ok. so. I've been on a streak of these story games after realizing with telltale walking dead that sometimes games without shotguns can be awesome. It did sort of have this barrier of the whole setting being .. medieval times in some buttfuck country I never heard of set dozens of years before I was even born. Medieval times is a pretty boring setting. If you ask me, the only three settings I will accept are modern day, zombie apocalypse, or the cold war. Games CANNOT be set in the future because they will be outdated when we get to the time the game alleges it's set in. It also cannot be set in space because there's no sound in space so I have to turn off my volume every time for full immersion and its so lame. My most important rule is games cannot be set in medieval times because I don't want motherfuckers saying "thy, thee, thine, thou, wasn't, shakespeare," and other medieval words. Also I can't help but think it just really smells bad there.

But you know what, I gave this one a try. And I'm glad I did because despite the boring, lame setting and naming all these old monks from like 1500 in conversation as if I'm supposed to know who they are, I found peace within the world through the protagonist, Andy. You see, Andy is a visitor and an artist. You play as him and choose what he says. What I did was I self inserted as him and I thought I was him. So when people said "oh yeah saint reactine from the denzel mountains said pablo neruda and max brooks of loeb city went to the pottage shop to eat pottage" (authors note: pottage is like beans sort of ) both me and Andy can nod our heads and pretend to know wtf is going on.

You see I'm a big fan of games that make me feel smart without having to be smart or do anything. There are no real puzzles in this game or any way to fail, it's completely linear and no matter what you do you win. But it makes me feel smart because I didn't know it was impossible to lose. So when I kept winning, I felt sooo really sodding smart. (Authors note: sodding is ancient slang for fucking) Andy quickly became one of my favourite characters in recent memory because of how relatable he is not just in his fish outta water attitude in the town, but his personal arc also really resonated with me. Anyone can relate honestly. The game says a lot about passions and goals love and people and building on the past and the economy's relation with art and the passage of time and faith and a whole lotta fancy pants college degree bullcrap but I won't get into that because I want YOU to get into it.

Yeah you play the game yourself and comprehend the themes and subtext and stuff. That's gonna be real fun for you. The side characters are also super fleshed out and seeing these guys change over the course of the game was amazing and I was really really invested, which is surprising especially for such a short -ish game, I have to admit its very hard to get me to care for a whole town of people but I did even if sometimes I couldn't pronounce their medieval ass names. There's a whole lot of them and it normally would be easy for them to feel really similar visually and personality wise considering there's no voice acting but the art style is so outta this world that not only does everything look smooth and the animations feel real and sick and awesome, but each npc has their own look and style where you from a glance can almost tell what they're like just from their face and what they're doing and their posture or whatever. I had some complicated ass relationships with these townspeople. And I think that's really awesome.

One thing I did think was sort of underdeveloped was the actual quest design and time passage mechanics. Your quests are always very similar, go here and ask this person about this. Like I get it there's no funny business its a straight up realistic medieval times thing, and there are some exceptions where the quest can be action packed... But yeah it can get boring to make a break in the case and my next goal is to talk to these three people about this topic and gather info, which I guess is the point since you're solving a murder mystery but, whatever. Aside from the variety I just wish the actual stuff was more robust and clear. Like ok this quest tells me to talk to this guy. I go to the guy. He gives me a "wassup Andy" and I can't respond. Is the quest broken? did I come at the wrong time? who knows. The in game journal ain't tellin me jack squat. I also thought the pacing could be off at some times, some chapters felt very long and some felt like they were over in a second. But if those tiny ass baby ass complaints are all I got then I don't see why I can't bestow upon this game one of elk's highest honours, the coveted, the exclusive, the cool and badass 5/5. Yeah. Hell yeah.

good night!

EDIT: Josh sawyer blocked me on twitter so im dropping my rating of this game. Thanks for understanding.