Arms of God is a roguelite bullet heaven that I can sum up as a fun little title where you can just shut your brain off and blast demons for hours on end, but it’s not without issues. It’s an extremely straightforward arena-style game where the only goal is to survive each level until you face the boss at the end.
I’ve been playing it on and off whenever my busy schedule provides some respite for gaming, and here are my thoughts.
NOTE: I received a review copy from the developer ahead of the release.
Pick Up & Play
Arms of God drops you right into the action as soon as you start a new save. From there, any bullet heaven enjoyer will feel right at home as it doesn’t deviate too much from the typical roguelite formula this early on.
You’ve got various resources to collect, a timer you have to outlast, and an ever-growing horde of enemies that’ll spawn nonstop. Between each level, you get to buy as many upgrades as you can afford, though you can only pick from a randomized pool that you can keep refreshing.
Your first run is essentially one long tutorial where you fight your way into the cathedral, which is the game’s hub area where all the meta-progression systems are placed.
I love how you can just go on a run and play any time you boot up the game. There’s little to no prep needed in between each run, and with how straightforward upgrades are, you don’t really need to spend too much time weighing your choices.
How Do Upgrades/Weapons Work?
Your crusader only has two arms… at least biological ones. Throughout each run, you can hold multiple weapons with the help of some mechanical arms attached to your suit.
Unlike most other games in the genre, you always have the option to sell and replace your existing weapons after each level. This provides you with a lot of flexibility to pivot into a new build if you manage to get some upgrades that benefit a highly specific damage type or weapon.
There’s a wide range of weapons to unlock, and most of the upgrades you can get will buff specific elements while, typically, debuffing others. This forces you to be mindful of what rewards you get so that you don’t end up having the DPS equivalent of a flaccid pool noodle.
Impact Not Guaranteed
Now, having a lot of variety doesn’t automatically mean the game’s upgrades are in a good spot. I feel like the game struggles too much with trying to keep everything in line. Because of this, upgrades don’t feel too impactful both visually and mechanically.
Don’t get me wrong though, there’s a significant difference between having one weapon or walking around with an entire arsenal on hand. It’s just that you don’t actually feel like you’re upgrading anything even after picking up multiple in between levels.
Maybe it’s just the low numbers (+10% damage, 4% more speed, etc.) on a lot of blessings/upgrades, or the lack of any visual feedback on… quite frankly, everything.
Even if the numbers get pumped up, attacks (both yours and the enemies’) are missing a sense of weight that you’d expect from a game that’s clearly heavily inspired by DOOM, where every blow has that satisfying, visceral “punch”. Instead, enemies just kinda run towards you and slowly lose HP as your attack animations loop, and your own HP just kinda gets depleted if you touch their hitboxes, I guess.
Hefty Meta-Progression
The game features a lot of meta-progression systems once you unlock the cathedral from the “tutorial” run. It’s pretty substantial, as there’s a long list of upgrades to get.
Unfortunately, these do require quite a bit of grinding as everything requires a decent chunk of resources to unlock. You can get resources by completing challenges or finding collectibles during a run, and you aren’t exactly given a generous amount of anything.
While this does give the game a lot of replayability, it gets a bit disheartening to see “+5 HP” or “+3% attack speed” locked behind a decent chunk of resources.
It’s Good, But It Could Be Better
I feel like there’s a lot of room for improvement in the game’s systems overall. Though I did have fun playing through it a few times, I find myself getting pulled out of it every now and then because of these issues.
Like, yeah, it’s cool that I can build my character to become a tanky beast with a giant buff-granting cross on his back, but the time and RNG needed to get there is a bit much. Every other run, I just sort of die with little visual feedback while playing a glass cannon build, while on the opposite side of the fence, I’ve managed to beat the game in ways where I could just let go of the controller halfway through.
There’s also the growing frustration I have with some of the systems in place. For instance, one of the possible events that gives meta-progression resources has you defending a machine that’s as flimsy as wet toilet paper. It also feels pointless building for more than one element per run, because you will get shafted by debuffs one way or another.
I still recommend checking it out if you’re a fan of bullet heaven games, because it may just click for you. Personally, I think it’s a few tweaks away from being just as engaging to me as something like, say, Yet Another Zombie Survivors, which I previously covered in a list of 5 games like Vampire Survivors back when it was still in its infancy.
I’m going to keep playing Arms of God as I do actually find it fun enough to occasionally play through a couple of runs every now and then. However, in its current state, I don’t see myself getting glued to it for prolonged periods of time like I do with some of its peers.
Luckily, it’s in early access, so it’s not like things won’t be changing over time!
A Slight AI-Related Concern
Before I sign off, my only non-gameplay complaint is the use of generative AI for a few icons and translation. While I understand the difficulty in funding for solo devs, I do hope there comes a time when the disclosure on Steam isn’t needed anymore.
It does state that AI-generated assets will eventually be replaced with humanmade work, so fingers crossed that it happens sooner than later, especially since the developer himself is an artist who I’m sure knows how harmful GenAI is to all creators.
GenAI is a sensitive topic for me as I’m a writer who, in the past, has dealt with a few problematic AI bros in my non-gaming work. Even this very blog has been plagiarized by GenAI users in the past.
Mind you, I don’t recall seeing the AI disclosure on the store page when I received a review copy and started drafting this review. It could have been my fault for missing it, or maybe it was added on launch. Regardless, I figured the use is minimal enough that I wouldn’t just scrap this piece. Trust me, I see far more egregious and shameless slop in my inbox, so I’m fine giving this a pass for now.