Despot’s Game Review (Nintendo Switch OLED)

by Jim Smale · Published May 31, 2023 · Updated May 30, 2023

For our Despot’s Game Review, where we guide puny humans through Despot’s Game – a rogue-like tactics army battler. Equip your team and sacrifice them through procedural dungeons as you fight enemies and other players!

Despot’s Game Review Pros:

Decent pixel art graphics.
1.4GB download size.
Own in-game achievements.
Game settings – always show tutorials, show levels, faster quests, and always show HP bars, language, and Joy-Con hints.
Auto battler roguelike gameplay.
When navigating the world you go from room to room and control which direction you take.
When the combat begins you get to set up your team however you want, you can see where enemies will spawn. So set it up then press play and it auto battles.
Find and equip items and weapons.
Rooms will change into rewards or shops after a fight has finished.
Mutations change how everyone acts and you can buy new ones in a run by exchanging tokens for them.
Can change the controls from menu surfing to using a traditional cursor like a mouse.
The game world randomizes every run.
Two game speeds.
You can buy more humans from the in-game shop on a run.
You can pause the game.
Big boss fights that unlock another level to the game world.
Multiple choice encounters.
Has a choose your own adventure type of writing for the choices.
Challenges mode has additional set-piece scenarios.

Despot’s Game Review Cons:

So much to take in.
The Hud is really confusing to use.
Tutorial pop-ups are not always clear or frequent enough.
No text pop-up for gameplay settings.
At the start, you will die a lot and quickly which is fine but the tutorials will repeat themselves and you can’t really turn it off as you may miss a new tutorial pop-up.
It always feels like the odds are stacked against you.
The lack of a map makes it a pure random luck-based run.

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