After the first hour or so of playing Godfall, initial reactions might be "this is fine." For the most part, it rings true for a large majority of the game. Godfall is just... fine. However, it's also aggressively unremarkable at being anything other than that. In an age where every company and their goldfish are trying to hop on the looter trend, there have been some shining examples. Monster Hunter World might be the best of its kind, while Warframe continues to harbour good will from its massive player base. This makes it particularly tricky for a game like Godfall to leave its imprint on the sub-genre, and as it stands, it struggles to even leave a dent.



Godfall takes place in the fantasy realm of *checks notes* Aperion. You play as Orin, the last of the Valorian knights who must deal with the forthcoming destruction of the kingdom by the hands of your villainous brother, Macros. As far as plot goes, that's all you're really getting out of Godfall's thin narrative. Before being given a chance at facing Macros, you have to deal with his five generals, steadily clearing the ranks as you progress through its roughly 10-12 hour campaign. Beyond that, there's little to keep you invested in the story. Sadly it's terribly dull and uninteresting, and throws more meaningless fantasy buzzwords at you than you can shake.

Its excellence in visuals is sadly undercut by a loose narrative...

Godfall goes through the motions of your typical fantasy RPG without any of the attachment necessary to carry the story. There's plenty of fascinating lore hidden behind a thin veil of mediocrity, which Godfall chooses to spend simply telling you instead of showing you. There's three overarching worlds to explore: Earth, Water and Air, each with their own distinctive design. Its excellence in visuals is sadly undercut by a loose narrative, which is barely held together by a list of remedial checkpoints on a list that you have to do over and over again. If it sounds dull and repetitive, it really is, but there's no easier way to put it. I zoned out of the story way too many times to find any sort of lasting emotional impact.



You undertake a variety of story and side missions in a central hub area called The Sanctum, consisting of a whole two NPCs that you can talk to: the Seventh Sanctum, a literal floating head who gives you exposition dumps and points you in the right direction, and the blacksmith (?) who can upgrade your weapons - and also gives you exposition dumps. That's it. There really isn't any other NPC interaction in the game besides these two NPCs, which is baffling considering that Destiny came out six years ago and managed to squeeze more than just two NPCs in its intricate hub world. Alongside the walls of The Sanctum you'll find all twelve Valorplates (this game's armor variants) that you can unlock by collecting the required items as you progress through the campaign. We'll get more into that in a bit.

The gameplay is fluid and engaging when it works, but here is where it runs into a host of problems. From a mechanical perspective, it's also broken.

Godfall's story and world isn't anything to write home about, but what about the central gameplay loop? This is where the game becomes a double-edged sword. The moment-to-moment gameplay is actually really fun while it lasts. It's a mix of hack-and-slash and tactical gameplay, where you'll tackle a variety of enemies (some with shields, some spellcasters, some ninjas, you know the drill). You have a handful of weapons to choose from, each bolstered by specific abilities and stat increases. Hammers pack a ton of punch, but are slow to the wind-up, while dual blades dish out quick damage but only chip away at an enemy's health. The gameplay is fluid and engaging when it works, but here is where it runs into a host of problems. From a mechanical perspective, it's also broken.



Aside from a weird jittery freeze animation that happens every time you kill an enemy, the intricacies of its combat is frustrating. There's no animation-cancelling at all, so you have to commit to an attack or block otherwise you leave yourself wide open to incoming attacks. Furthermore, enemies attack with such speed and aggressiveness that's hard to actually predict or forecast an oncoming strike. Since the camera is so tightly zoomed in on your character, there's little spatial awareness and enemies can surprise attack you off-screen. A little red indicator does warn you of an incoming attack, but the clutter of the overwhelming particle effects makes it incredibly difficult to see where they're coming from, and the indicator is so small and unnoticeable that you'll barely pay attention to it anyway.

These are just some of the minor inconveniences in Godfall's combat that begins to pile on as the problems become more apparent. Yes, you can still find fun in its fast-paced swordplay, but some refinements to its basic combat mechanics could go a very long way. I hope developer Counterplay Games at least fixes or revamps the combat here as it has a lot of potential to be great, but just needs that TLC and a bit more time in the creative oven.



The Valorplates is where Godfall could've greatly delivered on. They're really stunning to look at, and wonderfully designed in that high-fantasy style that dotted games like Warframe and, to an extent, World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, they only serve as visual upgrades with small, inconsequential buffs or abilities. This makes each Valorplate almost indistinguishable from one another, and you could theoretically just unlock two or three throughout the whole campaign and never feel the difference. It all boiled down to which Valorplate looked the best for me, and I just kind of stuck with it throughout the journey as the perks didn't really offer anything special.

It's a gorgeous game with striking graphics and terrific, atmospheric worlds that really stress the term "next-gen".

As far as positives go, the praises are surface-level. It's a gorgeous game with striking graphics and terrific, atmospheric worlds that really stress the term "next-gen". The way reflections bounce off the golden-lined towers and streets with shimmering sunlight is a spectacle to behold. The worlds are aesthetically pleasant, vibrant and beautiful. However, they're also as shallow as a puddle. The design of each world isn't exactly open, but rather it strings you along interconnected pathways all littered with the occasional band of enemies. You really begin to feel the tedium of these worlds when you're dropped at one end of the map and have to - for the fifteenth time - run through the same mobs of enemies to get to a boss or monster that dies within two minutes.



That brings me to the biggest negative of Godfall: its mission structure. There are several main story missions that follow the same rinse-and-repeat pattern above: run along a long path, defeat enemies along the way, activate some beacon/thing, kill more enemies, etc. The artificial fun factor of the moment-to-moment gameplay is the only thing that holds these missions together - something that plagued a similar looter, Anthem. In between main missions you're required (yes, required) to do side activities because boss battles are locked behind some arbitrary sigils that you can only get as rewards from these side missions. This only feels like padding for a campaign that would otherwise be 4 or 5 hours long at most without it. The side missions barely differ from the main missions either, as you're still running (you do a lot of that, trust me) across a map to fight enemies, kill a boss, repeat.



So what about the loot? Surely that's something that a looter game needs to nail? While it's not the worst loot system I've ever seen in a game, Godfall loot is dictated by inflated numbers as opposed to anything substantial. You'll get a greatsword in one mission with a high base attack, then go on to switch it out for dual blades with a higher base attack in the next mission. There's no real sense of reward in its progression, and no weapon ever feels unique. Instead, they're literally throwaway items that you switch out on the fly because one offers an incrementally better attack boost than the last. You can pair these weapons by their attached buffs and abilities with your armour benefits to optimize a certain kind of build, but builds are hardly ever an option since ailments and debuffs are applied all the same with the same additional percentile damage. A fire damage-focused Valorian feels no different to a water damage-focused one because they both offer the same extra damage output.



I've spent most of my review digging into Godfall's pitfalls, but at the end of the day, I don't entirely hate what it offers. The visuals are truly spectacular and a marvelous showcase for the capabilities of next-gen gaming, and the exciting gameplay - when taken at face value - keeps you engaged enough that you can almost forgive and forget everything crumbling around it. When you step away from the controller and really think about the cracks in its foundations, though, Godfall simply becomes another looter with a poor launch that can't seem to do much of anything right beyond being just fine. A terribly uninteresting story and a severe lack of content turns it into a game that will only provide you the bare minimum fun factor, and there's a lot better you can do with your time and money right now.

*PS5 Review code provided by Gearbox Publishing