This review contains spoilers
We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey
Some of the best gameplay/narrative cohesion I've seen in a game. Lobotomy Corporation is a game all about managing a series of ever increasing worst case scenarios that culminates in an absolutely brutal final stretch that left me hobbling towards the finish line with only a third of the employees I'd spent so many hours training.
Unfairness and brutality are a core facet of this game. The only way to understand many of the horrible monstrosities you're tasked with managing is by throwing your employees at them and letting their deaths help you to formulate your strategy. Abnormalities have conditions that are generally easy to manage in isolation, but where the game gets truly sadistic is in managing multiple abnormalities with overlapping and often contradicting rules. One requiring a number of sacrifices per meltdown while another will wreak havoc after enough employees have died. One abnormality may require you to never have your camera on it while it's being worked on, whereas another may require you to keep your camera on it the whole time. Juggling all these different challenges will truly put a test to your ability to micromanage, and just when you think you've got it all under control, you'll remember you haven't checked Express Train to Hell in a couple minutes and a ghost train will rip through your facility and kill half your team.
The olive branch extended to you is the rewind feature, allowing you to rewind back to a previous day or even the beginning of the game while retaining your abnormality information and equipment, as well as your mission progress (that last one I was ignorant to until about 35 days into my first cycle, having failed to complete a single core suppression). I had to do two full resets before reaching the true ending, and while losing my employees was a harsh blow, the gains were too big to ignore. Cleverly, the game even ties this rewind mechanic directly to the story, recontextualizing what I initially thought to be a fail state into an expected aspect of my journey.
The best aspect, however, was the core suppressions; which put to the test nearly every skill you learn in your playthrough in interesting ways while often providing some great insight into your colorful cast of coworkers. My favorite of all has to be Hokma's suppression, the mechanics behind it and how they relate to his personal mindset and feelings was a particular highlight for me. When I tried to speed up time during this event and was met with a message telling me that we "mustn't let time pass recklessly", it hit me way harder than expected.
And can we talk about the music? The core suppression music is always a perfect representation of its boss' mindset, but the standout tracks were the trumpet/warning themes. Trumpet 1 is accompanied by a tense track that wordlessly tells the player "Hey, some shit is starting to go down". When things start to really go bad the Trumpet 2 theme kicks in, a fast paced, energetic song backed by a whining alarm telling you that your situation is spiraling out of control. Finally, when you inevitably fail to control the situation, the third trumpet theme plays; a somber track with sorrowful vocals effectively communicating that your situation is almost certainly incapable of being salvaged. The first time I had this series of tracks play in full for me might just be my favorite moment of the game, perfectly lined up with my own initial panic, determination, and despair as I went to restart a particularly disastrous day.
Overall this game features an incredible cohesion between all of its aspects, nearly every gameplay element justified in it's story and fitting well with the plot and themes. I jumped right into Library of Ruina upon finishing Lob Corp and while I am loving it's turned based card system, I can't shake the feeling that it's numerous systems won't achieve that same wonderful harmony this game has.
One of my new favorites for sure, just make sure you download those stacking healthbars and super speed mods to save yourself some headaches. Even making liberal use of the super speed mod, my true ending playthrough clocked me in at around 140 hours, a number I imagine would be a lot higher if I stuck with the vanilla game's max speed. There's a fair bit of jank to this game, and all my major flaws were easily fixed by mods that I didn't feel impacted the cut-throat difficulty.
Some of the best gameplay/narrative cohesion I've seen in a game. Lobotomy Corporation is a game all about managing a series of ever increasing worst case scenarios that culminates in an absolutely brutal final stretch that left me hobbling towards the finish line with only a third of the employees I'd spent so many hours training.
Unfairness and brutality are a core facet of this game. The only way to understand many of the horrible monstrosities you're tasked with managing is by throwing your employees at them and letting their deaths help you to formulate your strategy. Abnormalities have conditions that are generally easy to manage in isolation, but where the game gets truly sadistic is in managing multiple abnormalities with overlapping and often contradicting rules. One requiring a number of sacrifices per meltdown while another will wreak havoc after enough employees have died. One abnormality may require you to never have your camera on it while it's being worked on, whereas another may require you to keep your camera on it the whole time. Juggling all these different challenges will truly put a test to your ability to micromanage, and just when you think you've got it all under control, you'll remember you haven't checked Express Train to Hell in a couple minutes and a ghost train will rip through your facility and kill half your team.
The olive branch extended to you is the rewind feature, allowing you to rewind back to a previous day or even the beginning of the game while retaining your abnormality information and equipment, as well as your mission progress (that last one I was ignorant to until about 35 days into my first cycle, having failed to complete a single core suppression). I had to do two full resets before reaching the true ending, and while losing my employees was a harsh blow, the gains were too big to ignore. Cleverly, the game even ties this rewind mechanic directly to the story, recontextualizing what I initially thought to be a fail state into an expected aspect of my journey.
The best aspect, however, was the core suppressions; which put to the test nearly every skill you learn in your playthrough in interesting ways while often providing some great insight into your colorful cast of coworkers. My favorite of all has to be Hokma's suppression, the mechanics behind it and how they relate to his personal mindset and feelings was a particular highlight for me. When I tried to speed up time during this event and was met with a message telling me that we "mustn't let time pass recklessly", it hit me way harder than expected.
And can we talk about the music? The core suppression music is always a perfect representation of its boss' mindset, but the standout tracks were the trumpet/warning themes. Trumpet 1 is accompanied by a tense track that wordlessly tells the player "Hey, some shit is starting to go down". When things start to really go bad the Trumpet 2 theme kicks in, a fast paced, energetic song backed by a whining alarm telling you that your situation is spiraling out of control. Finally, when you inevitably fail to control the situation, the third trumpet theme plays; a somber track with sorrowful vocals effectively communicating that your situation is almost certainly incapable of being salvaged. The first time I had this series of tracks play in full for me might just be my favorite moment of the game, perfectly lined up with my own initial panic, determination, and despair as I went to restart a particularly disastrous day.
Overall this game features an incredible cohesion between all of its aspects, nearly every gameplay element justified in it's story and fitting well with the plot and themes. I jumped right into Library of Ruina upon finishing Lob Corp and while I am loving it's turned based card system, I can't shake the feeling that it's numerous systems won't achieve that same wonderful harmony this game has.
One of my new favorites for sure, just make sure you download those stacking healthbars and super speed mods to save yourself some headaches. Even making liberal use of the super speed mod, my true ending playthrough clocked me in at around 140 hours, a number I imagine would be a lot higher if I stuck with the vanilla game's max speed. There's a fair bit of jank to this game, and all my major flaws were easily fixed by mods that I didn't feel impacted the cut-throat difficulty.