X
- Chaphat
- Chaphat
- Chaphat
- Chaphat
Cults and Daggers
Released On: Feb 12, 2015
Metascore
Available after 4 critic reviews
7.5
All Platforms
But other than those minor grievances, I found the overall experience to be a fun, unique experience that lends itself to a variety of play styles, giving it a good amount of replay value. With a little more polish, it could become a cult classic.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 16 User Ratings
7.5
75% Positive
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
0% Mixed
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
25% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 16 User Ratings
7.5
75% Positive
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
0% Mixed
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
25% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
A game about faith that plays like a poem or an odyssey into the world of gods and mystery cults. Part myth of its own making and part exploration into the many strange and varied religions of the time Cults and Daggers is something new. It is hard to explain why such a rough and hard to learn game is so touching, the disciples who come and go with their little lives if part of it, but so is the art and the gradual unfolding of the gameplay as the world gets more and more chaotic.
My game of the year so far.
Report
PC
Just a great great game. Deep , immersive and innovative. The way you shepard your disciples through the decades is very rewarding indeed and there is always something to do. Not easy to learn though, do not expect your hand held.
Report
PC
This is not a game for those who want a fast reward or an easy ride, this is a slow paced methodical game with plenty of micromanagement and depth. The myriad of special events and miracles per cult each and the unique disciples with their own stats (who amusingly die like flies)
The depth of this game is what keeps me coming back, I've played about 5 full games now, which might not seem like much but my last game soaked up over 12 hrs worth of gameplay and I lost, but I still learned a lot and had a lot of great moments.
I must say the learning curve was pretty steep But if you stick with it, it's well worth it.
Report
PC
A brilliant breath of fresh air. Coming out of nowhere Cults & Daggers invents a new sub genre within turn based strategy. It brilliantly combines a system focused on your religions disciples with the ability to manipulate cities over hundreds of years. The game is a challenge to understand and play as it has zero compromise when it comes to expecting player engagement so casual gamers should not apply.
But if you want something genuinely new and innovative to turn based strategy then this is it. Highly recommended.
Report
PC
Here we have a game that most of all resembles an autistic child quietly mumbling to himself in an asylum corner. Does the quiet whisper contain observation of a brilliant, yet troubled mind, or is it just simply rambling of a madman? It's hard to tell, and sadly, without weeks of study and patience we may never know.
So here comes Cults and Daggers with an interface that would be horrible even in the mid 80s last century. Throwing down the drain everything developers have learned about presenting information in a clear and readable manner, this game will present you with a huge, low-resolution, zoomed-in map, that you can sluggishly scroll around with something resembling a virtual finger on a touchscreen. After the initial confusion, you will find tiny icons and barely readable numbers informing you about cities, your status, your disciples, et cetera.
And while other games try to present information in a way that the important things are immediately visible and understandable, this game presents you with a blur that's hard both on your eyes and on your mind. Is it a clever symbolic reference to a mind of a mad, raving cultist? Perhaps. What's clear is that this approach to visual presentation will make playing the game a painful chore.
As to the game itself, it presents appealing enough concept - become a head of a cult, recruit disciples, persuade nobles, brainwash masses, assassinate opponents and prevent old gods from entering and destroying the world.
But because the game fails to provide clear and understandable feedback about what's going on in the world, playing it actually feels like a chaotic mess. Sometimes, you travel somewhere, and your main disciple disappears. After painful minutes of searching through a convoluted mess of a message log, you find out why - a purge in enemy town killed him. Why? How? Could I prevent it? Perhaps, perhaps not. I really don't care anymore.
If you take interest in the game, find someone who owns the game and try it first on his computer, as I did. If you find you don't like the game, you can invest your money in something playable - like I did by buying Hand of Fate, an excellent and well crafted indie game, who cost me half the price tag of this convoluted badly designed demo ****, yet provided ten times the fun.
If you make the mistake of rushing and buying it for the insane price of 28 Euro, you will feel like you have become a victim of an evil cult plot - and perhaps that's the only authentic experience the game is designed to provide.
Report
PC
Ok, lets start with what this is not. It's not a game about religion, philosophy, occultism, history, or metaphysics. Then what is this game about? Random numbers. That is what this game is about. A random event generator that does nothing to engage or pull you in, save by attempt to be mysterious when instead being oblique and lost.
Lets start with the complete lack of documentation or a tutorial. It just expects you to read and understand everything with no form guidance save tool tips that pop up when hovering over something. And as anyone knows, that information is very limited in both context and depth, and therefore accomplishes little. This probably leaves the casual gamer mystified and the more dedicated gamer interested for a few games, but then annoyed at the later mistakes that show the whole to be incompetently done and shoddily constructed. In other words it tries to use it's lack of assistance to the gamer as a screen that suggest mysticism and occultism but is actually just laziness.
Next is the interface. As pointed out by another the interface itself is sluggish and poorly rendered. This was probably another bad attempt at suggesting age and to get it a historical feel. Instead, as before, it show a lack of vision and effort to bring together a wonderful concept to full fruition. It has very little to informed you about, yet that which is does inform you about is usually small text in unforgiving colors and fonts that leave much to be desired in crispness and readability. If you don't have a very large screen, or very good eyes, don't even bother.
Next game format and play-ability. Here is where the game truly fails. If you don't have the patience and interest to actually play through a couple of games to find out what causes what, you will be lost and never engaged. Interest will wain and you will simply uninstall and never return. If you do actually have an interest in the subject matter and perhaps some curiosity as to what the designers seemed to be trying to do, you will do the same; merely later. This game has little to hold you down to it as it nearly wipes the board clean after a few turns and mixes the board up to give new starting positions, characters to work with, and relative strengths to start with. In other words, all you work for is thrown into the trash every so often so that the designer's inability to balance the game play is never noticed. Then it runs a whole bunch of random turns and lets you try to build something again. Just to see if you will chase the carrot again. So you truly get nothing out of this game. You don't build a cult, you don't change history, you don't do anything other then issue a couple of orders, maybe get a quick buff in the form of a "miracle" then hit the end turn button and see the counter click down another notch until all your work is recycled into a mess again. This is not helped by the fact that you are really not in control of anything important. Your "disciples" disappear with alarming frequency, if your opponents don't assassinate them, they "fall in love, and vanish to start a family". Therefore you can't build your agents up to anything decent, else they just vanish until you only have two again, then it stops; for no reason. You can't build your followings up in any cities, as anytime you gain something good, a random even comes along to take it away, or again, remove the disciple that is turning it into something decent.
And finally there is pricing. Who wants to pay $30 for a game that they will sit down with, once, maybe twice and then uninstall, never to return? If that is you? Then this is your game. If not. Go play something else. Anything else. Even other bad games might still have a chance at being fun for a day or two. This one won't.
Report
PC
Summary As Cults & Daggers opens, you learn that the Old Gods are plotting to destroy a planet they can no longer rule, and you are tasked with creating your own religious faith to fight a secret war for the soul of the world. You’ll have to recruit loyal disciples throughout the Mediterranean in order to spread your faith by preaching to the m...
Platforms:
- PC
Initial Release Date: Feb 12, 2015
Developer:
- Chaphat
Publisher: Chaphat
Genres: