I don't often play a game to the very end anymore and when I say "very end" I mean to one of the endings. I'm not sure if "Cult" has multiple endings but I played the game to the point where the credits are rolling on the screen and to me, that is completion. I don't 100% any games because I like to believe that I use my time wisely in life and would rather be doing other things.
It was a pretty fun ride and I recommend this game big time for most people but that isn't to say that this game is perfect because it isn't. I'll lay out what I believe to be the pros and cons of the game now.
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Pro: It's really easy to just pick up and play
While there is a lot going on in this game, it is a very straight-forward combat system that I think basically anyone can get the grasp of really fast. You have a basic attack, a heavy attack that I rarely used, a magic attack, and a dodge... and that's basically it. There are some special attacks called relics that you get from time to time but like the heavy attack, this is something that you do not need in order to prevail and mostly it is there to spice up combat a bit. You never need these in order to win.
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Honestly, if you can't wrap your head around this combat system you need to go ahead and just get the linkin logs out of the closet and build a cabin.
Pro: Town building is a nice break from the combat action
I tire of rogue-likes for the most part because the repetition gets old pretty fast. I say this even of really great rogue-like games such as Hades. There's only so many times I can run through a level, even if the layout is different every run, before I get tired of it. In between runs on "Cult" you always end up back in your camp where you need to build things, cook food (or later assign a cook to do it for you) and complete various side-quests that you have the choice of picking up or denying of your cult followers.
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You need to maintain the loyalty of your followers by having regular sessions at your temple where you give sermons to further indoctrinate your cult members and you also need to continually recruit or rescue cult members from the game's 4 dungeon levels. It never proves too difficult to keep cult members indoctrinated once you figure the system out and all of them are pretty cute and funny characters as well. I found myself spending more time on town building than I did on combat and I believe this is what the devs intended as well.
Con: Strange issues with resources
Like in a lot of sim games, the collection of certain resources is absolutely critical to being capable of building various structures in your city. This has a very odd curve to it in that during the beginning stages of development, you experience great difficulty in obtaining stone and lumber only to later on once you have finally built up a good capacity to generate these things, find out that you don't actually need it anymore. You spend all this time building up many quarries and lumberyards only to find that you are now stockpiling these resources and you don't have anything to spend it on. There are not many resources in the game at all but I find it a bit strange that in the beginning stages of the game obtaining the necessary materials to build really anything is a massive pain in the butt yet later, once you have the ability to make these things quite easily, you no longer need them and there are no other resources to even aspire to. After a while you really don't feel inclined to build anything else because there is nothing more to do. Perhaps this was the way of the game getting you to move on and complete the game but to me, it was just kind of lame to find out that once you finally get enough followers and camps to really get your economy moving, that you no longer need them anymore. It's just kind of strange
Con: The game crashes a LOT
Do a search for "Cult of the Lamb" crash and you will see that this game is buggy AF. It doesn't seem to matter what platform people are playing it on, the game frequently crashes out.
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If you are simply city building this isn't that big of a deal because the game auto-saves every day, so you just do whatever you were doing again and not much is lost. However, there are other instances where you will be on a run and the game crashes out and since you cannot save inside of a dungeon run that means that everything you just did is negated. I was on a very good run where I ended up with a wonderful weapon loadout on the final stage, had just struck the final blow to the last and quite tough boss and the screen just froze with the music still continuing and bugging out a bit here and there. It was evident after 10 minutes or so that this problem was not going to sort itself out. I had to force the game to shutdown and when I logged back in the game didn't recognize that I had ever entered the dungeon, let alone completed it with flying colors. I nearly gave up on the game at that point but a day later went and did the dungeon again and for whatever reason, it didn't crash out after killing the boss.
Other times I would return to my town and none of the townspeople were there and then the music would start acting up and the game started moving really slow and lo' and behold, it would crash out again.
My brother had a bug on his PS5 where if he so much as tried to use one of the major buildings in his city that the game would crash every single time. The devs have pages on what you can do to correct these things but here's an idea, why don't you, the developer, fix these things on your end?
I haven't had many PS games crash on me at all but this one, it was at least 20 times that this happened while playing to completion. This is unacceptable IMO
Pro: The game is cute and lots of fun
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Despite the rather serious nature of the game and there are loads of satanic imagery, the overall presentation of the game is cutesy. It's a fun little paradox of a mix because what you are doing is actually pretty awful in that you are deceiving your followers and brainwashing them into blindly following you so that you can release an evil spirt onto the world they live in, yet they blissfully carry on with their day and toiling away at worshipping you. It is through this power that you advance and upgrade your abilities. Speaking of which!
Pro: Lots of upgrades keep town building interesting
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Until a certain point in your progression, town building stays interesting because there is always some sort of upgrade to aspire to. They might be something as simple as an outhouse so that your cute little cult members no longer have to poop in the woods and it can move on up to possession circles where you convert your followers into demons that will follow you on quests and assist you in battle. There is always something to do as far as town-building is concerned and every building has a purpose. Of course this reverts back to you having an total over-abundance of resources in late game content to the point where building no longer has any meaning but for about 5 or 6 hours it is a great deal of fun.
Con: Most items you find while adventuring are cosmetic upgrades
Some people might like this sort of thing but I have never been a fan. For the people that are trying to 100% this game you will spend a lot of time searching about in the wild for certain upgrades that offer no bonus whatsoever as far as gameplay is concerned, it is merely a bunch of outfits that you can put on your cult members or yourself and to me, and especially since the cult members die after a certain amount of days, this all seems extremely pointless and sort of dumb.
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But just like fishing mini-games (and yes, there is a fishing mini-game) these sorts of things seem to be protocol in games these days and I don't really know why.
So there you have it folks. I think this is a very fair list of pros and cons for this rather wonderful yet flawed game that I played mostly by accident and truly enjoyed.... well, other than the constant fear of the game crashing out. Apparently people playing it on PC have considerably fewer problems than people playing it on a console, which seems strange to me.
In the end I think this game is very worthwhile and most people will enjoy it. It might be a bit too easy for you hardcore people out there but for a filthy casual like myself, this was the perfect mix of fun with minimal difficulty. It is currently free if you subscribe to PS-Plus so why not give it a try?