Aztech Forgotten Gods - Switch Review
Set in a futuristic Mesoamerican metropolis, Aztech Forgotten Gods follows Achtli, a young woman thrust into the thick of combat after her mother gets trapped inside an ancient ruin, with her only chance of rescue is to take the energy held by six ancient deities. Equipped with the artefact known as The Lightbringer, it is up to Achtli to take down these deities rampaging across the city, discover what The Institute is hiding and save her mother.
The Good
The futuristic Mesoamerican art style is truly unique and you can really tell that nailing that art style and representation was a very high priority for Lienzo, the development team over in Mexico.
Achtli as a character is very captivating and enjoyable to experience and her personal journey throughout the story is really well done. Her aversion to responsibility makes her a reluctant hero when she is chosen to wield The Lightbringer and her brash and impulsive actions leading up to her mother getting trapped in the ruins mirrors her blaming herself for the death of her father. Watching her grow as a person and get over her own personal struggles for the sake of her mother is very endearing.
TL;DR
- Unique art style
- Endearing and well-written protagonist
The Bad
Aztech Forgotten Gods’ controls have a lot of issues. General movement on the ground is very sluggish; it has the floatiest jumps I have ever seen and a lot of early movement options given to you once you obtain The Lightbringer are purely horizontal, making you rely on climbing up walls to gain height. You do eventually gain the ability to burst yourself up vertically but the charge up time is so long that it ends up being quicker climbing up walls.
The game’s camera is also quite the issue. While it isn’t too bad when exploring the open world, it becomes a real hassle in more confined spaces and you have to wrestle with it when doing side missions. But it is by far at its worst during boss fights; some automatically lock the camera to the boss and won’t let you move it around. Combine that with the movement issues and you’ve got yourself a truly painful experience. Aztech Forgotten Gods takes the award for being the first game to ever make me vomit due to motion sickness.
Now graphical fidelity is something I personally don’t really account for in a game’s overall quality but Aztech Forgotten Gods’ graphics are really distracting. Going back and looking at all of the promotional footage this game got during one of Nintendo's Indie World presentations, it is very clear that the footage used was recorded on the PC version. I know the Switch isn’t the strongest console so having to cut back on the graphics is only natural but this feels like a massive downgrade. With the lower quality models and the overly muddy textures, it looks like the game is running on a PSP.
TL;DR
- Awkward controls
- Restrictive camera
- Very low graphical fidelity
Final Score: 4/10
It’s a shame, I was really looking forward to Aztech Forgotten Gods. It presented itself very well but in execution, it came out as kind of a mess. I can see a good game here, it just needs some ironing out and perhaps a couple more months of development time.
Thank you for checking out our Aztech Forgotten Gods Switch review, thank you to Lienzo (via Stride PR) for providing the review code and thank you to our $5 and up Patreon Backers for their ongoing support: