Steam Curator

Who knew that bullet heavens had so much to gain by borrowing from Resident Evil 4? God of Weapons may not inundate you with Spanish zombies but it does gamify the grid based inventory management of the 2005 Capcom Classic and combines it with a bullet heaven.

The result is glorious: you get the same sort of escalating power thrills of all the best games that have ‘survivors’ in the title but it also turns the build crafting process into this constant negotiation where upgrades take up physical space and are competing with the rest of your powers.

A bland aesthetic and lack of contextualization for its inventory systems ensure that God of Weapons is only as good as it’s mechanics, but thankfully those mechanics are both massively compelling and endlessly replayable.

I think the highest compliment I can give God of Weapons is how obvious it was that this wasn’t their first time taking a crack at the genre: developer Archmage Labs previously made “Beautiful Mystic Survivors” which takes full advantage of the fact that this genre is typically played with one hand. Despite the fact I haven’t played it, it’s not lacking for glowing reviews that swear they’re only playing it for the articles.

That survivors pedigree is made manifest in some subtle choices—strong execution of genre staple mechanics and smart cherry picking it’s done from its peers. It’s got Brotatos economy management and discrete waves to ensure building and upgrading has its own dedicated time instead of disrupting the combat. It’s got a Soulstone Survivor’s esque cross character dash that allows for a low cooldown position reset if needed. But most importantly it’s got that RE 4 inventory management, more directly filtered through the lens of modern indies like Backpack hero which wrap a whole game around the concept and add perks like modifiers and adjacency bonuses.

All those influences fit like a glove: the inventory management specifically isn’t just a gimmick but a complete reconteztualizarion for each choice you make. The leveling process itself isn’t granting you all that much statistical power, it’s real merit comes from giving you one more choosable square on the inventory grid.

And therein lies some pretty compelling questions: you’ll have your usual survivors concerns like getting enough flat damage to get through early game and enough scaling damage to get through late, but now you have to think about how those things interact in a physical container.

You’ll oftimes start by designing your weapons around your space but you have enough agency to design your space around your weapons: when that max rarity hammer pops into the shop you’ll be tempted to find the 8 lopsided grid squares it demands to take advantage of that power.

There’s a lot of more minute shuffling to be done in addition to that though: each class has a different starting item that typically applies benefits to neighboring weapons or armor, so there’s this jigsaw meta game of trying to align your inventory in a way that both minimizes open space but also ensures your passive boosts are touching the right items.

There’s a transience to the inventory as well: the ability to sell any item gives your playthroughs a level of mid-run flexibility and pivoting opportunities that God of Weapons’ peers typically don’t have. It prevents your builds from ever becoming autopiloted regardless of how deep into a run you are.

What shouldn’t be unspoken is how well God of Weapons executes on the genres tenants. Even completely independent of its bespoke inventory management upgrade system, it nails the satisfaction that comes with overpowering the swarm that’s enclosing you. The scrolling combat text is readable and simple, the soundscape nails the gratification that comes with the layered audio impact of cleaving dozens of minions at once, and by virtue of the fact this is a full 1.0 release rather than the genres love for early access, it came out the gate with around a dozen classes each of which has three subclasses.

Brisk 20 minute durations always tempt a follow up run, coupled with a meta progression and item unlock system that multiplies the amount of weapons and armor in the game.

It does have some balancing problems which, according to one of their first post release dev communications, is something they’re already looking at. One of the obvious culprits is items that use increased horde size as a downside to offset powerful bonuses, but in practice it’s the elite and boss monsters giving you the heartache not the horse itself so it’s hardly a penalty.

It’s current biggest drawback is a modest presentation that might have some folks scrolling right past it’s store page and prevent them from ever getting to the juicy systems underneath. This knight lugging around a sack of pointy sticks in the key art isn’t a visual motif that carries into the actual gameplay in any way. Armor gets no optical representation at all and weapons unceremoniously float around you—a budget concession I think I’d be more willing to jump on board with had the visual themes enforced it more: like controlling powerful gods who need not bother with grips and handles, instead of these regular ol’ fantasy classes that are all telepathic I guess.

It may not be a looker but don’t make the mistake of passing it by for that reason; from a pure gameplay sense this is the one you’ve been waiting for. God of Weapons borrows a lot but it borrows smartly. There’s no system in here you haven’t seen before but their integration add a tremendous amount of texture to every decision and every run. A flexible inventory based building system, varied classes and subclasses, and punchy-satisfying auto attacking combat ensure this title isn’t just a God of Weapons, but a God of Survivors games too.