Shadows of Forbidden Gods

It's ok. Can be satisfying when things go according to the plan. But this game needs a rework (will never happen lol), UI is ass, and many mechanics are very poorly explained, mainly.

As a big fan of the Dominions series this game hits all the right buttons. The actor simulation isn't particularly deep, but it absolutely sells the puppet master with what it has. Like once this game clicked I immediately lost 6 hours to it. I was originally put off from buying this from all the reviews mentioning the confusing UI and badly explained mechanics, but compared to Dominions this is very approachable. Most of the information you need is actually in game and it makes an attempt to explain and tell you why something isn't working. Although I wouldn't say no to a 400 page manual for this game. Especially for some of the newer gods that require some creative approaches the game doesn't outright tell you about. Nothing that's required trial and error has been so bad that I would have never figured it out without outside help.

The idea is good but the game itself clunky with an atrocious UI and kind of bad writting. The tutorial is really really bad, overall it feels more like a fan game than a serious product.

An amazing concept drowning beneath the waves of bad UI, nonexistent QOL, enormous feature bloat and mechanics as clear to see through as a brick wall. I've bashed my skull against this game some and I am aware that 90% of my dislike for it is likely my own inability to pick up and apply one of the many, many, MANY mechanics that all (seemingly?) have no synergy, or at least no satisfying synergy. Prepare yourself for pain if you try to learn new mechanics. Wanna pick up magic? Great, everyone else has it now too and is throwing rocks from a continent away at your necromancer. This would be fine I suppose, except the UI gives no way to locate these kinds of threats and no meaningful warning so you go "cool, magic!" and proceed to lose your most important piece because if I want to do anything besides cast a protection spell and recast it I'll immediately get red misted by an eldritch A-10 Warthog. Let's try influencing a major religion to our advantage! Okay cool, all neighboring religions now hate them and after two hours it feels like the effect provided is essentially the same as if I had just enshadowed the land manually. Deep Cult? Cool cool, just gonna toss everything I have into turning a city into a Deep Cult so I can experiment, y'know? After quite a while (I don't want to know how long) I finally convert this city aaaaaand.. It isn't adjacent to any human settlements so it can't draw in population to grow and I have effectively just made a goofy looking fish icon that sits on a foreboding hexagon. Am I misusing and misunderstanding all of these mechanics? Possibly! Have I not given this game the time it expects for each mechanic I've tried to implement and instead bashed my skull into it? Oh definitely! But that's not really the point. The problem is that every mechanic tested, every route explored, every hint followed just leads back to the same locked door of "there were actually six variables we didn't explain that are hidden off in the UI jungle in separate locations that make everything you've done in this particular spot worthless." There is a wonderful soulful skeleton of a subterfuge/manipulation game somewhere under all this fluff, I think, but I don't really want to slog to it when people who seem way smarter than me and have put in way more hours than me are stuck in the same mud I am. I've tried multiple times to play this as a game and not an end-turn/popup closing simulator but can't. I hope the developer returns and polishes it someday.

god, i wish i could recommend this game so much. the mechanics are cool, the playable gods have really interesting ideas, and theres just not that many games similar to this. however, theres one thing that completely screws this entire game over. the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ui i cant find out ♥♥♥♥ anywhere, im constantly reminded that a bum ass king on the other side of the map just took a massive ♥♥♥♥, and i have no clue whats happening because a million other useless stuff keep on taking up space. and god does it hurt. in my own opinion, if the developer just decided to rehaul the entire ui into something more coherent, then this game would 100% be worth it. however, considering the dev has also stated they wont work on this game anymore in the near future, unless they somehow give us the ability to mod the ui this game is not worth the headaches the ui alone brings. also, i wish a god that actually makes orcs less useless would be made.

An absolutely fantastic game if you share a passion for Eldritch god simulators that let you not only directly destroy mortal kingdoms, but also sow panic and discord, turning valiant heroes against their own allies, and so on. If I had to compare it, I’d call SoFG the Ruinarch of global strategy. While in Ruinarch you were dropped onto a local map where a couple of villages and towns served as victims, here it takes place on a planetary scale, affecting countless mages, knights, rulers, and their families. I’m particularly pleased with the real variety in the gods’ gameplay, which isn’t limited to one evil creature getting +2 to intrigue and another getting +2 to lore at the start of the game. One god literally plunges entire countries into darkness through his agents, a darkness that gradually spreads everywhere and which heroes and rulers are forced to fight, consecrating shrines and casting protective spells. And while they battle the obvious darkness in the south of the country, in the north your preacher turns the local duke into a bloodthirsty bastard who slaughters his subjects, sparking a rebellion. Another God uses the shadow only to later dispel it himself with false light, forcing frightened people to worship him willingly as their saviour, organizing a separate faith, and then zealously marching under false banners against the righteous who are desperately trying to seal you back away. Another goddess distributes gifts that at first bring great benefit, but then the hour of harsh retribution arrives. The variety of ways to get back at mortals is also impressive. You can unleash plagues, raise the dead, perform unholy rituals, incite peasants to revolt against their lords, spread curses, poison heroes, orchestrate assassinations, study various forms of magic, and much more. The heroes have their own priorities; some hate fighting and prefer diplomatic missions, while others remember how your agent killed their friend and now, having given up on everything, are trying to track you down, all while you deliberately lure them into the lands you’ve corrupted to finish them off. And then there’s a separate hero on the map, the Chosen One, who, just like in those fantasy movies of yours, must fulfill a prophecy and seal you back away. As long as he’s in his typical state of plot armor, there’s nothing you can do to him. But just like the heroes in those movies, he’s an emotional softie and an idiot. See him going to clear the mind of the ruler you’ve enslaved? Oops, orcs have attacked your hometown and burned it to the ground; now you’ll spend the next 100 turns fighting their tribes, seeking revenge. Going to organize an alliance against the forces of darkness? Remember your mentor from the first episode of the series, the one who later dies dramatically and brings the viewer to tears? Well, that episode has arrived; my agent smeared him all over the walls of his house. I hope you won’t be too upset. Speaking of the downsides, I want to say that the game’s strengths are definitely worth overlooking these issues. The main complaint is the clunky UI, which makes it very difficult to keep track of what’s happening where, which character is where, and especially where their loved ones are—since that’s crucial to the gameplay. I know that the sorceress Sarah loves the healer Jonathan, but where the heck is Jonathan right now? On top of that, there are a huge number of pop-up windows, most of which can be easily disabled, but then it becomes harder to keep track of important events. It would be better to implement this as a single events window at the beginning of each new turn rather than displaying each one separately. Also, I’d like to see more attention paid to the rulers and their families; interaction with them, unlike with the heroes, is extremely limited. All in all, for its excellent execution of a rather niche genre, I’d give the game an 8/10 in its current state, where my main complaints have more to do with the convenience of the gameplay than with its content, which is the best part.

I have 40+ hours in this game, and still don't understand any of the mechanics. The tutorials don't teach even 1/10 of what you need to know to play the game properly. Imagine if you went to college to get a degree in nuclear engineering, and they say, "This is nuclear engineering. And this is a nuclear reactor. Okay! Good luck!" And they just throw you in a nuclear fission plant, and you have no idea how to work anything, and you're expected to just wing it. I'm not asking for them to helicopter me through the game. I just want to know the basic mechanics, so I'm not wasting time having my heros killed, even though I'm spending half the game with them, "laying low". (And yes, I have them laying low in infiltrated cities so it works faster.) It's obvious this game was rushed out for a quick buck, if they can't even take the time to explain how to play. And to the playerbase, if your guide on this game is simply, "Lol loser! Git gud at grand strats!" You're just as braindead as the devs that pushed out this slop. I was really looking forwards to this too. I love evil sims! I actually got a recommendation for this from the Ruin Arch forums, because that game was an abandonware POS! But compared to this game, they at least gave a comprehensive guide on how to play their slop. We need more evil sims, badly! But this just ain't it.

Great game. It is not a classic 4x. It is a game about intrigue. That Which Sleeps was a vaporware. This one is the real thing

I really wanted to like this game but after one functional play session.. all other attempted sessions afterward were buggy. I couldn't control the size of the game (even though in the first session I was able to resize it) So the game was just so big I couldn't see the bottom of it and the buttons there.. or at some point on restarting it, it was suddenly so tiny I couldn't even read it properly without straining my eyes. There was an idea behind this game.. but the poor programming is holding it back.

i am completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lost