God Bless, or Goddess Review

Now look, I know what you’re thinking. But as I’ve stated here at the Tavern many times, I’m always up for trying a new game or game type, and having really enjoyed the output of Wales Interactive, Aviary Studios, and D’Avekki Studios over the years – and with a seeming abundance of games of this ilk coming from elsewhere in the world now – God Bless, or Goddess looked as good as any to try. For what it’s worth, there is something here to enjoy outside of the obvious, although some fine tuning is going to be required to match the greats in the genre. 

We play as Lin Fan, the only male member of the Crane Illusion Sect, a group of spiritually powerful beings that are trying to achieve immortality and ascend to the heavens. Lin is accompanied by a sextet of females, all of whom have eyes for him alone and try their best to keep his attention to themselves. Throughout the adventure, we’re faced with a series of dialogue and action choices that will affect our relationships with these women. 

This is, as FMV games go, a fairly standard title. It has some decent special effects and a good amount of production value, with detailed sets and costumes, as well as passably implemented backdrops for more open scenes. There is a lot of watching and listening (or reading, as the game is only subbed, not dubbed), with choices popping up every now and then to splinter the story off in various ways. 

RIZE Entertainment do try to offer a little more here, though, with hidden items collected either through picking certain choices or in one of the handful of room exploration scenes. Later choices are blocked off if we don’t have certain items, and the only real way to see it all is to go back and replay scenes, and select different choices. It’s a slightly more incentivised reason to replay the game, but can make the initial playthrough a tad annoying at times, as the only option we’re usually left with is a less desirable one. 

There are a handful of side stories to explore in between chapters, too, as long as we have the required points to unlock them – which in itself is a bit of a vague system. We get these points from completing QTE battles in the story, I think, but I haven’t failed one yet and have still sometimes ended up with no points to use. These side stories offer only slight additions to the lore and characters, and could have done with some clarity or polishing in this regard. 

Of course, you may have noticed that our female companions – some of who are Lin’s seniors, while others are his mentees – are all of the attractive persuasion. A huge – almost entirely encompassing – part of God Bless, or Goddess is that Lin is for some reason irresistible to the ladies of the Crane Illusion Sect (and, well, just any other women that appear in the story to be honest).  There are innuendos and flat out propositioning at every turn, and the ladies are almost constantly fighting for Lin’s approval or attention. A lot of the choices involve picking between two or more of them, and we get a love meter rating between chapters to see how Lin is doing. I decided to focus on Ironveil – his tough, stone-faced senior ‘sister’ in the sect – to see how that progressed. Much like other aspects of the gameplay, it all felt a bit scattershot: in one instance, she’d be blushing and seemingly coming round to Lin, and in the next scene she’d be threatening to kill him, in a complete tonal shift.

The continuity between scenes feels very off, and some choices don’t feel like they line up with what we intended. Trying to be nice to one person can just as easily piss them off, and I can only assume some things got lost in translation. 

But no matter what we choose, it’s safe to say that Lin (and by extension the player) is meant to feel like the king of the world with all these beautiful women throwing themselves at him. And really, well, that’s the point of God Bless, or Goddess. There are plenty of very specifically angled shots to catch the eye (though nothing here is explicit at all), and one or two borderline inappropriate lines from Lin (where he has to stop himself from ‘taking advantage’ of a sleeping lady, for example). Most of it is played for laughs but, again, feels like something is lost in translation, and can seem a bit outdated in its approach. 

Not much to report here other than the video quality holds up nicely on the handheld. Inputs can be either the face buttons or touch screen (or mouse if you have it docked), and the Play Anywhere function works as well as you’d expect. God Bless, or Goddess saves fairly frequently, so picking up on the handheld means losing very little, if any, progress. Perhaps not one to play on the train or waiting at the doctors, mind you…

ROG Xbox Ally X Corner

As mentioned, the game is subbed with the original Chinese Mandarin voicework in place. This is fine, but due to the speed that some of the ladies speak, it can mean the subtitles go by very fast. I’m a fast reader but even I struggled to keep up at some points. There’s also the fact that there are a lot of proper nouns, names, nicknames, and more to try and not only read, but keep track of and understand. I definitely lost track of who was who more than once, and I still don’t quite understand the whole cultivation power aspect other than it being – at times, or perhaps always? – a metaphor for banging. 

Conclusion

All in all, God Bless, or Goddess is an odd curiosity. On the one hand it has some decent special effects, some interesting characters and some added gameplay elements you wouldn’t normally see in an FMV title, as well as some tongue-in-cheek humour. On the other, it’s clearly aimed at a certain (mostly male) audience for certain, obvious reasons, and the plot and characters can become a tangled mess of names and proper nouns that are hard to keep track of, especially with the rapid pace of the subtitles going by.