While the Norse and Greek pantheons tend to get the most love in video game representation, there are numerous other cultures whose unique mythologies have very rarely, if ever, been adapted despite their equally interesting qualities. Game studio Lienzo decided to mine this untapped creative vein by using the notoriously bloody Aztec mythos as the center of its new title Aztech Forgotten Gods, and it's an uneven effort that has enough going for it to merit a playthrough.
Aztech takes place in a futuristic version of the Aztec empire where, presumably, the culture was either spared from ever meeting or beat back the infamous conquistadores, and so they were able to flourish into a technological juggernaut. The game’s main narrative follows Achtli, a young woman who, through helping her mother research the past, has come into possession of a giant stone arm named Lightkeeper which is the only weapon able to kill the gods that its activation let loose. While this story seems pretty sparse at first, over the course of the game Achtli’s character ends up getting delved into quite a lot. Unfortunately, the decent writing can occasionally feel muddled between some hammy or overdone dialogue, but it starts to come into its own more and more in the latter half of the title.
As far as core mechanics are concerned, having a giant rocket fist is definitely up there with some of the better ideas, and Aztech Forgotten Gods does a good job with it. Flying around the map feels extremely satisfying and the number of maneuvers that can be used to prolong a flight make for some fun improvisation. With that being said, the environment does have some issues which can impact things such as some collision and clipping issues, most especially at high speeds or when dealing with the enemies found around the overworld.
In regards to these same enemies, the combat used to deal with them is more than a bit of a mixed bag. The primary issue is that there’s very little to almost no finesse to it. In theory, the combat is a series of quick-time events that occur when the player presses the attack button while locked onto an enemy. After Achtli has teleported over to the adversary, the attack button has to be pressed again when a circle lines up with another in order to deal more damage. If this is done three times consecutively then the enemy is instantly killed in a finisher cutscene. In practice, however, within the game’s timed fighting challenges the moments wasted timing the presses and watching the cutscene prevents successfully completing them in time. Instead, all that the main combat really comes down to is mashing the attack button as fast as possible until everything dies.
Fortunately, the lackluster combat is mostly reserved for the peon enemies in Aztech while the bosses are far more interesting and challenging. Each one takes the form of a different god from and the ways that they act tend to feed into their place in Aztec mythology. While some fights are certainly far more interesting than others, they are all unique enough to not really have a standout worst. A certain late-stage encounter does take the cake as the best though, and it would have been interesting to see some of the others given that level of interaction. It also would have been nice to see a bit more buildup in general to these fights, as the mostly empty world didn’t do much to set them up.
While on their own the various aspects of Aztech don’t seem that bad, unfortunately it is the game that ties them all together which is the weakest overall link. Aztech is structured like a story-based 3D Action game, but there’s no side content other than the aforementioned fighting challenges and races, which aren’t actually races at all as the goal is simply to follow a little robot so that Achtli can eventually kill it. The world feels very empty while it zips by, as there’s only four side characters that ever get interacted with in the story, and while there are technically bystanders on the ground, the distinct lack of detail on their models suggests that they were never meant to be talked to.
Sometimes a game that just misses the mark on really coming together is still worth playing thanks to the parts of it that go above and beyond. Aztech Forgotten Gods is a game with a great central gimmick and a good core story, both of which are more than worth experiencing even if, as a whole, it just isn’t quite able to coalesce. It's just a shame that the promise of its best facets isn't deliver on when it falters on some of the more basic elements of its design.
Aztech Forgotten Gods will be released for PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Nintendo Switch on March 10th, 2022. Screen Rant was provided a digital Steam key for the purposes of this review.
