Cult of the Lamb
Excellent!
Village upgrade: Demon Summoning Circle
Normally, your cultists live in isolation from the dangers of crusades. However, the summoning circle allows you to temporarily alter a cultist into a familiar that tags along! Every cultist has a predetermined form they take, and their strength is affected by their loyalty (basically an EXP meter).
My favorite demon is an archer who snipes an enemy every few seconds. The Lamb also gets ranged attacks with spells, but they’re limited and need to be used wisely. The archer demon patches up the scenarios where I’m relegated to close combat.
Tarot Cards: Hands of Rage, The Arachnid
While it has a long cooldown, I was always grateful to find Hands of Rage. Similar to the previously discussed demon, you automatically launch a homing missile every 10 seconds during a sword swing. This thing packs a punch, too, so it’s worth the long cooldown.
Arachnid guarantees each sword swing deals poison damage to the afflicted target. I love damage-over-time builds, and this card delivers that glorious power. It’s superior to poisoned swords too, since those aren’t guaranteed to trigger the status.
Cultist: “Beep”
In Animal Crossing, there’s always that one villager you have the best memories with. Cult of the Lamb can create moments like that, too.
Beep was always loyal to the village and a hard worker (sometimes I had to force him to get bed rest). He was one of my highest-ranking cultists, shooting over level 10 Loyalty. With a talisman that extended his life, he was a comforting face no matter how much the village grew and changed.
I eventually married Beep, and anytime he passed away, I performed the ritual to bring him back. This one character became the mascot of my village.
Even the game took note of this favoritism. Beep constantly got picked when random calamities occurred. One time, I resurrected him, went on a crusade, and then a Bishop possessed him into fighting me. I had to kill him in cold blood and wait for my ritual to cool down before bringing him back. Again. It was hilarious how this game kept writing drama for Beep and my relationship.
Boss: Heket
Each Bishop’s boss fight causes them to transform with a few aesthetic changes. This six-eyed demon frog looks the slickest out of the four.
AWFUL
Unbalanced Doctrines
When unlocking a Doctrine, you have one of two choices to commit to that slot. However, I often found one option was vastly superior to the other.
For example, you can either have cultists eat trash-tier dirt and grass without losing faith, or they become cannibals and eat high-grade meat without the risk of dying to disease. Sure, there’s plentiful grass to take advantage of. But I would gather so many new cultists, that there was never a shortage of meat to cull. I’m not particularly concerned about the grim topic when it’s a beneficial mechanic in a video game.
Some Doctrines make it difficult to weigh their options, but others could use an overhaul.
Village upgrade: Propaganda Speaker
I found this item to be redundant and not worth the resources. Cultists within its range temporarily generate Devotion (an upgrade currency) 20% faster, but it requires a gold bar to activate. In my playthrough, I never had a lot of bars on hand, so it wasn’t a good tradeoff. I was already upgrading the village at a great pace without it, anyways.
Tarot Card: Weeping Moon
30% more damage during nighttime? Not a bad proposition… until you realize how little time that gives you the buff.
Night hours are the shortest part of every day in Lamb. Sure, you can pair Weeping Moon with All Seeing Sun so that you have a damage buff all day. But there’s already one card that does that: Master of the Art, which gives you a flat 20% boost no matter the time of day.
This is a joke item. It’s a tale as old as time with Roguelikes. But the sneakiest part of this item is the fact that you willingly buy it and add it to the loot pool. Congratulations, you trolled yourself!
LOCKED EXITS
This is one of those design choices that are ultimately harmless, but still obnoxious. When a room locks itself down due to hostile enemies, trying to approach an exit causes a towering murky column to erupt for a few seconds. This column doesn’t take the camera into account, so the southern exit turns into a blinder. It’s especially infuriating when surrounded by enemies.
What’s doubly frustrating is how simple this issue can be fixed. Reduce the opacity of the column, and it won’t obscure the combat.
Boss: Kallamar
My problem with Kallamar is simply because of playingon Switch. Imagine a bullet hell with “slideshow” frames per second. Not a fun time.
