Welcome to our review of Polygod, a mediocre FPS on Nintendo Switch in desperate need of a better aiming system.
Polygod is a rogue-like, randomly generated, single & multiplayer FPS with a brutal difficulty curve!
Blending a fast-paced, Quake-esque feel with randomness, difficulty and our handcrafted power-up system, Polygod is a hardcore gamer and speedrunner’s dream. Only the most skilled and strategic players will defeat the Trial of the Gods.
You are a Faceless One: a one-armed, gun-wielding assassin of legend. The seven deities of Polygod will test your skill with randomly generated areas of hostile minions, followed by a boss fight against a ruthless Holy Champion.
Each of the arenas features five Altars of Worship, offering you Blessings in exchange for Souls you have collected along your journey. Blessings combine and stack to create unique gun effects, but each has consequences, so choose wisely if you wish to survive each wicked challenge. And don’t forget, death is permanent in this purgatory of the gods!
The art style is inspired by the metaphysical surrealist artist Giorgio de Chirico who is famously revered for his eerie mood and strange artificiality of cityscapes.
Polygod is a typical game that in a genre that benefits from having a mouse and should be played on a PC if this is the aiming mechanism they give us. More than not, I missed the target and due to how bad this aiming mechanism works, I either fled to avoid damage or got hit. Usually even multiple times. I got into messing with the settings, way too much for my liking, but never really found a way to make it feel more natural and that is exactly the problem of this game, it bathes in mediocrity.
And mediocrity is what defines this game. This aiming mechanism totally destroyed my gaming experience. While the game kept reminding me of the old school First Person Shooters, a very nostalgic feeling indeed. Heading into corridors, spotting the enemies before they do, upgrade your weapons, … I felt very interested in this game, who would not be?
When you start up the game, you can randomly generate the levels in a variety of atmospheres. There is a level of the day, … You can keep replaying levels and what is fun, in the middle of a level, you can buy upgrades. Everything comes down to saving souls, which you do by killing enemies.
Grab that pair of swift boots or 10 seconds of faster shooting and you are back on your way. While all of that sounds great, I come back to the way the game is handled by the bad mechanism. It is hard to aim and even motion controls barely make you any more precise. Add on top of that the roguelike nature of this game and to be blunt, you got a mediocre game.
In conclusion, Polygod only excels at that old school nostalgia but fails miserably to bring a decent gaming experience. The way it handles the shooting is just something you would expect during the OG game boy era, but not now.
My rating is a poor 30%
