"Don't doubt. Don't be afraid. And know.
Knowledge will save all".

Gnosia presents us with a very interesting premise. Social-Deduction RPG which is basically what it meants, deduce who is the enemy or lie your way to victory. Main objective is to eliminate all threats upon our way to victory, we can either play as the "Threat" (Gnosia, Bug, AC Follower) or "Human" (Crew, Doctor, Guardian Angel, Engineer, Guard Duty). Each class has their own tutorial while going progressing through the game and each is explained in detail. I won't go much in detail for the mechanics here, they are explained very well in the game.

You take the role of an unknown crewmate in the ship. Again, your main objective is to survive discussions in the ship, alongside the Gnosia threat, depending the class you choose to take part in. As an RPG, you'll start as a pretty tame individual, my recommendation for first time players is to not take much part in disscourses and limit yourself only to vote what people think is the real enemy. As you progress more, you'll level up and learn more abilities to add to the set discussion making surviving much more easier, even being to 180° most situation.

You can say there is a story here, but is underneath layers and layers of "special events" throughout the game. These events let you progress through the story and slowly start to piece all together. Yeah, which means there is no linear story here. I was in a loss at first, events kept occurring seemingly in no particular order, and that's a given. You won't experience the same events in the same order as myself, it's RNG most of the time.

It's really lighthearted in tone, and I'm use to visual novels to go absolutely hogwild at some point, but this isn't much the case. It feels very honest about what it wants to tell. And I'm very thankful for it since, in my opinion this game doesn't need to go that far and touches most topics again, in a very innocent way with it's characters. Talking about characters, they're really charming. Everyone is different from one another, not just in aspect but in personality and this is reflected in all sort of places; during disccusions, during events and even their stats. Everyone has their own stats, some are better than others at disscusions and some have abilites others simply don't. Though, I wanted to know more about the them. This is strictly tied to events as I said before and every characters has more than 4 events to explore from 14 characters in total, not including the main character which we know close to nothing about.

The presentation in this game is wonderful and full of life. If I'd had to give it a name it would be something like: "Alien, but welcoming" and that's knowing you're in a ship with a bunch of alien and humans. Muisc is like goofy-esque silly drama most of the time and calm and weirdly sentimental when it needs to, that I thought suits this game very well alongside the visuals. Every character is separated by a color palette wich makes each one standout more from the rest and is easier to recognize everyone as soon as you see their portrait on screen. I don't personally have a favourite but if I have to choose, I'll go with Shigemichi. He's a pretty funny fella.

My favorite moment of this game when I decided to trust a certain crew member while Gnosia just to cover mysef of any suspicion since she was against me and picking on me constantly on discussions. The idea was to make her support me on the debates trusting each other on the act. An event triggered after finishing that day, then she asked me if I was lying this whole time to again, cover myself as Gnosia. Said yes, but she didn't mind as a Human and even knowing I was Gnosia she decided to support me on those debates just because I was honest with her. It was honestly surprising. Then "Aster" starts playing in the background, one of the very few vocal songs in the game only reserved for moments as special as this one.

After Loop 30 or so you're free to do whatever you want. I'm a bit sad to say this is where this game starts to get worse. Before each gane a menu is presented, you're able to choose everything; from the amount of people that are in the ship and gnosia quantity and the class you want to take part in. You main objective now is to search for these events to advance through the story. Some are really difficult to trigger and activate and some require very specific instances to then activate.

Personally I probably would never have found some if it wasn't for a quick internet search and I'm quite sad for it because I loved this game before it forced me to stay as away as possible for it. And it gets worse, I started to not care about the characters and only focus myself on getting these events activated. Remember the RPG aspects? You'll start to level up like crazy after each loop and become untouchable for the most part by level 100. Days and days, searching for these events to trigger. Some didn't, some randomly appear and some luckly were triggered as well. And I hate to say this, but you better off watching the ending(s) on Youtube.

Wish this game gets a sequel soon, with a new row set of characters because I feel there is a lot of potential wasted here. Mainly to fix how you progress through the story. I'm quite sad seeing how things turned up for Gnosia because I really liked it at first but then my love for it started to go downhill as loops went on and on, until the very end. If these things gets fix in the future, I'm sure this game will recieve more international praise and not be just relegated to be only known by some people. I'm sure of it.

Reviewed on Nov 28, 2023


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