This was a disappointing one for me. I enjoyed this studio's previous game, The Council, for bringing role-playing style stats into a TellTale style game. I wasn't blown away by the story, and the graphics and voice acting could've definitely been better, but I enjoyed it well enough paired with the gameplay mechanics that I had an overall positive experience with it. One of the things Swansong revealed to me about how I play games now, is that I'm just not willing to read through a bunch of superfluous text unless it's exceptionally well written. I used to be the type of player who would read every single codex entry in a BioWare game, and when I played The Council which also has tons of reading, I read through everything I found even if I found it boring sometimes. My playstyle has since changed however, and I'm no longer willing to give my time to something like that unless I view it as being worth my time, and in the case of this game I don't think that it was. My only prior experience with the Vampire: The Masquerade universe being Bloodlines, I've already had an experience with a very well done role-playing style story in this universe in video game form. The central conflict between the Camarilla and the Anarchs in that game is thematically rich and compelling. The conflict in this game just didn't grip me in the same way, and didn't compel me to scrounge through in-game books to try to learn more about it, especially when not everything you can read is crucial or even interesting. When a large amount of the game is about investigating, and I'm too bored to care to read up on the things I'm investigating, that's a bad sign.
I also think that Disco Elysium has just ruined this kind of game for me because it did stat-based storytelling too well. In Disco Elysium every possible way you could think to build your character is valid, and the game itself is more about playing it the way that you want, because there are options for every build imaginable. Swansong on the other hand, having only played through once, really feels like there are certain stats that you could min/max to simply get the "best" outcome. Investing points into your four core dialogue stats seems way too strong, and I never felt like I was choosing between these in an interesting way. It was more "sometimes this will come up and if you have points you'll win easier" and less "multiple of these will come up and you'll make an interesting character choice." I do hope that this studio can get a couple more shots at refining their formula because I do love the concept of RPG meets TellTale. Hopefully they look at how a game like Disco Elysium does this in a CRPG format and can apply it to the kind of game they make. But for this game, it just didn't really grab me.
I also think that Disco Elysium has just ruined this kind of game for me because it did stat-based storytelling too well. In Disco Elysium every possible way you could think to build your character is valid, and the game itself is more about playing it the way that you want, because there are options for every build imaginable. Swansong on the other hand, having only played through once, really feels like there are certain stats that you could min/max to simply get the "best" outcome. Investing points into your four core dialogue stats seems way too strong, and I never felt like I was choosing between these in an interesting way. It was more "sometimes this will come up and if you have points you'll win easier" and less "multiple of these will come up and you'll make an interesting character choice." I do hope that this studio can get a couple more shots at refining their formula because I do love the concept of RPG meets TellTale. Hopefully they look at how a game like Disco Elysium does this in a CRPG format and can apply it to the kind of game they make. But for this game, it just didn't really grab me.