Gods of Almagest review for PS Vita

Given that the Vita has basically been given less than five months to live, it should be considered a small miracle at this point that any games are still being released for it — let alone exclusive ones like Gods of Almagest. So, as one of the ever-dwindling number of people who still proudly clings to Sony?s soon-to-be-late handheld, I?m happy that Gods of Almagest exists.

But as someone who wants to see something other than trash on the Vita during its waning days…I?m at the very least open to the notion that the Vita (and the world, for that matter), would be better off if Gods of Almagest didn?t exist.

Because make no mistake: this game is awful. It?s a weird mix-up between a space shooter and dots and boxes, and it makes zero sense whatsoever. There?s some kind of story about space and ancient gods and I don?t even know what else, and the game very quickly transitions from shooting in space to flying around a grid firing at everything until lines appear and you can try to complete boxes.

Unsurprisingly, nothing is ever explained. The story reads as if someone entered the vague outline of a story into a mediocre translation site, sent it back and forth between various languages a couple of times, and then copy-pasted the results into Gods of Almagest?s dialogue.

On top of that, there?s no explanation for anything, ever, as far as the gameplay goes. Now, given the developer?s track record, this is actually not a wholly bad thing — after all, they were also behind 2016?s Maliya, another terrible Vita exclusive that actually included a tutorial, only that tutorial was so incomprehensible it didn?t tell you anything. That they decided to just let people play here is, in that respect, kind of a mercy.

That said, this means that you never have any idea what?s going on, and you?re left to guess. Near as I was able to figure out, you park yourself in front of a line, and just keep on shooting until the line appears. Then you move on to the next space, and do it again. Occasionally you have to make use of the game?s very poor steering to try to avoid enemies while maneuvering yourself to a position where you can shoot them…though given that my shots seldom actually blew anything up, I may have missed something entirely.

Even if Gods of Almagest had tried to explain itself, though, I don?t think it would?ve been significantly better. Everything here is terrible, from the incomprehensible story, to the baffling gameplay, to the lousy graphics. It?s a shame that this is one of the final games of the Vita?s lifespan, because it?s hard to imagine a worse send-off (apart, you know, from the one Sony is giving it).

Arrayanosoft provided us with a Gods of Almagest PS Vita code for review purposes.