Polygod (Nintendo Switch) Review

Polygod is simple on the surface. With a gun in hand, there's several stages that must be trekked through in order to complete a run. Defeating enemies offers a currency named souls, which can be used to purchase helpful perks, such as dealing more damage, or a faster movement. Dying, however, means that it's back to square one, where the process repeats from the beginning.

The graphic style consists of simple shapes and geometry, which can actually look quite nice at times. That said, the enemy designs don't make much an impression due to being so basic, and some levels definitely look more memorable than others. The music does add some appreciated atmosphere, but on the whole, the presentation in Polygod isn't especially remarkable, even if the art style isn't something you usually see in modern games. It's not exactly fluid to play, either, but more on that later.

Buying upgrades is something that was briefly mentioned earlier, and it's worth praising how inventive many of them are, often completely changing how Polygod plays. One upgrade, for example, drains your health when firing a bullet, but will give double the amount of that health back if the bullet hits an enemy. Not all of them are like that, but there's enough to encourage experimenting with different play styles and make each playthrough that much more varied.

Perhaps the biggest frustration with Polygod is how its random nature can harm the enjoyability of a run. This applies to many games with roguelike elements, but it's alarmingly noticeable here. Sometimes you'll turn a corner and find a swarm of fast moving enemies that shoot projectiles like a shotgun without having any time or space to react, sometimes a boss will be extremely tedious because no upgrades were offered that would be helpful against it, enemies may spawn behind you at the start of a run with no indication that they're there, and so on. Again, this can be an issue in other roguelikes, but not to the degree that it is in here.

Something especially disappointing is how gyro controls have been implemented. On the surface, offering gyro controls seems like a great addition, but its actual execution leaves much to be desired. The most prominent issue is that turning horizontally works differently than one would expect; the only way to turn the camera is to tilt the controller strictly left or right. It may be a bit much to expect the gyro controls to be as precise as Splatoon 2, but having to rotate the controller so often is a hassle, and is basically impossible to comfortably use in handheld mode since tilting the screen so much makes it difficult to tell what's going on - that's not even accounting for the vertical part of the equation, either. It's not a deal breaker, but it is a shame nonetheless.

Another detractor from Polygod is its performance. It has a jarringly inconsistent frame-rate, even in docked mode, and when things get chaotic enough, it can turn into a slideshow. Perhaps if the aesthetics were stunningly detailed then it would be slightly easier to stomach (although still far from desirable), but the graphics are so simplistic that it just makes this problem that much more annoying, and a frame-rate drop that's so frequent can make it unsatisfying to play.