Cultist games feel like they’re cropping up more and more in recent years. There’s the incredible Aussie homegrown Cult of the Lamb with its straight-faced debauchery, Cultist Simulator, which delves into Cthulhu and horror with confidence, or Honey, I Joined a Cult, which wears its comedy chops as a badge of honor.
It’s a shame, then, that the latest kid on the block, Becoming Saint, can’t seem to decide if it’s being funny or serious, and the mechanics holding it all together are only skin deep.
Build-a-cult
Becoming Saint presents a simple directive — take over Italy and become a Saint. You achieve this by founding your own church, answering questions like “How should money be shared?” or “How should we treat enemy priests?”.
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Based on these answers, you land on one of eight doctrines; you might be Anarchists, Pacifists, or Revolutionaries, to name a few.
Each doctrine has combat units associated with it, and your doctrine can change as you answer more questions during your run. I enjoyed this aspect, as it means your cult evolves over time — starting as an Anarchist and potentially ending as a Capitalist.
The core gameplay involves straightforward combat encounters as you aim to conquer each city in Italy. Combat is quite simple; you’ll go into battle with up to five units, each whimsically off-kilter. You might fight with an army of beggars or swearing nuns.
Importantly, very few of these units are actual soldiers. The idea is that you’re rallying commoners to your cause.
To battle! Kind of.
Combat takes place on the same 5×6 grid every time. You control your units directly by assigning them a target square, and they will attack enemies en route. The combat system includes basic modifiers like height advantage and cover, but that’s about it.
Your leader can bless or curse units, adding some tactical depth — especially when you’re down to just one unit and nearing the end of the fight.
There’s also an autobattle feature, which I quickly relied on once I realised how slim the combat system really is.
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I enjoyed the originality behind these units, and the art style is cute, with a paper-craft feel. Unfortunately, it often feels like one half of the game is going for whimsical, while the other is aiming for serious.
Not so saintly
Becoming Saint is incredibly repetitive. While repetition in many roguelikes is a badge of honour — where you level up and grow through each task — Becoming Saint does quite the opposite.
Each run feels much the same as the last. You set your doctrine, which mainly determines the units you can access. Then, you land on the map and start converting towns around your starting city.
Whether you’re taking your first or tenth city, the process is much the same: choose some units, march to the city, fight, and repeat.
As you expand, there’s little opposition to your growing cult. Each city has static defences, and there’s only ever a single fight to overcome them. There aren’t enemy armies trying to retake cities, so there’s little push-back on your expansion.
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Ironically, the biggest threat to your expansion is your own followers. As you gain more territory and take more cities, all those mouths need feeding. You must meet a certain food requirement each round, which you gain some of from taking cities, and some is scrounged or begged while marching.
There are also really strange translation issues scattered everywhere. Defeated lords shout “May get Plague!” as they retreat or give encounter prompts like “Will you lend the food! Will you try this quick way to make food!” A good proofread would have done wonders.
Should I buy Becoming Saint?
Becoming Saint doesn’t do very much that’s innovating on the genre. It has a passable combat system that is slimmed down to the point that you might as well use the auto-battle feature. The features it does have going for it are some cool original art, and an interesting — if slim — cult development system.
Putting it simply, if you want something to spend an hour on, maybe give Becoming Saint a look. But fair warning, after an hour you’ve probably seen about all there is.
Quest Daily scores Becoming Saint:
5/10
Access to Becoming Saint was supplied to Quest Daily by the publisher.
