for itself. The good news for fans of the game is that the graphics are absolutely stunning and worthy of the best praise the industry has to offer. The downside is that the game overall has beenmet with mixed and negative reviews.
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So where doesGodfallgo from here? Looters likeDestiny 2andDiablo 3are no strangers to disastrous launch reviews and yet managed to turn themselves into juggernauts in the looter genre. So even though things might look bad now, if history is to be understood, nothing is stopping this game from becoming one of the best. To do so entails listening to the players, informing the community, using other games as a model for success, and putting in the effort to make those changes.
10Diversify The Environments
One might wonder why a game that looks so good graphically is not getting top marks in the areas of environment and atmosphere. The problem is not that the game looks bad, it actually looks incredible, but it all looks the same.
One way to makea bad review ofGodfallbetter would be to add in different detailed environments. The developers obviously loved gold-encrusted everything, but the effect gets old well before the end of the game.
9Repair The Crashes And Freezes
Fora game that already makes the mistakes of other looters, it really cannot afford to have technical problems. Yet, whether playing on PS5 or PC, the game is extremely prone to outright crashes, with the average being about once every two hours.
Even when it doesn’t crash, during intense action scenes, the game will freeze up for several frames that can stretch to seconds at a time. It might not seem so bad to lose a few seconds, but that’s more than enough time for the enemies to get plenty of cheapshots in.
8Remove The Railroad
Most gamers will begrudgingly accept a railroaded campaign experience but when the same design makes its way into the endgame and multiplayer portions of the game, that’s where people draw the line.
The multiplayer mode is already struggling with frequent crashes, but those issues can be fixed with some hard work and a few patches. The entire system needs to be reimagined. There is an example to look to;Warframelaunched as a linear game but has since opened up, much to the delight of its fanbase.
7Unleash The Storytellers
The lore ofGodfallis incredibly dense, inspiring more than one YouTube series that explains all the moving parts. Even blacksmiths have been so motivated by the lore behind the weapons thatthey’ve gone and recreated some of them in real life.
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Players who finish the game will undoubtedly be disappointed that almost none of this lore made it into the final game. Any future DLC and expansions will require much more of an emphasis on the rich world that the developers neglected in the base game.
6Eliminate The Fetch Quests
Having only two NPCs of any significance,Godfallplayers certainly expected a lot of personality and life from both of them. Sadly, they are hollow characters whose sole responsibility is to inform players that they need to fetch items in order to progress.
Players who want to knock outevery trophy onGodfall’s listunderstand that a fetch quest or two might be included, but to have the main story dependent on replaying missions to collect the sigils is a slap to the face.
5Zoom Out The Camera
Directors who make action movies understand that bringing the camera in tight enhances the effect of the action on-screen. This trick is appropriately used inthe trailers forGodfallto create a sense of excitement and mayhem.
The trick does not work well with actual gameplay. By focusing in over the shoulder while fighting, the field of view cuts out enemies that are attacking the Valorant Knight, forcing players to unnecessarily retreat and reposition to compensate.
4Add Audio And Visual Cues
Fans of the looter genre understand that attacks can come from anywhere and at any time, soGodfallplayers won’t be terribly surprised that opponent attacks are executed quickly and require fast reflexes.
But players absolutely expect an audio or, at the very least, a visual cue that an attack is incoming. Some enemies will wind up with a big attack that glows red, but normal enemy attacks are executed instantly and without any warning or heads up at all.
3Less Staggering Blows
Taking damage from virtually unavoidable attacks is something that dedicated fans will deal with, but having every attack stagger the Valorant Knight is something that all but the most hardcore gamers will tolerate.
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Players will be dealing with this constantly inGodfall. Every little attack sends the main character flying backward. Worse, the entire knockdown animation has to complete, often resulting in further attacks that also stagger and further delay any effort to recover from these blows.
2Add Cancelling And Queueing
Even on a regular swing, some weapons, like the warhammer, can take over an entire second to resolve. That would be fine so long as players had the ability to react when an enemy attacks, disappears, or moves before the completion of the swing.
Sadly, this is not the case, as using a move locks the player in for the entirety of the animation. This is further compounded by the strange removal of input queueing, which, for example, would allow players to hold the block button and block as soon as the swing finished. Not having either animation cancelling or input queueing makes players think their controller is broken.
1Make The DLC Free
Those who purchased the Ascended Edition ofGodfallhave already been promised a free expansion. After fulfilling that commitment, all other additions must be provided for free. In its current state, the game will be lucky to have players in two months, much less two years.
The worst way to destroy the game would be to put the planned content behind a paywall, which, at the moment, is what the developers have planned on doing. Fixing this decision must be a priority if the game is to have any longevity and evolve into a viable franchise.
