Written by: Jason Boucher Follow me: @jboo_777 on twitter!
Thank you to Ultimate Games for providing me with this game to play!
The Story So Far:
Please the Gods is a short, RPG, adventure game. It is set in Finnish mythology where you and your family have settled down. The thing is that living here, in the North, is hard and you are running out of food. You receive a vision of Sampo (an old mill) that is in the land of the Gods. You must leave your family behind in search of this item so you can save them.
Gameplay:
Everything in the game takes place on an overworld map and depending on your mission, will have a mix of landmarks scattered on the map that you can interact with. You are a small circular token that moves around this map. Each landmark is either a battle, a campfire (where you can heal, gather food, or boost your defense), a gathering location (where you can get food) or a mystery (represented by a ?). Often times you will have a branching path, so you can choose which path you want to take.
The core of the gameplay here is the battle system. It is composed of dice and skill cards. Each round of combat is broken into two phases: an attack phase and a defense phase. You start each phase by rolling two dice, and the enemy rolling two dice. In your attack phase, the goal is to have a higher total number than the enemy’s defense number. After your initial roll of the dice, you get to choose a skill, which is represented by different cards that you can play. Some will give effects on your next round, others will give you more dice so that you can get a higher score. If you are successful, then you one do one point of damage that takes away one heart from the enemy. In the second phase, if your total score is better than the opponents, then you will block the upcoming attack. The battle system itself is not that deep, and I wish there was more to it than just the luck of rolling the dice. This is my biggest problem with the game, it just feels like you don’t have control. The core of this battle system is luck and I just don’t like that.
At the end of each mission, you will receive a skill point which you will use for the various skill trees. There are two sets of defensive and offensive skill trees. You can only take four cards into battle so there is some strategy in choosing cards that will work together.
Conclusion:
I spent about an hour and a half with that game and got a third of the way down with the game, so it probably sits around four to five hours to complete. This is a decent game, I just do not like the luck element in the battle system, but hey maybe you will. If this game sounds interesting to you, it is currently $9.99Â on the Nintendo eShop.
