Starting out, I thought the dice system was cool, and the cyberpunk setting was neat. The resource/time management aspects I liked and I thought they could do a lot with those concepts.
But at a certain point, you figure out the gameplay pretty well and then there is no challenge anymore. No struggle for money, no struggle for good dice rolls, no struggle for time. At this point, the game slows down and you are left waiting for side-quests to be available, doing nothing truly important each day. At a certain point, I was trying to figure out how to end the game because I felt like I should be done after becoming this powerful.
One thing that could make this game incredible would be if the writing was amazing. But in reality, it's... just good? The story of the game feels very disconnected. Stuff happens all over the place, but none of it is really related to each other. The game has a bunch of cool story points and choices you make, but they all seem to come out of the blue and seem like they've been forced in there for no real reason. I felt a lack of engagement with the events happening in the game. The whole time I simply did not really care. I didn't care for any of the characters really, (emphis was cool) especially the protagonist.
The main character of this game is intentionally made a blank slate so that you can - I don't know: "forge your own path in this lawless world" or whatever. But I felt no attachment to them at all. I hate to do the obvious and compare this to that other game, but having just played Disco Elysium recently, the disparity in the writing was inherently obvious to me. In that game, I was 100% invested in every character, including the protagonist. In Citizen Sleeper I didn't care what happened. My character felt like the Dragonborn in Skyrim, joining all of these different factions around the whole region, living several lives all at once. Being able to do all of these things at the same time with them not being connected at all or having any consequences was weird. It felt so disjointed and you can't truly get a grasp on the protagonists personality, stuff just happens and you do other stuff to move the game along. Also, it felt like none of my choices mattered. Things move along whether you want them to or not. The writing isn't bad but it just wasn't at a high enough level to enthrall me. I was never fully captivated.
I got 2 different endings and they both felt abrupt and meh. Like the story in the rest of the game, I didn't really care what happened. In the late-game, I felt it was dragging on as I had only like 1 quest going at a time and I just wanted to get it done so I could finish the game. So the pacing was a bit weird too.
I'm just a bit disappointed I guess. The game could've been amazing but it had some issues that just seemed weird to me. And a lot of my issues became much more prominent in the last few hours of gameplay, which sadly had the game leaving a sour taste in my mouth. I'm not sure anymore if I am going to play the DLC episodes. Maybe later I will play those and if they're super good I might update my review.
But at a certain point, you figure out the gameplay pretty well and then there is no challenge anymore. No struggle for money, no struggle for good dice rolls, no struggle for time. At this point, the game slows down and you are left waiting for side-quests to be available, doing nothing truly important each day. At a certain point, I was trying to figure out how to end the game because I felt like I should be done after becoming this powerful.
One thing that could make this game incredible would be if the writing was amazing. But in reality, it's... just good? The story of the game feels very disconnected. Stuff happens all over the place, but none of it is really related to each other. The game has a bunch of cool story points and choices you make, but they all seem to come out of the blue and seem like they've been forced in there for no real reason. I felt a lack of engagement with the events happening in the game. The whole time I simply did not really care. I didn't care for any of the characters really, (emphis was cool) especially the protagonist.
The main character of this game is intentionally made a blank slate so that you can - I don't know: "forge your own path in this lawless world" or whatever. But I felt no attachment to them at all. I hate to do the obvious and compare this to that other game, but having just played Disco Elysium recently, the disparity in the writing was inherently obvious to me. In that game, I was 100% invested in every character, including the protagonist. In Citizen Sleeper I didn't care what happened. My character felt like the Dragonborn in Skyrim, joining all of these different factions around the whole region, living several lives all at once. Being able to do all of these things at the same time with them not being connected at all or having any consequences was weird. It felt so disjointed and you can't truly get a grasp on the protagonists personality, stuff just happens and you do other stuff to move the game along. Also, it felt like none of my choices mattered. Things move along whether you want them to or not. The writing isn't bad but it just wasn't at a high enough level to enthrall me. I was never fully captivated.
I got 2 different endings and they both felt abrupt and meh. Like the story in the rest of the game, I didn't really care what happened. In the late-game, I felt it was dragging on as I had only like 1 quest going at a time and I just wanted to get it done so I could finish the game. So the pacing was a bit weird too.
I'm just a bit disappointed I guess. The game could've been amazing but it had some issues that just seemed weird to me. And a lot of my issues became much more prominent in the last few hours of gameplay, which sadly had the game leaving a sour taste in my mouth. I'm not sure anymore if I am going to play the DLC episodes. Maybe later I will play those and if they're super good I might update my review.