Lucius Review

There are few words to describe how excited I got when I found Lucius for the first time — a puzzle game where you play as a six-year-old antichrist and have to murder people? I don't see why anyone would say no!

Lucius is quite straightforward in nearly every sense: the story is simple, the gameplay isn't overly complex, and the mechanics to kill don't come with a lot of bells and whistles. That being said, I had a blast with this title! 

The game starts off during Lucius' sixth birthday and also his first blood. Your first victim is a maid who unwittingly goes into the freezer to put some stuff away and gets trapped when he puts a padlock on the door, letting her freeze to death. While simple, it is a great tutorial for all the HUD items, how the inventory works, and how the entire gameplay will be.

As I said before, the game is on the simple side; you'll mostly just go from kill to kill, only stopping whenever Lucifer shows up to give you new powers. And although after I hit the seventh-hour mark I did get slightly tired of killing people, I didn't feel like the game was too long at all.

For the most part, you'll just get shown Lucius' next victim through his journal, and then you'll have to figure out how to get them while no one sees you. There are numerous employees to kill throughout the mansion and a few abilities and items to do so. As an example, two of the powers you'll get are telekinesis and mind control, which are the most used throughout the entire playthrough.

While there's no freedom in how you go about killing people, it is quite fun to figure out what the game wants you to do and then pull it off without getting caught. However, I did kind of hate the stealth sections, especially due to the lack of proper checkpoints. I ended up having to let my wife do them because I would get caught and have to restart from the beginning over and over.

That being said, this glorious title is obviously not perfect. Whilst I did quite love it, the sheer number of bugs and glitches I encountered was not only astounding, but it was also disappointing; I never quite empathised with gamers that hate buggy games until I finished Lucius. At one point, I was going down the stairs in my tricycle and I glitched through the wall and got blasted outside the mansion; thankfully, I was able to clip through the wall again. Additionally, it became a Googling-fest near the end of the game, as I couldn't figure out how to do things due to a lack of proper explanation, and sometimes the quest would just glitch.

I can't tell if it was the fact that I was constantly getting stumped due to bugs or misunderstandings, but the last bit was slightly annoying. I was glad it didn't drag on, as I truly didn't want such a great title to end in such a bad way!

If you're willing to ignore the bugs, I couldn't recommend this game enough. Lucius is a hilarious and creative title, where you'll find out more ways to kill people than you'll ever need. Additionally, if you're a fan of achievements, the game really nailed what makes them fun! I hadn't had such a great time trying to 100% a title in a while.