Developer: GSQ Games
Publisher: Gamera Game
Platform: PC
Tested On: PC
Amazing Cultivation Simulator – Review
Creating a cult or a sect of your own is an interesting concept that hasn’t been explored too much. Other than the excellent Cultist Simulator released back in 2018, few games come to mind on the topic. Amazing Cultivation Simulator is the latest game to take a shot at this particular formula, making it especially unique with its departure from eldritch gods in favor of eastern mythology.
Story
Amazing Cultivation Simulator’s story is little more than a footnote. Players are tasked with rebuilding the Taiyi Sect after its decimation by a rival cult upon the death of their leader, who was caught in an ambush. Along the way, the game also features several different side stories with diverse levels of depth, which randomly appear. As the game is part of the ‘simulator’ genre, the story value is less important.
Graphics
The game’s graphics are a quite nice combination of 3D models for the characters and 2D tilesets for the environment. Drawing from the eastern mythology theme, the game offers plenty of different options to decorate the sect’s abode, although most need to be unlocked over time. That said, the characters and items are quite the opposite from this; slight changes such as scars or different colors are the only variations between them.
Curiously enough, Amazing Cultivation Simulator’s animations are surprisingly detailed for the size at which they play. Ranging from simple things like eating a bowl of ramen to more complex ones such as performing ritual dances, not all of them might be the best but most are still quite expressive and add a good amount of flavor to the game.
Sound
Amazing Cultivation Simulator’s sound department is quite well covered, although more on the soundtrack side of it than on the sound effect one. Similarly to the visuals, the music stays faithful to the eastern theme, all while still being quite varied and changing from season to season and for the different events that may occur throughout the game. Although worse than the soundtrack, the SFX are not bad either, although they are not particularly prominent due to the nature of the game.
Gameplay
As its name indicates, Amazing Cultivation Simulator belongs to the simulator genre, in particular, that of a cult, combined with classical RTS mechanics such as pausing or speeding up the in-game time or quicksaving. Players must keep their underlings alive while working on achieving ascension to the Golden Core state. To do so, they will have to micromanage the sectarians’ stats, keeping a balance between all of them, while still letting them work and train for their ascension.
To organize their workers, players have at their disposal a work schedule, through which they can select which character will work on which tasks. Depending on the sectarian, they may be better or worse at certain things, thus making the possibility of spreading too thin quite real. Other than through this work schedule, players are unable to manually manage their workers, relying on the AI to choose the appropriate tasks by themselves, which more often than not doesn’t occur. The tasks themselves are quite varied, ranging from building, cleaning and cooking to harvesting, lumbering or mining. In order to keep the sect’s resources in check, all of these will need to be covered.
Once one of the cultists is ready to ascend, players will have to choose the “path” said cultist will follow, which ideally should align with the character’s stats. These paths will grant the individual powerful abilities relying on energy known as “Qi” and allow them to go out adventuring for resources in exchange for no longer being suitable for work. With a limited roster of characters that only ever so slowly expands, players will have to decide which of them will ascend and which will remain as workers. Dedicating all of them to either will only leave players unable to advance or it will result in their sect starving.
Besides these basic mechanics, the game is also jampacked with others such as a “secret” unlocking one or a tribulation test for those cultists who belong to the shapeshifter kind. Unluckily, the game does an incredibly poor job at explaining these, undoubtedly not helped by the incomplete fan translation upon which it relies. Despite offering a “Help” manual, reading through it in English will only leave players scratching their heads wondering what the broken explanations are supposed to mean.
Conclusion
Amazing Cultivation Simulator is a surprisingly good game with a very entertaining gameplay loop that is let down by the obscurity of its harder mechanics. While the game itself is good, the inability to comprehend how things work may end up leaving players fighting to progress. That said, a better translation has been said to be in the works, with more languages being added officially and through mods by fans. At £19.49/20,99€/$24.99, the game offers plenty of content to be entertaining and worth its price, although waiting for a proper translation to release is advised.
Personal Opinion
“I didn’t expect much out of Amazing Cultivation Simulator and was quite happily surprised to find a very entertaining game. Although it is definitely flawed in certain things, such as the dumb AI or a few bugs here and there, managing the cult is still quite entertaining. Funnily enough, the game reminded me more of Rimworld than any other game, so fans of that game may enjoy this. That said, I still have to bring up the main flaw of the game: the obscure mechanics and woeful translation. Other than looking up the wiki and relying on the fan guides with loads of information dumped in doc format, players will be left with no option but to keep trying and failing while reloading saves until they figure out what’s wrong. Such was the case when one of my shapeshifter units had to “tribulate”, where I spent over an hour attempting to make her survive only to find it impossible. Upon checking said fan guide I learned two things: the amount of Qi required for these units to survive is massive and impossible for starting players to achieve and that turtle shapeshifters are useless, explaining why my starting turtle character had died a few days in despite my best efforts. Unluckily the game had never explained this thing, thus leaving me with a doomed save file on which I had already invested plenty of time.”
Amazing Cultivation Simulator - Review,
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