Review of Cult of the Lamb Switch: a tad underdone
Our Verdict
An incredibly detailed and accomplished game that deftly balances combat with managing your very own occult village, Cult of the Lamb is an amazing game that deserves to be played. But no amount of humour or depth of mechanics can save the consistent and disappointing performance. I pray to Cthulu that some patches can bring this essential title up to snuff on the Switch.
Growing older has made me more aware of my tastes. Maybe it's the calming quality of things, but I really like micromanagement in video games. Cult of the Lamb has been on my radar since I first saw a trailer since I enjoy a good rogue-like and am a huge admirer of the strange and occult.
In the rogue-like action game Cult of the Lamb, you take on the role of the titular lamb who was sacrificed to appease four Eldritch gods. However, you are rescued from the slaughter by "The One Who Waits," an imprisoned god who offers you eternal life in exchange for killing the four gods who bound him. Recruiting supporters, leading a cult, and gradually strengthening your forces are all necessary to face the formidable foes that lie ahead.
Cult of the Lamb has a lot going for it, including one of the greatest split gameplay systems this side of Moonlighter and graphic design evocative of Happy Tree Friends. It also offers a great deal functionally. Unfortunately, the Switch port seems to be undercooked, and there were technological difficulties that left my portion of lamb tasting sour.
You have to oversee a town full of devotees after emerging from each of the four dungeons that house one of the gods in Cult of the Lamb. These followers provide you with dedication and heavenly inspiration that you may utilize to advance your talents, acquire new ones, and do much more.
Each of these systems functions flawlessly in concert with the others. You have a choice of paths to take when exploring the dungeons. The potential rewards are indicated by icons and can include meeting unusual characters, discovering and indoctrinating more people into your cause, finding and gaining useful items like lumber or rocks, and unlocking new areas of the map.
With just one primary attack button, one dodge roll, and one magical strike that requires fervour—a resource that adversaries drop when they die—the game itself is likewise quite basic. You are dealt a weapon and a magical ability at random on each run, and as you go further into each dungeon, you may discover more.
The weapons themselves are initially rather basic, consisting of a variety of swift weapons with limited attack and massive axes that take a while to swing but do terrible damage to your enemies. These gradually introduce new features like weapons that replenish your zeal, swords that call out a spirit from your opponents to attack others, vampirism (which lets you recover some health from your killed enemies), and much more. Everything intensifies gradually but satisfactorily, keeping the fighting exciting without ever being too complicated.
You may also use a wonderful combination of projectiles, poison debuffs, and AoE assaults with your magical skills. Although the variety of combat options is appreciated, the rogue-like aspect of the game can make it challenging to find the appropriate weapon for the current dungeon. This means that sometimes you start with a better loadout than others, but that's part of the appeal. The enemies you face are themed in each dungeon but start to really test you later on.
Importantly, you must finish each sector three times before facing the much harder adversaries on your fourth run. This means that you do not get to confront the primary gods the first time you reach the end of a dungeon. Cult of the Lamb has a lot to do anyhow, but having this additional time is pleasant and enhances the experience considerably while maintaining enough variety for it not to feel monotonous. Death only punishes you by stealing a portion of your riches, not by squandering your time away, and each run is profitable due to the quantity of resources, skills, or followers you may unlock.
Tarot cards are another kind of run-specific boon that may be obtained from a merchant on every new adventure. These give you greater fighting skills, including doing more damage at the expense of your health and creating a lot more intriguing wrinkles. These may be obtained by purchasing them from various characters in the overworld and dungeons. There are more than thirty cards that can be found, and there are many intriguing combinations that might significantly impact your run.
The cult management is the opposite side of the coin, and maybe my favorite. To achieve your objectives, every resource is vital and every additional follower is very necessary. This is an important aspect of the game that you cannot neglect, since you need a certain number of followers in order to access later dungeons. Once you have gathered enough devotion, you may unlock additional structures in your commune by decorating and populating a large open space that begins with a summoning circle and a statue for your followers to worship. This will provide you the resource known as divine inspiration.
To prevent your followers from being hungry, you must first clear trees, mine rocks, prepare every meal, and even clean up the sick and excrement of your cult members when they are sick. In order to keep them faithful to you and prevent the entry of unbelievers into the cult, which would sow discord and cost you the invaluable dedication you need to go forward, you even need to construct beds for them and take care of them. Although it's an unusual setup for a rather straightforward town administration system, it functions and completes the task at hand with great efficiency.
It's really pleasant to gradually introduce helpful facilities, like the outhouse where followers may deposit their waste and then gather fertilizer for planting seeds. There's a farmhouse to inspire your supporters to tend to crops, a silo to store seeds, and a scarecrow to deter sly birds from taking your valuable harvest. I've acquired a ton of helpful structures that all gradually automate those menial chores. I've also achieved additional powers like the missionary, which lets you send followers on holy quests where, if they get it back alive, they could bring back priceless riches.
Thus, many systems are already in operation, although it seems like we have only just begun. Every day, your lamb may deliver a sermon, winning over believers to your cause so you can buy new doctrines that alter how your cult is run and how its adherents respond to the many competing systems. My ideology, known as "belief in sacrifice," bestows increased allegiance onto each and every one of my followers in the event that they are sacrificed. Just adding additional ornaments to the cult area has given me the capacity to grow faith, and marrying a follower will give me an even bigger dosage of faith. Another twist is that, once unlocked, you are given the choice between two new philosophies, which allows you to choose how precisely kind or cruel you wish to be as a king.
The followers themselves, with their hilarious language and the odd task that had me laughing uncontrollably, are also a fantastic representation of the dark humor of the game. One of my fans once challenged me to make another eat poo. They were so pleased with the outcome that they begged me to do it again because they thought it would be even funnier. The followers are a continual source of delight and clever humor, while the heavenly enemies and NPCs give well-written dialogue that toes the line between occultism and magic.
The crowns of the four gods then allow you to choose between four crucial additional benefits, such as the chance to resurrect yourself from death once at the expense of a follower, adding even more unlocked powers. It is a heart-wrenching sacrifice to have to decide which loving animal to gut for its vital life energy, just so you can face those tough adversaries later on. In reality, the more faithful your followers are, the more health you have upon returning. For your lamb, you may even acquire different fleeces that have even more powers and features.
At last (I swear, we're almost there), there's more action than just the dungeons and the cult; an overworld completes this universe and becomes accessible once you encounter the required NPCs while on your tasks. A forest full of mushroom people gives even greater powers if you can harvest some fungus for them. New locations enable fishing holes to gather those scaly suckers so you can cook tastier dinners.
In addition, each location has plans for brand-new furnishings and structures, certain tarot cards that can be purchased with real money, and other unusual components that somehow raise the level of difficulty in this game. I really like the dice game Knucklebones, which I must confess I became a bit hooked to, and the fishing mini-game, which has the wild difficulty of the early hours of Stardew Valley. Though I feel like I'm still missing something, please know that every element is taught in length and only serves to enhance the gameplay.
Above all, I never experience overload. Even though there were occasions when I had a lot on my plate when I returned from a dungeon and my followers requested items, I never felt as like it was taking me away from the action. Every now and then I would return to find a corpse that needed to be buried to prevent followers from becoming ill, or structures that had fallen and needed to be repaired. However, your followers will do as you say, so if you give them an order to construct, they will, and if you instruct them to mine resources, they will labor all day while you are at work. Even if there is a lot to handle, the game constantly seems to be providing you with the tools you need to do so, even though these choices are unlocked gradually.
To be honest, I wish I could end my review here. Cult of the Lamb is a complex, rewarding game that does a fantastic job of striking a balance between its management and combat aspects. In some way, this allows the game's two halves to seem richer and more engaging than games that focused just on one of those aspects. It also looks stunning, with the vivid colors and strong contours on the OLED screen really standing out. The character designs are adorable but always excellent, and if you download the free DLC now offered, you can even make your followers look like fish, crabs, deer, eldritch monsters, or even Cthulu himself.
Sadly, during the fifteen or so hours I've spent playing to complete those four dungeons, one issue has held me back every minute of the game. On Switch, the performance is terrible. More frames are dropped than a bull in a window shop due to the wildly erratic framerate. This persistent juddering affects even the quietest gameplay moments. However, as soon as the action ramps up with a few foes or missiles on screen, there are pauses that sometimes seem like a single, motionless second as the game tries to comprehend what's going to happen next. Because of this, fighting can be rather unpleasant at times. You have to make snap judgments to avoid dying, and the game's performance makes this a continual hassle.
I regularly burned meals despite though the action to do so properly provides you a wide-open slider that should be simple to prevent failing. despite minigames like cooking and fishing cause horrible delay. It seems like the game pauses for a few seconds when it changes from night to day, and there are a ton of other places where there are just too many problems that are just intolerable.
When I ran out of health during a boss battle, for whatever reason, I simply stopped taking damage. I stood in the center of the level and let myself be pounded since I wasn't sure at first, but after seeing that I hadn't perished and that my hearts were entirely empty, I realized that I had simply stopped taking damage. The game froze on the following frame for a few seconds, as if trying to figure out why I was still there, after I ultimately won the fight—very unfairly—but fortunately it sent me back to the village without destroying any of my progress.
Additionally, I had many instances of being soft-locked out of the game after carrying out a ritual or sermon. In these cases, the game became stuck, and my only way out was to turn it off completely, which prevented me from making any further progress. My timer has been drastically off by 43 minutes on the opening screen, even though I've previously entered enough time to play the game for almost 30 days. I don't know why. Even the occasional spelling error in the text adds to the impression that this game, and the Switch version in particular, require a few more weeks of quality assurance testing and more time for optimization.
Has this made the game less enjoyable for me? Not entirely, but there are a lot of lovely things about this place and the mechanics function quite well when they do. Right now, my advice would be to either pick it up on a different platform or hold off until publisher Devolver and developer Massive Monster fulfill their promises to provide some crucial maintenance. Though I really can't suggest it at this moment, this should be the ideal pick-up-and-play Switch game, allowing you to take in the exciting action on TV and then unwind with some leisure in your cult on the go.
Cult of the Lamb, with its dark humor, intricate gaming mechanics, and masterful contrast between the two gameplay sections that flawlessly complement each other, may be my favorite independent film of the year so far. It somehow exceeded my expectations. However, framerate problems and the overall performance made even the most routine moments seem needlessly tedious, as I found myself dying much too often and yelling at the screen. I'll gladly give Cult of the Lamb a nine or potentially even a higher rating if the gameplay is improved, but I'm rather unsatisfied with this version right now.