Aztech Forgotten Gods

Short review: God that price is big. If you catch it on a sale, I recommend this for a glimpse of some really ambitious direction. The ambition in this game is immense, and you can feel the skeleton for something amazing as you play this game. When I first tried it and got the hang of the movement boss combat, this game shined in a way so unique that I really couldn't stop thinking about it. Your first move is a jetpack, and the moveset only gets even crazier from there with quick boosts, homing rocket punching and a bunch of ways to chain them together. I can't overstate how good the gameplay feels when it's at its peak. Unfortunately, whether it was time, money or direction, it's only a skeleton. Most of the game is traversing through the overworld, which has some cool ideas like energy-recharging rails, air hoops to make you go faster. the problem is that every objective is at the corners of the map, away from these cool mechanics, leading you to just holding a button to fly there. Story might be nice... but since it's presented through voiceless dialog, it just feels slow. When I accepted that I could skip through whole scenes, the game improved immensely. I owe an apology to the writers, I'll gladly experience your stories any other way. Visual designs are REALLY good... but I swear the shaders and illumination in general betray these designs by making them feel out of place, too bright or too dark. Music is also REALLY good and puts you in a very good mood. Sound design is also good... but a little broken. All this being said: I had a blast in every single boss in this game, which is half the game. They're dynamic, requiring a lot of quick thinking and movement, and had badass music, visuals and mechanics going for it. This vision and direction for a game has so much potential. I'll follow these guys closely.

This game sounded great in theory, and looked good on paper. The premise is lovely, the design is gorgeous, but the gameplay is disappointing at best. Two things drew me to the game: boss fights and cool movement tech. The boss fights were pretty good. I did enjoy how each one was quite a lot like a puzzle, where the objective (kill the large thingy) is pretty obvious most of the time but the procedure (go here, punch this, wrong order, etc) requires you to look around. It reminded me a lot of Zelda bosses. The bosses themselves never felt unfair or unbalanced. The movement tech was awful. The player constantly clips into walls and floors, usually getting stuck for a second or two. It's entirely too easy to get stuck inside a boss's collision, and since this game intends for you to enter close combat a lot, it's too big of an issue to ignore. The player can frequently lose control of their own movement in the air. I don't mean like the character slingshots around, that would be much easier to control. I mean it is inconsistent whether pressing any arrow keys will result in aerial movement or not. I have many more small gripes with this game's movement (excessive floatiness, automatically invalidated upgrades, etc), but I'll stop here. The story is quite good but honestly excessive. You do not have to read all of the dialogue. I did (aside from one section that glitched out) and I regret it. Lastly, the sheer lack of polish the game has is infuriating. Many things need to be fixed for this game to not seem like it's still in beta. From accidental out-of-bounds mistakes to actual softlocks, I was not able to ignore even slight oversights because they're just so ubiquitous. TL;DR It wasn't an awful game. It was infuriatingly glitchy. Despite being marketed as a 3D platformer/boss rush, it played better as a visual novel.

ENG: Game is about fighting bosses, where the main mechanics are not the attacks themselves but the aerial maneuverability since we fly as if we had a jetpack, dodging attacks and making our way through the various bosses weak points. The strengths of the game are the graphics, its very original techno-aztec aesthetics and a good story. I really liked it a lot and enjoyed the 6 hours it took me to pass it. Highly recommended. ESP: El juego es de combates contra jefes, donde la principal mecánica no son los ataques en si sino la maniobrabilidad aérea ya que volamos como si tuviésemos un jetpack, esquivando ataques y abriéndonos paso por los distintos puntos débiles. Los puntos fuertes del juego son los gráficos, su estética tecno-azteca muy original y una buena historia. Realmente me gusto mucho y disfrute las 6 horas que me llevo pasarlo. Muy recomendado.

I can't quite figure out why I find the dialogue (and the narrative in general) as unengaging as I do, which is a shame because the dialogue is most of the game's runtime. The concept of a high tech sci-fantasy Aztec state persisting into the modern day is an interesting one, but the exposition is dry and the dialogue has a lot of inane banter and melodrama I didn't have any emotional investment in. I found myself skimming most of the dialogue to get to the boss fights as quickly as I could. Then I got to the plant boss with the door puzzle and I realised I wasn't very engaged with the bosses either. They're mostly large, stationary targets in small arenas that don't give room for creative manoeuvring besides just flying out of the way of their attacks and punching them when appropriate. Ultimately, I think the movement mechanics are too simple to keep the boss fights engaging. Now, the movement is quite satisfying, but it boils down to holding the thrust button and tilting the stick in the direction you want to go. There are movement techs like ledge grabs and rails and pogo jumps and so on, but all those mechanics are janky enough that I had more fluid movement ignoring them entirely. Zip around until you run out of power, briefly land on the ground (or stick to a wall if floor is unavailable), wait a second for most of it to regenerate, then blast off again. Power management is rarely an issue, and when it becomes an issue the most boring solution tends to be the most effective at keeping you moving, which is a bit disappointing. Aztech is an unfortunate case of many small issues building up to soil the overall experience. The foundations for a good movement-based spectacle fighter are there, but the movement mechanics need more polish and depth, and the narrative either needs to be told in a more compelling way (don't ask me how) or to get out of the way of the gameplay.

Solo vale la pena si es en oferta y me duele decirlo así. Resumen del juego: spiderman si fuera Azteca, en un Tenochtitlan futurista, peleándose con titanes. Dicho así suena cool y, dios, es muy divertido ir rápido por el mundo y usar las cosas del mapa para moverte y eso, pero eso solo es la mejor parte del juego... Este juego es un boss rush, pero algunos jefes son más molestos que divertidos y aunque hay uno que me encantó (no diré cuál, no spoilers) he de decir que veo más contras que pros en las mecánicas: - No hay sistema de combos real: tienes eso de timear tus golpes y dar un "finisher" para matar antes a los minions, pero con los jefes hay nada de eso y no hay como crear tus propios combos nisiquiera aunque en el juego vas aprendiendo nuevas habilidades de ataque. Resumen: te puedes pasar el juego solo masheando y no cambia mucho. - No hay retroalimentación en los ataques: los jefes ni se inmutan con tus cosas, sabes que le pegaste porque la barra de salud baja. - La cámara a veces es un desastre: estoy viéndote, segundo jefe - El mundo está vacío: hay npc por todos lados, pero todos son genéricos, de gráficos que disuenan con el prota y el mundo y que tampoco aportan mucho a la narrativa, casi siempre solo dicen frases a veces chistosas a veces interesantes. Hay coleccionables y misiones secundarias si, pero esas misiones están tan desconectadas del mundo que parecen puestas de último momento para "expandir" el tiempo de juego. Los coleccionables están bien. - La historia está muy bien y está contada con buen ritmo, me gusta. Lo que no me gusta es la cantidad excesiva de texto que hay en ella. De verdad, muchos dialogos aportan nada al juego y algunas conversaciones podrían cortarse a la mitad y no solo sería mejor para el jugador sino que encima no perderías contexto de lo hablado. La parte buena es que puedes saltarte los textos, la parte mala es que debes tragártelos si quieres saber que está pasando realmente en la narrativa. Y por último Y MUUUUUUY IMPORTANTE: este juego está roto, en el mal sentido. Me lo pasé entero y tuve un bug raro saliendo de la tienda, cerré el juego lo volví a abrir y ahí seguía, tuve que entrar de nuevo a la tienda y salir para que se arregle. ¿Todo guay no? Nope, al rejugarlo (intenté sacar la recompensa de sub 2 horas) 2 veces seguidas en 2 lugares distintos el juego se softlockeó. Fue super irritante y decidí dejarlo y no sacar la recompensa. Lamentable la verdad.

Was hoping for a lot more for this game. I will start by saying like everyone else pointed out how its cool that it gives some exposure to meso-american culture. But thats about the only good thing I can. The game is super ugly, and theres noticeable clipping and weird visual effects when running and inside houses that changing refresh rate and vsync doesn't fix. There is way too much dialogue, as 1/3 of the game is reading through boring characters saying inane pointless things. After skipping individual lines I just started skipping entire sections, which FYI I make it a rule to never skip cutscenes in games, but this was so boring and droning I had to. This means I didn't get much of the history but it wasn't worth sitting through all the other garbage dialogue for it, especially as theres just weird grunting sound effects and no lips moving. The gameplay is repetitive and boring. You fly somewhere, fight a boss, fly back to base, have some dialogue, fly out again and repeat for the super short runtime of 4 hours. Fighting is the same thing you just press auto attack in this QTE style thing, and thats it. The flying is wonky and although you can get a hang of it and its fun for about 10 min, thats all you do in the game. Theres no real platforming or other movement skills like any other parkour games or like Cloudbuilt etc. So boring overlong dialogue, ugly graphics, graphical effect problems, simplistic lame combat, wonky flying, and super repetitive and short. Not much positive to say. How this game is price at 30 bucks is hilarious, should have been 15 dollar release at most initially, then destined for bundles and bargain bins. 5.5/10.

Does a great job at giving the vibe of a PS2 game but takes way too long to get started with unfufilling dialog and challenge based gameplay interactions. The combat feels like a shallow version of Gravity Rush but is not bad by any merit, just not my cup of tea with how this is packaged together. The Aztec art direction is awesome and I appreciate the opportunity for character and skill customization in a platformer.

https://youtu.be/_-ovnJKE46E Lacking needed QoL features such as a map or waypoints leaves players immediately struggling to figure out how to progress.

[i]I purchased the game heavily discounted and would consider £5-10 to be a more reasonable price range.[/i] [b][i]Aztech: Forgotten Gods[/i][/b] is an action game in a futuristic setting. The protagonist, Achtli, discovers an ancient artifact and faces the titular forgotten gods, who threaten to destroy her city. [h2]It is a decent boss rush game with unusual combat. [/h2] The main aspect of the game is the battles against formidable and diverse bosses. Each battle has its unique mechanics, while the bosses have some background story scattered around the city. The city itself is open for exploration from the start, though there are very few things to do there - there are some optional challenges and lore pieces, which might require having certain abilities unlocked in order to access them. The bosses appear in a specific order and cannot be fought at will. The story is well-paced, with the characters and their relationships developing throughout the game, though I did not quite like one of the main ideas. The protagonist is, nonetheless, interesting, reasonable, decisive, and tragically realistic - a young person with a history degree and a position that does not require high school (a courier). The combat is unusual and I do not think that I have mastered it even after finishing the game. The jetpack (jet-glove?) allows vertical movement with very little limitations and automatically propels the main character towards the target. The abilities are unlocked as the story progresses, with the upgrades available and requiring the experience points to purchase. Additionally, there are several stylish outfits and hairstyles to choose from for the protagonist. The graphics are stylised and quite appealing, while the music fits both the combat and travel well. The game is VA-free. The subtitles can remain on-screen as long as needed during cut-scenes (with the characters performing looped animations), but advance automatically during other parts of gameplay. The controls are comfortable and rebindable. The game saves the progress automatically, so Windows Explorer can be used for the save file management.

El juego es en general divertido, especialmente por la mecánica de las batallas, pero tiene demasiado que pulirse; hay bugs que impiden el avance (aunque se corrigieron con reiniciar); la dinámica de los diálogos es cansada, son diálogos redundantes y giran en torno a una historia en parte cliché y en parte predecible; los enemigos pequeños en la ciudad pierden sentido; pero mi mayor problema es el enfoque de la mitología azteca, por un lado uno no aprende nada de la cultura azteca y por otro el giro maniqueo medio de mitología griega y ciencia ficción es además de pobremente elaborado, un tanto irrespetuoso, no sé si para que los indígenas del valle de Mexico actuales se sientan ofendidos pero para cuestionar si la historia como la conocemos y la mitología que sabemos, es tan aburrida o irrelevante como para inventar dramas de humanidad vs aliens/dioses, cuyos nombres ni se dignan a mencionar. Sé que la intención es que lo juegue todo el mundo y se sientan atraídos por la idea de "lo azteca" pero de eso apenas hay una estética vaga y unos diálogos básicos.