It's been quite a long time since I have been properly obsessed with a game. The older I get, the more precious time about this Earth starts to seem. Viewed through that lens, even if I am professionally obligated to experience a game, I usually find them pretty simple to put down. Which was incorrect with Cult from the Lamb, a game that kept me awake past 2 a.m. more than once as i was reviewing it.
Cult of the Lamb is the epitome of the game which makes you say, “Just one more round.” Structured around a wonderfully metered out day-night cycle, the game lulls you into a rhythm. Each morning, you feed your cult before your everyday worship. By midday, everyone is hard at work gathering resources and generating devotion. In the evening, you are able to roll using your camp, collecting the fruits of your cult's labor. Then it's bedtime, giving you a minute to connect some loose ends while your cult members sleep peacefully within their tents-or on the cold, wet ground, if you're that sort of cult leader.
As I produced in my preview, Cult of the Lamb's cutesy aesthetic doesn't merely lend irony to the darker themes of demonic worship and religious brainwashing (not too those themes are ever really developed through the game). Instead, Massive Monster's adorable art style is an efficient tool at getting you to almost immediately care about the members of your cult. I needed them to live their best lives and I needed these to love me, not unconditionally apart from that these were so darn cute. And, as if they were Pokémon, I wanted to catch all of them.
I loved my little cult a lot which i didn't want one to leave. I did not want one to stray. So I built better tents to allow them to sleep in. I planted better food for them to eat. Used to do everything they inquired about to do, even when that meant imprisoning another cult member for stealing. Besides, I usually let the prisoner pursue a day and gave them a consolation gift of the homemade necklace simply to say, “No hard feelings.” I danced together, paid them, gave them weekends off, and each once in a while we all tripped balls together. If I left them for too much time while I was out slaying heretics, I ensured to reward their patience with a feast. All Gurus for in exchange was their devotion, their labor, their bodies just for the occasional demonic possession, and, once the time came, their lives.
Then it had been over. I slayed all the heretics. My duty was done. I was left feeling empty. What was my purpose now? What was the point of any one of it? Sure, you can say that in regards to a lot of games, especially ones that do not have particularly engaging stories. But this time I felt worse, like I was waiting for something that never turned up. While there was definitely more of everything that I liked about Cult of the Lamb after i previewed it, the sport didn't get more interesting. Sure, I had been adding a lot of buildings and unlocking new rituals and gaining new followers, but all the game did was expand. It never deepened.
This feeling of expansion over depth might have something to do with the truth that Cult from the Lamb is basically two games in one. The first game is a cult management sim where you do all the fun stuff I mentioned earlier, like farming and delivering sermons. The second game is really a 2D roguelike in which you need to fight your way through randomly generated, enemy-filled rooms with randomly assigned weapons before you either beat a boss or die. While there is the slightest hint of a story making you towards your ultimate goal, the real motivation would be to gather resources and followers while you're slaying heretical unbelievers from the One Who Waits.
Cult of the Lamb's combat is easy-maybe a tad too easy, at least on the “medium” difficulty setting. I only died once throughout my time with the game, and this is coming from somebody that barely made it through one successful run of Hades. A part of that could be how quickly and efficiently I leveled up my cult (more about that later), but I think that Cult from the Lamb isn't intended to be a terribly difficult game. There are only a number of enemy types in each from the four combat zones, and while many of them are unique for their specific zones, they have a tendency to possess similar attacks.
The listing of weapon types offered is also relatively short. There is a dagger, a sword, an ax, a hammer, and gauntlets. While all these might have their very own passive perks (like poisoning enemies or spawning a spirit from a dead enemy which will attack another enemy), using them essentially feels exactly the same. The only real weapon that felt totally unique was the hammer, which had a long wind-up time but a devastating delivery. It had been easily my favorite weapon hanging around, as you have to time your attacks a lot more than with the others.
Curses would be the other tool you get to help you get rid of your foes. They are essentially magic attacks that use a mana pool, which you have to recharge by killing enemies. Such as the weapons themselves, there are only a number of curses hanging around, although the effects that they can also have change. One curse, for instance, is just a powerful sword attack, if you could possibly get a sword attack that spawns spirits or one that freezes enemies. As the curses genuinely feel not the same as each other, there also aren't that lots of them.
If it sounds like I discovered the combat in Cult of the Shadow to become shallow, that is because I kind of did, but which does not mean I didn't appreciate it. For one, there are tarot cards that you can unlock and randomly receive on your combat runs that will provide you with temporary buffs, and those might have an effect how you play or at best how strong you are feeling. You may also unlock a structure at your camp that lets you temporarily turn your followers into demons and follow you into battle. Tinkering with these elements can be fun and add variety to your playthrough.
The major reason I enjoyed Cult of the Lamb's combat, however, was due to its context. Moving out in to the wilderness to murder heretics had meaning since i was doing the work in the service of my cult. It helped break up- I'd rather not say the “monotony” of managing my cult, however it lended a nice rhythm to my time using the game. I'd spend a couple of days in the camp, amassing wealth and resources, and earning my cult's devotion, after which head out for any heretic-slaying adventure. But in addition to that, I wasn't just killing enemies personally. I had been killing enemies so I could bring goods to my loyal followers.
There's a satisfying synergy forwards and backwards halves of Cult from the Lamb. The bones I earned from killing my enemies might be spent on rituals back home. These rituals could make my cult followers happier, easier, or even more devoted. The greater devotion (an actual resource hanging around) they gave me by praying towards the camp's central idol, the greater I possibly could level up the camp by unlocking new buildings like farms and mines. The more items I farmed and mined, the more gold I could earn, that we could then invest in tarot cards, or become gold bars which I would use to construct more complex versions of mines, camps, and more.
In by doing this, Cult from the Lamb's systems feed into each other nicely, but simply like combat, the cult management aspect just felt too easy. About halfway through my time with the game, I already had more resources than I'd ever actually need. I never ran out of wood or stone or food, and if I ever got have less gold, I could just sell whatever excess mushrooms or materials I'd. The game's economy felt broken, so that as someone who never really engages too deeply with these kinds of systems in similar games, I found it strange how easy it was that i can basically never need to worry about resources.
On another hand, there have been different ways in which Cult of the Lamb seemed a little too user unfriendly. One of many concerns is if your camp is neat and sanitary, as your followers need to defecate and occasionally vomit. Among the solutions would be to build a janitor's closet, that will randomly assign a cult member to clean the mess. Another solution is to provide your followers a place to do their business by means of an outhouse. The problem using the outhouses is they can fill up and overflow, so you've to occasionally clean them (which, conveniently, nets you some fertilizer to use on your farms). Now, you'd believe that the janitor would also cleanse the outhouse and deposit the fertilizer within the specific dumpster near the farm that's designated for storing fertilizer. However the janitor seemingly ignores whatever mess accumulates at the outhouse, leaving you to constantly be checking them.
This is just one example where Cult of the Lamb's management sim half feels lacking. Followers assigned to farms, as the second example, won't wait until the crops are fully grown, thus netting you seeds that you could then become more plants. Instead, they'll pick them just early enough that you lose out on that added bonus. When the idea is to have your cult on your side, then why did I feel like I was constantly doing the dirty work? Plus there is the fact that you can't move or remove buildings once you have placed them, that was aesthetically annoying although not necessarily game-breaking. Ultimately, the management side from the game, while compelling and expansive, did start to feel a little shallow, too.
It might sound like I have a large amount of complaints about Cult of the Lamb, but the fact of the matter is that it didn't really stop me from enjoying my time with the game any less-except for having to wash the outhouses constantly. But simply because something is a touch shallow doesn't mean it cannot be fun. As I write this review, the latest season from the British reality show Love Island is airing in the U.S. Like the followers within my cult, its contestants are all trapped on a small stretch of land, performing exactly the same tasks (in this instance, “grafting” and toe-sucking) again and again. Sometimes they play games, but winning doesn't usually enable you to get anything. The rest of the time, the contestants-who are influencers or types of some kind-lounge around a swimming pool.
And guess what happens? I love it. It's one of the shallowest, most repetitive shows That i have ever seen, but it's also one of the most fun shows on television. Sometimes dumb, shallow fun is what you need, even when that means it isn't exactly the most fulfilling experience. I don't always wish to have to create an effort. Sometimes I just want something simple to obsess over. Maybe Among the finest to be brainwashed, too.
