122 Reviews liked by Nodima
The story's honestly pretty inconsistent- certain quests are hallmarks of great worldbuilding and genuinely tough moral dilemmas, while others are forgettable, thinly contextualized busy work. However, what they all have in common is a set of mechanics that end up causing a pretty huge disconnect between the player and the main character. Geralt has to pay attention to environmental storytelling to figure out what exactly he's dealing with during each mission while I don't- I just have to hold "L," tap "A" when I'm next to something that's glowing red, and then listen to what Geralt tells me. Geralt has to evaluate whether or not he's currently strong enough to take on a particular contract while I can just look at what level the game says I should be at before I do it. Geralt has to strategize about the best way to prepare for each monster encounter while I just have to follow the instructions that pop up on my screen. In short, I'm not actually the witcher, I'm just watching him work, and this is a flaw that the game's top-notch presentation doesn't make up for. It's a game that doesn't have much room for player input in general, with the exception of its dialogue choices, which, to be fair, it excels at. The harshest insult that I can throw at The Witcher 3 is that it's basically a Telltale game where your choices actually matter, and there's far, far worse things for a triple-A title this monstrously large to be.
An immersive story line, unforgettable quests and character, a thriving universe. A near perfect game. It truly feels that this is a real world existing and I am in the middle of a larger war, rather than being the most important piece of the war. The people and characters and interactions are great. The combat is also a lot of fun against a good mix of humans of monsters. In combat one has the choice to mix magic attacks with explosives, or just slash harshly with a blade.
One of the best games I've ever played. Everything thing about it is fantastic. The visuals, sound design, music, characters, story, setting, voice acting and gameplay are all amazing. Both expansions are also incredible. A Masterpiece.
One of the best games I've ever played. Everything thing about it is fantastic. The visuals, sound design, music, characters, story, setting, voice acting and gameplay are all amazing. Both expansions are also incredible. A Masterpiece.
A triumph of the interactive medium as a whole. The best realized world of not just all open-world games, not just all games in general but basically all media ever (rivaled only by maybe Blade Runner). Literally made me appreciate the natural beauty of my country more, and as an extension the natural beauty of the world in general. I know how fucking weird that sounds, but it’s just a testament to what a masterpiece this work of art is.
Looking back on it, in a “technical” sense this probably isn’t the best game I’ve ever played anymore. Yet I still cannot bring myself to take it off of that number one spot, and I don’t know if I ever will. I’ve played games with much better gameplay, better story, better characters, better music, better art… I could keep going. But I don’t even know if Wild Hunt can be described with the generic “it’s greater than the sum of its parts”. I think it’s the open world that’s doing most of the job here. It’s the open world that creates the incredible atmosphere and the coveted “Immersion” with a capital I.
I need to be transported – it’s not something that can be described with words, no matter how hard I try, it’ll just end up sounding generic. When I look back on a game, I need to remember something more than sitting in front of a lit up screen and… “being entertained”. I need to remember the feelings I felt. I need to remember the views I saw. I need to remember being there. I need to remember it being real, even if it only existed for me. Or perhaps exactly because it only existed for me.
And honestly? Even this immersion aspect… I have doubts if The Witcher 3 continues to be my number one pick anymore. But I cannot rank games based on some sort of average or a rating influenced by any aspect I could bring myself to call even slightly “objective” (what a bunch of bullshit). That’s not right. That’s not how art is meant to be consumed.
It all makes me a bit scared to ever replay this game. I’ve only ever completed the main story once. Part of the reason is probably that I just can’t really be bothered to replay long games – there are too many new ones to experience. But part of it… I’m scared that what I remember may not be real. May stop being real.
So for now, I’ll let The Witcher 3 continue existing only in my memories. So that when I think back to those golden sunsets over Velen, those bustling streets of Novigrad, those milky peaks of Skellige… I can tell myself that my pick for the best game of all time is a simple choice. I know that in reality it’s not. It’s not a choice that can even be honestly made, really. But I think I’d rather fool myself a little while longer.
Looking back on it, in a “technical” sense this probably isn’t the best game I’ve ever played anymore. Yet I still cannot bring myself to take it off of that number one spot, and I don’t know if I ever will. I’ve played games with much better gameplay, better story, better characters, better music, better art… I could keep going. But I don’t even know if Wild Hunt can be described with the generic “it’s greater than the sum of its parts”. I think it’s the open world that’s doing most of the job here. It’s the open world that creates the incredible atmosphere and the coveted “Immersion” with a capital I.
I need to be transported – it’s not something that can be described with words, no matter how hard I try, it’ll just end up sounding generic. When I look back on a game, I need to remember something more than sitting in front of a lit up screen and… “being entertained”. I need to remember the feelings I felt. I need to remember the views I saw. I need to remember being there. I need to remember it being real, even if it only existed for me. Or perhaps exactly because it only existed for me.
And honestly? Even this immersion aspect… I have doubts if The Witcher 3 continues to be my number one pick anymore. But I cannot rank games based on some sort of average or a rating influenced by any aspect I could bring myself to call even slightly “objective” (what a bunch of bullshit). That’s not right. That’s not how art is meant to be consumed.
It all makes me a bit scared to ever replay this game. I’ve only ever completed the main story once. Part of the reason is probably that I just can’t really be bothered to replay long games – there are too many new ones to experience. But part of it… I’m scared that what I remember may not be real. May stop being real.
So for now, I’ll let The Witcher 3 continue existing only in my memories. So that when I think back to those golden sunsets over Velen, those bustling streets of Novigrad, those milky peaks of Skellige… I can tell myself that my pick for the best game of all time is a simple choice. I know that in reality it’s not. It’s not a choice that can even be honestly made, really. But I think I’d rather fool myself a little while longer.
One of the most interesting things about The Witcher 3 is how it subverts so many common genre and video game tropes, "bad guys" have motivations and there goals make sense, monsters might not all be so evil or have to be dealt with through combat, you aren't an all powerful hero righting all the wrongs of the world and making easy black and white (or in some cases nice guy/violent unhinged consequences be damned guy) decisions. You have moments where you can just enjoy the world or interacting with characters in normal or amusing events like getting drunk to lure out a vampire, going on a romantic dinner date with a sorceress, putting on plays, having a snowball fight, a hilarious drinking scene with other Witchers, navigating a maze of smelly cheese, painting soldier company emblems with a singing troll, etc. You get to spend time with almost every one of Geralts friends just engaging in amusing distractions rather than having a focus on combat or progressing the story. Moments like these not only makes the world feel like a more fleshed out alive place and allow us to get to know the characters that inhabit it, but it makes your character who is barely even supposed to have emotions feel so much more relatable and emotive than the terrible power fantasy, nearly invincible, one liner spouting heroes that video games (and often fantasy in general) usually give us. Character facial expressions and subtle movements do an excellent job of adding emotion to the excellent performances given by the voice actors, this is especially true for Geralt and Yennefer.
The most obvious thing that it manages to do so much better than other open world games, outside of characterization, is to have almost (chasing down trails in Witcher vision can get old) nothing but quality and interesting content in a game that will end up taking so much longer to finish than something like Fallout, Elder Scrolls, or Dragon Age which go out of their way to throw busywork and time wasting events at you so they can pretend to have a long and detailed game. Many quests can even branch based on your decisions or when you do them leading to very different scenes, events, objectives, and possibly allowing you to see the effect your choices had later on. Many larger games tend to have one interesting and different quest, Dragon Age 3 for example has you trying to prevent an assassination while mingling with party guests, The Witcher 3 has more interesting quests like that then most other games like it combined. Conversation options are handled much better than other games, in many scenes a certain choice can lead to a very different conversation happening, possibly even with additional choices, it could be humorous or more informative but it tends to be much more memorable than other games where it almost always leads back to the same dialogue path. Many of the game's scenes have excellent small touches that add a lot to the world and character such as guard stopping to look through a window as a bard performs, a doppler turning into Ciri and seeing Geralt's reaction of seeing her as an adult, Geralt eating an apple during an autopsy, etc.
In addition to the main quests, which there are many of, you can find a variety of monster contracts, treasure hunts that will get you unique recipes for witcher gear you can then craft, and smaller but often entertaining side missions. The treasure hunts aren't usually very exciting, often taking you to places you will already go for other quest and just requiring you to pick up an item, these can also be annoying as you can't track multiple objectives and might have to go back to an old area if you missed it, but some of them will take you to different areas or places where puzzles need to be solved or where extra game lore can be found. The map is also full of bandit camps, guarded treasures, monster lairs, underwater chests, prisoners to save, places of power, and areas that you kill enemies at so people and merchants can move back in. Unfortunately, many of these "treasure quests" that don't involve Witcher recipes end up being some weak or common equipment that you will likely have little use for. Completing the main story, all monster contracts, all side quests, Witcher gear treasure hunts, and traveling to many of the areas on the map (I didn't go to every monster lair or hidden/guarded treasure location) on the hard difficulty took about 90 hours, this is without adding in the time I will spend with the game's two expansions.
The game's economy is handled better than other open world games, money is more scarce and merchants won't pay that much for equipment you are selling. You will really want to haggle for your contracts because the cost to repair your gear will likely take most of the reward away in the early game and while you might start to amass a large amount of money you will likely spend it all once you are able to craft and upgrade your Witcher gear. As you continue to play the game money will be much less of a concern but just being something to worry about at all is a big step for the genre, even more so when the early game of the Witcher 3 might take over 30 hours of playtime.
Voice lines are frequently repeated by people, which is often fine, but it can be odd when you go back to a location to see that some things have changed and some characters have new dialogue but the unnamed NPCs are still complaining about a monster you killed for them last time you were there as if it has been alive a week later. Also hurting some of the world immersion is that you can just go around looting everything unless guards see you, which frequently leads to strange events like you walking into a poor or abandoned peasant's home and taking a lot of rare materials that they have no reason to have, things like bars of silver, crafting recipes, books, expensive alcohol, or stealing all of their food without them caring or saying anything. What makes this even stranger is that the owners don't care but random, extremely overpowered, guards will attack you if they see you stealing. If they catch you they will likely bring down all of your health in one hit but instead of killing you you will wake up with half of your money gone, nothing about this makes sense for the game and feels like an afterthought that it was left in.
Combat is typically enjoyable, with a lot of different ways to build your character when it comes to the use of your weapons, magic, potions, oils, and bombs. You can even fight while riding a horse or fight enemies who ride them, which is a feature that a lot of games don't have even though they also include horses. There are problems though, hit detection doesn't always work well, spells are easily abused (mostly your shield and the ability to confuse enemies and make them fight for you), there are problems with the AI, and detection range has a lot of issues. The controls aren't always as responsive as they should be, with Geralt not using his spells or rolling when he should, replacing the ability to jump with the ability to roll during combat can also be awkward when you are fighting in an area where you should be able to jump over or climb something. The game's poor detection range for enemies can cause problems where you move slightly out of an area in a normal fight while dodging only to move out of the enemies set area causing them to all run back to where they started and go back to what they were doing, it might also cause some enemies to attack you while others don't, sometimes Geralt won't go into his combat mode until enemies are almost already hitting him, and sometimes Geralt will just end his combat mode while in a fight. While you are in combat locking on doesn't always work well if you make use of the feature and the camera can make odd movements, I ended up just never using the lock on feature. The game is also fond of starting fights with you already getting hit or enemies in mid swing as soon as cutscenes end. A crossbow was added to the game, which is a very poor weapon, to make it useful you would need to fill many of your ability slots with crossbow buffs, and even then aiming it is very difficult both because it requires you to hold down the middle mouse button by default and because the reticle constantly jerks around making accurate shooting extremely difficult. The crossbow is really just to instant kill enemies that are underwater when you are swimming, to knock flying enemies out of the sky by tapping the button for a quick shot, or shooting enemies off your boat while piloting it, it is useful in those situations but it kind of makes it seem like an afterthought inclusion. Mounted combat can be fun but the games poor control, Geralts odd tendency to aim his sword on the wrong side of the horse, inability to use spells, and Geralt randomly swinging his sword while you are holding down the button to wait make it an impractical choice. CD Projekt struggles so much with control that even the menu you can open in combat to switch between spells and items is so unwieldy that it makes selecting what you want difficult, even though opening it slows down time to a crawl, I ended up just ignoring it and using the mouse wheel while rolling around to avoid attacks to change spells. Another issue with combat is that the open world nature of the game will frequently have you fighting enemies far stronger than you (possibly too strong to even attempt fighting without using the mind control spell) or you will be far stronger than your opponents and can kill them easily while mashing fast attack. Sometimes you will be fighting level 3-9 enemies then you will take a few more steps and run into a group of level 20-35s. It is definitely an improvement over the combat of the previous game though, where you needed a very late game upgrade to even allow your sword to hit multiple enemies in one swing and where you almost had to focus on only one area of abilities to upgrade. Outside of combat everything usually works well but accurate movement in cramped areas can be difficult with the way Geralt controls or with all the things you or your horse can become stuck on.
The crafting system works very well with you only needing to craft oils, which allow you to do more damage to certain types of enemies, and their upgrades once and gaining constant access to them. Bombs and potions have limited uses but are all refilled whenever you meditate as long as you have one of two different kinds of strong alcohol, allowing you to quickly and easily replenish your supply, allowing you to make full use of them and the skills that increase their effectiveness. Weapons, armor, and items can be broken down into crafting components, or they can be bought or found, which can then be used to craft better gear or to upgrade the gear you already have. It's a good system and one where you don't have to constantly be picking up every single thing you find and the game allows you to keep the same equipment for some time without a big need to upgrade, meaning you aren't always wasting time going around collecting everything like you were in a game like Dragon Age Inquisition. Picking up items is also easy as there is no time wasting animations, just go over it and hit two buttons to grab everything from the pile, it would have been nice if they let you just loot everything in the area rather than having to walk to each lootable body after a fight.
While the game does do a much better job with the genre, it is still plagued by common problems such as poor AI, control issues, tons of worthless equipment (literally everything that isn't Witcher gear schematics, alchemy items, or stuff to craft Witcher equipment) because your crafted items will always be better, and the annoyance of being attacked frequently by low level wolves, harpies, and sirens almost everywhere you go while exploring. Those problems aside The Witcher 3 has made excellent use of being an open world game, has some of the best quest design, has some of the strongest characters and writing I've seen, and some of the most realistic portrayals of people. A new game plus mode allows you to keep your levels and the equipment that you have and that you have crafted while also making the game more difficult, a new playthrough can also allow you to focus on a different method of combat.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrAXMDNS9ng
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/751873457546080256
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/755212662389125120
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/753422762975211521
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/753431584821223424
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/757850420135862274
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/757849163975450625
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/757846371437121536
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/757173973662650369
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/756689070185517057
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/755881498285256704
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/754790218486517761
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/754809791382368256
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/753777045528686592
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/754790706288349184
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/754139842930364416
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/754140175593189376
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/753303847548747776
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/752667070190399488
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/757874815738916864
The most obvious thing that it manages to do so much better than other open world games, outside of characterization, is to have almost (chasing down trails in Witcher vision can get old) nothing but quality and interesting content in a game that will end up taking so much longer to finish than something like Fallout, Elder Scrolls, or Dragon Age which go out of their way to throw busywork and time wasting events at you so they can pretend to have a long and detailed game. Many quests can even branch based on your decisions or when you do them leading to very different scenes, events, objectives, and possibly allowing you to see the effect your choices had later on. Many larger games tend to have one interesting and different quest, Dragon Age 3 for example has you trying to prevent an assassination while mingling with party guests, The Witcher 3 has more interesting quests like that then most other games like it combined. Conversation options are handled much better than other games, in many scenes a certain choice can lead to a very different conversation happening, possibly even with additional choices, it could be humorous or more informative but it tends to be much more memorable than other games where it almost always leads back to the same dialogue path. Many of the game's scenes have excellent small touches that add a lot to the world and character such as guard stopping to look through a window as a bard performs, a doppler turning into Ciri and seeing Geralt's reaction of seeing her as an adult, Geralt eating an apple during an autopsy, etc.
In addition to the main quests, which there are many of, you can find a variety of monster contracts, treasure hunts that will get you unique recipes for witcher gear you can then craft, and smaller but often entertaining side missions. The treasure hunts aren't usually very exciting, often taking you to places you will already go for other quest and just requiring you to pick up an item, these can also be annoying as you can't track multiple objectives and might have to go back to an old area if you missed it, but some of them will take you to different areas or places where puzzles need to be solved or where extra game lore can be found. The map is also full of bandit camps, guarded treasures, monster lairs, underwater chests, prisoners to save, places of power, and areas that you kill enemies at so people and merchants can move back in. Unfortunately, many of these "treasure quests" that don't involve Witcher recipes end up being some weak or common equipment that you will likely have little use for. Completing the main story, all monster contracts, all side quests, Witcher gear treasure hunts, and traveling to many of the areas on the map (I didn't go to every monster lair or hidden/guarded treasure location) on the hard difficulty took about 90 hours, this is without adding in the time I will spend with the game's two expansions.
The game's economy is handled better than other open world games, money is more scarce and merchants won't pay that much for equipment you are selling. You will really want to haggle for your contracts because the cost to repair your gear will likely take most of the reward away in the early game and while you might start to amass a large amount of money you will likely spend it all once you are able to craft and upgrade your Witcher gear. As you continue to play the game money will be much less of a concern but just being something to worry about at all is a big step for the genre, even more so when the early game of the Witcher 3 might take over 30 hours of playtime.
Voice lines are frequently repeated by people, which is often fine, but it can be odd when you go back to a location to see that some things have changed and some characters have new dialogue but the unnamed NPCs are still complaining about a monster you killed for them last time you were there as if it has been alive a week later. Also hurting some of the world immersion is that you can just go around looting everything unless guards see you, which frequently leads to strange events like you walking into a poor or abandoned peasant's home and taking a lot of rare materials that they have no reason to have, things like bars of silver, crafting recipes, books, expensive alcohol, or stealing all of their food without them caring or saying anything. What makes this even stranger is that the owners don't care but random, extremely overpowered, guards will attack you if they see you stealing. If they catch you they will likely bring down all of your health in one hit but instead of killing you you will wake up with half of your money gone, nothing about this makes sense for the game and feels like an afterthought that it was left in.
Combat is typically enjoyable, with a lot of different ways to build your character when it comes to the use of your weapons, magic, potions, oils, and bombs. You can even fight while riding a horse or fight enemies who ride them, which is a feature that a lot of games don't have even though they also include horses. There are problems though, hit detection doesn't always work well, spells are easily abused (mostly your shield and the ability to confuse enemies and make them fight for you), there are problems with the AI, and detection range has a lot of issues. The controls aren't always as responsive as they should be, with Geralt not using his spells or rolling when he should, replacing the ability to jump with the ability to roll during combat can also be awkward when you are fighting in an area where you should be able to jump over or climb something. The game's poor detection range for enemies can cause problems where you move slightly out of an area in a normal fight while dodging only to move out of the enemies set area causing them to all run back to where they started and go back to what they were doing, it might also cause some enemies to attack you while others don't, sometimes Geralt won't go into his combat mode until enemies are almost already hitting him, and sometimes Geralt will just end his combat mode while in a fight. While you are in combat locking on doesn't always work well if you make use of the feature and the camera can make odd movements, I ended up just never using the lock on feature. The game is also fond of starting fights with you already getting hit or enemies in mid swing as soon as cutscenes end. A crossbow was added to the game, which is a very poor weapon, to make it useful you would need to fill many of your ability slots with crossbow buffs, and even then aiming it is very difficult both because it requires you to hold down the middle mouse button by default and because the reticle constantly jerks around making accurate shooting extremely difficult. The crossbow is really just to instant kill enemies that are underwater when you are swimming, to knock flying enemies out of the sky by tapping the button for a quick shot, or shooting enemies off your boat while piloting it, it is useful in those situations but it kind of makes it seem like an afterthought inclusion. Mounted combat can be fun but the games poor control, Geralts odd tendency to aim his sword on the wrong side of the horse, inability to use spells, and Geralt randomly swinging his sword while you are holding down the button to wait make it an impractical choice. CD Projekt struggles so much with control that even the menu you can open in combat to switch between spells and items is so unwieldy that it makes selecting what you want difficult, even though opening it slows down time to a crawl, I ended up just ignoring it and using the mouse wheel while rolling around to avoid attacks to change spells. Another issue with combat is that the open world nature of the game will frequently have you fighting enemies far stronger than you (possibly too strong to even attempt fighting without using the mind control spell) or you will be far stronger than your opponents and can kill them easily while mashing fast attack. Sometimes you will be fighting level 3-9 enemies then you will take a few more steps and run into a group of level 20-35s. It is definitely an improvement over the combat of the previous game though, where you needed a very late game upgrade to even allow your sword to hit multiple enemies in one swing and where you almost had to focus on only one area of abilities to upgrade. Outside of combat everything usually works well but accurate movement in cramped areas can be difficult with the way Geralt controls or with all the things you or your horse can become stuck on.
The crafting system works very well with you only needing to craft oils, which allow you to do more damage to certain types of enemies, and their upgrades once and gaining constant access to them. Bombs and potions have limited uses but are all refilled whenever you meditate as long as you have one of two different kinds of strong alcohol, allowing you to quickly and easily replenish your supply, allowing you to make full use of them and the skills that increase their effectiveness. Weapons, armor, and items can be broken down into crafting components, or they can be bought or found, which can then be used to craft better gear or to upgrade the gear you already have. It's a good system and one where you don't have to constantly be picking up every single thing you find and the game allows you to keep the same equipment for some time without a big need to upgrade, meaning you aren't always wasting time going around collecting everything like you were in a game like Dragon Age Inquisition. Picking up items is also easy as there is no time wasting animations, just go over it and hit two buttons to grab everything from the pile, it would have been nice if they let you just loot everything in the area rather than having to walk to each lootable body after a fight.
While the game does do a much better job with the genre, it is still plagued by common problems such as poor AI, control issues, tons of worthless equipment (literally everything that isn't Witcher gear schematics, alchemy items, or stuff to craft Witcher equipment) because your crafted items will always be better, and the annoyance of being attacked frequently by low level wolves, harpies, and sirens almost everywhere you go while exploring. Those problems aside The Witcher 3 has made excellent use of being an open world game, has some of the best quest design, has some of the strongest characters and writing I've seen, and some of the most realistic portrayals of people. A new game plus mode allows you to keep your levels and the equipment that you have and that you have crafted while also making the game more difficult, a new playthrough can also allow you to focus on a different method of combat.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrAXMDNS9ng
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/751873457546080256
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/755212662389125120
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/753422762975211521
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/753431584821223424
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/757850420135862274
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/757849163975450625
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/757846371437121536
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/757173973662650369
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/756689070185517057
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/755881498285256704
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/754790218486517761
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/754809791382368256
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/753777045528686592
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/754790706288349184
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/754139842930364416
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/754140175593189376
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/753303847548747776
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/752667070190399488
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/757874815738916864
Man this game is one that could have been something so special if it got a bit more time in the oven to bake. Presentation wise they have rebuilt this game up from the ground up with great cut scene performances and a beautiful art direction that really makes it feel like the 1930's that it should be. If you enjoy and type of Mafia based fiction you're going to enjoy the story, i'd say that in general the main three characters voice actors carry the performance(Namely Tommy and Paulie). I actually very much enjoyed the linear nature of the game where you have a mode to go freestyle in if you want but can otherwise knock through plot at your own pace.
The biggest issue I have with the game is usually around the control schemes when on foot. Shooting and movement feel clunky and imprecise. I avoided using half the available weapons in the game because they simply were not fun to utilize.
Which makes it all the more odd that driving for the most part felt great. Given these are older cars I gave them some leeway with the tightness of the handling on most of them but I had the most fun in this case when I was behind the wheel of a car.
Soundtrack was pleasant but didn't offer anything that will likely stick with me past this weekend of play.
Playthough via golden path was around 10-12 hours.
Only other piece of note is the game runs at 30FPS.
The biggest issue I have with the game is usually around the control schemes when on foot. Shooting and movement feel clunky and imprecise. I avoided using half the available weapons in the game because they simply were not fun to utilize.
Which makes it all the more odd that driving for the most part felt great. Given these are older cars I gave them some leeway with the tightness of the handling on most of them but I had the most fun in this case when I was behind the wheel of a car.
Soundtrack was pleasant but didn't offer anything that will likely stick with me past this weekend of play.
Playthough via golden path was around 10-12 hours.
Only other piece of note is the game runs at 30FPS.
I get the feeling this franchise is cursed because this felt off the entire way through, super high fidelity rendering, but characters and certain things look like they've been chiseled by sand paper. Cars feel fine? mission structure mostly the same shoot the bad guys but with minor hints of glory. The story is the meat though and it doesn't exactly amaze but I don't know of any Mafia related games that come close, though if we're talking gangs of course this is against things like GTA, which is enough said as a comparison.
Kingdom Hearts II
2005
the quality of these games seems to correlate with how often goofy is a turtle
Eddy Raja is the love of my life
Saints Row
2022
this game feels like they really wanted to make a game about "be gay do crimes" but management kept meddling with it to where its really bad and not funny but atleast the customization is fun
Norco
2022
This review contains spoilers
A great premise and stellar art design act as solid foundation to prop up an absolutely rickety mess of narrative and gameplay execution.
In Norco I saw something I rarely see in games: an exploration of places like home. Hailing from one of the poorest states in the American South (although Oklahoma's inclusion on that list is sometimes contentious), I've seen firsthand how economic evolution has slowly eroded the communities, homes, and spirits that once defined the great American Heartland.
Hell, as someone from these parts who's got an interest in art...these types of narratives have always fascinated me: the Southern Gothic of O'Connor or Faulkner, the Modernist treatments by Steinbeck and Ellison, etc. These stories take symbols familiar to us--family, faith, perseverance, community, fear, redemption, isolation, etc. and allow us to see alien groups (poor southern blacks, "Okies," American Indians, etc.) through understandable and sympathetic eyes. It allows us to see beyond the thick accents and rudimentary lifestyles and recognize the real human lives, struggles, and emotions behind it all.
So here we have Norco, which first appeared to me via a Tribeca Games Spotlight in 2021 next to other greats like 12 Minutes. The premise was perfect: Norco was one of those places many couldn't believe was real--one of those 'on the nose' symbols that you'd probably think came out of a bad book. But, like with much of the industrial south (as well as the northern Rust Belt), Norco is a sad fact of reality--one begging for artistic exploration. That might sound harsh, a sort of 'culture vulture' thing, but I mean it without a shred of irony. Just as Steinbeck had used the amalgam plight of real Okies escaping to California for The Grapes of Wrath, I think plenty of towns like Norco deserve to have stories told that push awareness to the greater public.
What's in an Opening?
But alas, within literal seconds of pressing start, Norco has already blown it. It's opening montage is perhaps the worst opening I have ever seen to a game--at least in terms of establishing mood, tone, and setting.
First, the game forces players to make narrative choices involving characters we have no understanding of. I don't know or care how well Kay slept based on their proximity to oil fields--I don't even know who the hell Kay is yet. I understand Kay is supposed to be a proxy for me, but I've just goddamn showed up here. I haven't absorbed the mood or tone of the game. I've got no attachment to anything yet and no headspace with which I can make a decision I give two shits about. In fact, I would say that even asking these of the player so quickly serves as a lazy cheat for the writers to avoid writing an actual mood setting hook. They instead rely on a basic player choice to invest you when you've got no reason or incentive to actually make choices yet.
Second, the game's godawful prose attempts to lure you in with some Mccarthy-esque delivery but bats your attention away with the same overwritten, over-precious exposition and framing that plague all beginner 'art' writers. Lines like
The war was a meme that set Albuquerque on fire.
Should make anyone roll their eyes (or laugh their ass off) as hard as the newest YA books should. Especially when literally moments later you're being forced to answer if you tried to fucking pray, sleep, or "forget" while hiding in a freightliner escaping the 'foot soldiers of a pop up junta.'
Remember: we're 35 seconds into this game.
To Point? Or Click?
Keeping in line with the laughably sophomoric opening, Norco decides to take so much influence from the most obvious sources that it destroys what little impact the game could have had left. Its point and click nature means that LucasArts (primarily Ron Gilbert's trademark blend of off-kilter black comedy) is front and center the entire journey. Combine this with Norco's bleak premise and you have a cocktail mix as good as Toothpaste and OJ.
Moments that are meant to highlight the impoverished lifestyles of NPCs are always undercut by the stupidest Glibertian shit. People starving, living life under the freeway? How about a funny puppet show that also happens there? Abandoned malls and burnt out youth with nowhere to go? How about a teenage cult that uses a fucking iPhone app to convert teens so they enter a dead mall and build a fucking rocket ship? So much stupid shit happens in this game that I can say a statement like
"Sorry your mom died of cancer, if only she didn't need QuackCoin and didn't go see the SuperDuck then it would have all been okay!"
Without lying about a single goddamn thing that happens in Norco.
The game's willingness to undercut and serious plot beats with unrelatable goofy content indicates a lack of clear and consistent narrative direction. If it's trying to be surreal, it's not doing much beyond some cheap sight gags. If it's trying to be serious, then the whole damn thing's a clown show.
This isn't to say that narratives need to have one consistent tone to be effective--look at my favorite game for Christ sake. But what a great narrative needs is effective use of tone. If you're going to be wacky, do something interesting with it. If you're just going to make some basic and derivative Ron Gilbert gags, then I could have just spent my time playing Monkey Island. The greatest of games, will use moments of comedy and levity to disarm the player and endear them to the characters of the world in realistic ways. Think your Disco Elysium or Mother 2 types of games. Norco, by contrast, fails to do either. Instead I'm usually left scratching my head wondering just how funny do they think the 10 week old hot dog gag is. It understands Southern Gothic as much as any fourteen year old who just read A Good Man Is Hard To Find for the first time does.
Cyberpunk Hell
On the other end of that spectrum is the rest of Norco's tired influences, the cyberpunk dystopias of Blade Runner and Final Fantasy VII's Midgar. At this point, discussion of Blade Runner is itself so banal that I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader. But several visual motifs are directly ripped from the film, so it shouldn't take you long to see the comparisons line up. Norco, in its desperate attempts to strip everything from the kitchen cabinets, even shoves some half-baked Replicant theming into the game during its final moments.
As for Midgar...well I'm starting to feel the same as I do about Blade Runner. It seems creatives and fans point at Midgar as a cheap shorthand for dystopian influence far too often these days. Not to say that Midgar is a shoddily crafted locale--the place is great! But as with most great works, the devil is really in the details as to why its great. The PS1 original stunned the world with some of the best atmosphere, direction, and writing gaming had seen up to that point. Moreover, Midgar left players wanting more, as the short time spent there left a lot to the imagination. But with Norco, as with Final Fantasy VII: Remake, the finer details are all sacrificed in the name of some basic stylization and theming.
Which is a shame, Norco's art direction could have set the game up for serious success in the hands of the right writer/director. When the game isn't busy ripping motifs from Blade Runner it concocts some genuinely great atmospheres and visuals that do emphasize the setting well. It's just unfortunate that the settings also have to involve puppet shows and mall cults. It's unfortunately just another reminder that Norco was creatively reaching towards the bottom of the ideas barrel when building its world and narrative.
Is There Life In Norco?
Which brings me back to Norco's most important failing: relatability and authenticity. The world and characters of Norco are as foreign to me as those in Maniac Mansion or Beneath a Steel Sky. They're just too damn quirky and flat for their own good. Any time I genuinely try to get wrapped up in what's happening to Kay or her mom I have to deal with characters who end every sentence with bruh or have names like ditch man. I have to deal with characters who are hunting after crypto coins or are all named fucking Garrett for comedy purposes. I have to attend parties where characters dress like they're in Eyes Wide Shut or scale rocket ships designed like Byzantine fortresses because...that would be cool.
The real tragedy is the fact that any real point that could be made about Norco--you know the real city is left totally dead in the water. Any sort of authenticity to the real people of Louisiana or the American South as a whole gets washed away under a mountain of the brain-dead metaphors, bad ideas, and unfunny jokes that plague nearly all quirky indie games. It's doubly sad considering that the guy who made the game is himself from Norco. It's a reminder that simply being from a place doesn't mean you're always the best equipped to tell its story. I don't feel like I've learned fuck all about Louisiana, and I live just a couple of hours away from Norco.
I spent more time chasing cryptocurrency and cults than experiencing the true effects of life in the town. I spent more time driving a motorcycle with my (admittedly sick) robot companion than I did getting to really understand the people who lived there. I spent more time figuring out that I'm the fucking descendant of Christ himself than letting anything actually meaningful about Norco soak in. Virtually every environment, puzzle, and interaction was in service of either a dumb gag or a trite narrative twist that served no point beyond elevating a tired narrative that had nowhere to go.
And so, Norco leaves Norco to rot.
More than anything else, Norco feels like it uses the aesthetics of poverty for cheap indie game gravitas. It feels like the writers and fans are more into Canadian Post-Rock bands with run-on sentence names (that are actually cool references to 50s Japanese films you don't know) than they are into Dixieland or Swamp Rock. It feels like the last place on earth they'd actually want to be is Norco, LA. And in this sense, I truly hate this game. In trying to create something that gave players a taste of the modern southern condition, Norco utterly failed. Instead it gave them an amalgam of hyper-derivative influences and half-baked 'art' literature with cheap Christ symbology.
What really digs me is how many players will feel 'enlightened' after this when they might as well have been playing Red Alert 3 for their cold war history. I guess I'll still be looking for the game that Norco was supposed to be.
In Norco I saw something I rarely see in games: an exploration of places like home. Hailing from one of the poorest states in the American South (although Oklahoma's inclusion on that list is sometimes contentious), I've seen firsthand how economic evolution has slowly eroded the communities, homes, and spirits that once defined the great American Heartland.
Hell, as someone from these parts who's got an interest in art...these types of narratives have always fascinated me: the Southern Gothic of O'Connor or Faulkner, the Modernist treatments by Steinbeck and Ellison, etc. These stories take symbols familiar to us--family, faith, perseverance, community, fear, redemption, isolation, etc. and allow us to see alien groups (poor southern blacks, "Okies," American Indians, etc.) through understandable and sympathetic eyes. It allows us to see beyond the thick accents and rudimentary lifestyles and recognize the real human lives, struggles, and emotions behind it all.
So here we have Norco, which first appeared to me via a Tribeca Games Spotlight in 2021 next to other greats like 12 Minutes. The premise was perfect: Norco was one of those places many couldn't believe was real--one of those 'on the nose' symbols that you'd probably think came out of a bad book. But, like with much of the industrial south (as well as the northern Rust Belt), Norco is a sad fact of reality--one begging for artistic exploration. That might sound harsh, a sort of 'culture vulture' thing, but I mean it without a shred of irony. Just as Steinbeck had used the amalgam plight of real Okies escaping to California for The Grapes of Wrath, I think plenty of towns like Norco deserve to have stories told that push awareness to the greater public.
What's in an Opening?
But alas, within literal seconds of pressing start, Norco has already blown it. It's opening montage is perhaps the worst opening I have ever seen to a game--at least in terms of establishing mood, tone, and setting.
First, the game forces players to make narrative choices involving characters we have no understanding of. I don't know or care how well Kay slept based on their proximity to oil fields--I don't even know who the hell Kay is yet. I understand Kay is supposed to be a proxy for me, but I've just goddamn showed up here. I haven't absorbed the mood or tone of the game. I've got no attachment to anything yet and no headspace with which I can make a decision I give two shits about. In fact, I would say that even asking these of the player so quickly serves as a lazy cheat for the writers to avoid writing an actual mood setting hook. They instead rely on a basic player choice to invest you when you've got no reason or incentive to actually make choices yet.
Second, the game's godawful prose attempts to lure you in with some Mccarthy-esque delivery but bats your attention away with the same overwritten, over-precious exposition and framing that plague all beginner 'art' writers. Lines like
The war was a meme that set Albuquerque on fire.
Should make anyone roll their eyes (or laugh their ass off) as hard as the newest YA books should. Especially when literally moments later you're being forced to answer if you tried to fucking pray, sleep, or "forget" while hiding in a freightliner escaping the 'foot soldiers of a pop up junta.'
Remember: we're 35 seconds into this game.
To Point? Or Click?
Keeping in line with the laughably sophomoric opening, Norco decides to take so much influence from the most obvious sources that it destroys what little impact the game could have had left. Its point and click nature means that LucasArts (primarily Ron Gilbert's trademark blend of off-kilter black comedy) is front and center the entire journey. Combine this with Norco's bleak premise and you have a cocktail mix as good as Toothpaste and OJ.
Moments that are meant to highlight the impoverished lifestyles of NPCs are always undercut by the stupidest Glibertian shit. People starving, living life under the freeway? How about a funny puppet show that also happens there? Abandoned malls and burnt out youth with nowhere to go? How about a teenage cult that uses a fucking iPhone app to convert teens so they enter a dead mall and build a fucking rocket ship? So much stupid shit happens in this game that I can say a statement like
"Sorry your mom died of cancer, if only she didn't need QuackCoin and didn't go see the SuperDuck then it would have all been okay!"
Without lying about a single goddamn thing that happens in Norco.
The game's willingness to undercut and serious plot beats with unrelatable goofy content indicates a lack of clear and consistent narrative direction. If it's trying to be surreal, it's not doing much beyond some cheap sight gags. If it's trying to be serious, then the whole damn thing's a clown show.
This isn't to say that narratives need to have one consistent tone to be effective--look at my favorite game for Christ sake. But what a great narrative needs is effective use of tone. If you're going to be wacky, do something interesting with it. If you're just going to make some basic and derivative Ron Gilbert gags, then I could have just spent my time playing Monkey Island. The greatest of games, will use moments of comedy and levity to disarm the player and endear them to the characters of the world in realistic ways. Think your Disco Elysium or Mother 2 types of games. Norco, by contrast, fails to do either. Instead I'm usually left scratching my head wondering just how funny do they think the 10 week old hot dog gag is. It understands Southern Gothic as much as any fourteen year old who just read A Good Man Is Hard To Find for the first time does.
Cyberpunk Hell
On the other end of that spectrum is the rest of Norco's tired influences, the cyberpunk dystopias of Blade Runner and Final Fantasy VII's Midgar. At this point, discussion of Blade Runner is itself so banal that I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader. But several visual motifs are directly ripped from the film, so it shouldn't take you long to see the comparisons line up. Norco, in its desperate attempts to strip everything from the kitchen cabinets, even shoves some half-baked Replicant theming into the game during its final moments.
As for Midgar...well I'm starting to feel the same as I do about Blade Runner. It seems creatives and fans point at Midgar as a cheap shorthand for dystopian influence far too often these days. Not to say that Midgar is a shoddily crafted locale--the place is great! But as with most great works, the devil is really in the details as to why its great. The PS1 original stunned the world with some of the best atmosphere, direction, and writing gaming had seen up to that point. Moreover, Midgar left players wanting more, as the short time spent there left a lot to the imagination. But with Norco, as with Final Fantasy VII: Remake, the finer details are all sacrificed in the name of some basic stylization and theming.
Which is a shame, Norco's art direction could have set the game up for serious success in the hands of the right writer/director. When the game isn't busy ripping motifs from Blade Runner it concocts some genuinely great atmospheres and visuals that do emphasize the setting well. It's just unfortunate that the settings also have to involve puppet shows and mall cults. It's unfortunately just another reminder that Norco was creatively reaching towards the bottom of the ideas barrel when building its world and narrative.
Is There Life In Norco?
Which brings me back to Norco's most important failing: relatability and authenticity. The world and characters of Norco are as foreign to me as those in Maniac Mansion or Beneath a Steel Sky. They're just too damn quirky and flat for their own good. Any time I genuinely try to get wrapped up in what's happening to Kay or her mom I have to deal with characters who end every sentence with bruh or have names like ditch man. I have to deal with characters who are hunting after crypto coins or are all named fucking Garrett for comedy purposes. I have to attend parties where characters dress like they're in Eyes Wide Shut or scale rocket ships designed like Byzantine fortresses because...that would be cool.
The real tragedy is the fact that any real point that could be made about Norco--you know the real city is left totally dead in the water. Any sort of authenticity to the real people of Louisiana or the American South as a whole gets washed away under a mountain of the brain-dead metaphors, bad ideas, and unfunny jokes that plague nearly all quirky indie games. It's doubly sad considering that the guy who made the game is himself from Norco. It's a reminder that simply being from a place doesn't mean you're always the best equipped to tell its story. I don't feel like I've learned fuck all about Louisiana, and I live just a couple of hours away from Norco.
I spent more time chasing cryptocurrency and cults than experiencing the true effects of life in the town. I spent more time driving a motorcycle with my (admittedly sick) robot companion than I did getting to really understand the people who lived there. I spent more time figuring out that I'm the fucking descendant of Christ himself than letting anything actually meaningful about Norco soak in. Virtually every environment, puzzle, and interaction was in service of either a dumb gag or a trite narrative twist that served no point beyond elevating a tired narrative that had nowhere to go.
And so, Norco leaves Norco to rot.
More than anything else, Norco feels like it uses the aesthetics of poverty for cheap indie game gravitas. It feels like the writers and fans are more into Canadian Post-Rock bands with run-on sentence names (that are actually cool references to 50s Japanese films you don't know) than they are into Dixieland or Swamp Rock. It feels like the last place on earth they'd actually want to be is Norco, LA. And in this sense, I truly hate this game. In trying to create something that gave players a taste of the modern southern condition, Norco utterly failed. Instead it gave them an amalgam of hyper-derivative influences and half-baked 'art' literature with cheap Christ symbology.
What really digs me is how many players will feel 'enlightened' after this when they might as well have been playing Red Alert 3 for their cold war history. I guess I'll still be looking for the game that Norco was supposed to be.
Norco
2022
The comparisons between Kentucky Route 0 and this are inevitable, but I think there's such an interesting, subtle difference that I think is really profound. KR0 often lets you interpret the relationships and histories of characters however you wish. And that's part of how it excels. That sort of ambiguity and tug of how these relationships play out is really something special. Its one of the many things that make KR0 what it is. You can't control everything, but all those small ways you can shape how evens unfolded for all these desperate people is one of its high points.
But there's a specific scene in Norco that instantly made an impression on me as different. The history of your character, Kay, is partly formed by your choices. But she always chose to run away from home, wander the collapsing United States, fight in various wars. When Kay abandons her brother Blake, you have the choice of "I didn't care how he felt" or "He'd get over it."
I chose the latter. The text responded. "He didn't." You don't get to choose how people feel about you.
I'm gonna try and stop comparing Norco to other things now, its really not fair to a truly wonderful game. Norco's adventure has you leap between the undecipherable Kay visiting her mother's grave and the final days of said mother. You encounter shady corporate espionage, malicious gamer cults, a power-crazy AI that's gone off the rails, and other strange entities vying for control. But what the game really excels at communicating is this idea that these seemingly powerful factions really have no power at all. Its all collapsing bit by bit, they're all just in denial of how powerless they really are. The game's more interested in the personal lives of these people and how they handle being caught up in the madness of all these conspiracies. The game encourages you to chase after various optional side content and examine the internal lives of all these strangers. In fact, one of the better endings is entirely missable if you aren't willing to just explore around.
One of the optional scenes you can acquire is a vision of what occurs after the game's end. Assuming your survival, where will the heroes end up? The answer isn't easy. They return to their old ways, fall back into melancholy. The stress of the current predicament is just one moment in time, not a life-changing fiasco. You can't change how people feel about you. You can't change where your path ends up. But you can try and understand people along the way. Make connections, even if they falter. Do good in little pieces
This game is just delightful. If you're a fan of Vibes and point and click, its worth full price.
But there's a specific scene in Norco that instantly made an impression on me as different. The history of your character, Kay, is partly formed by your choices. But she always chose to run away from home, wander the collapsing United States, fight in various wars. When Kay abandons her brother Blake, you have the choice of "I didn't care how he felt" or "He'd get over it."
I chose the latter. The text responded. "He didn't." You don't get to choose how people feel about you.
I'm gonna try and stop comparing Norco to other things now, its really not fair to a truly wonderful game. Norco's adventure has you leap between the undecipherable Kay visiting her mother's grave and the final days of said mother. You encounter shady corporate espionage, malicious gamer cults, a power-crazy AI that's gone off the rails, and other strange entities vying for control. But what the game really excels at communicating is this idea that these seemingly powerful factions really have no power at all. Its all collapsing bit by bit, they're all just in denial of how powerless they really are. The game's more interested in the personal lives of these people and how they handle being caught up in the madness of all these conspiracies. The game encourages you to chase after various optional side content and examine the internal lives of all these strangers. In fact, one of the better endings is entirely missable if you aren't willing to just explore around.
One of the optional scenes you can acquire is a vision of what occurs after the game's end. Assuming your survival, where will the heroes end up? The answer isn't easy. They return to their old ways, fall back into melancholy. The stress of the current predicament is just one moment in time, not a life-changing fiasco. You can't change how people feel about you. You can't change where your path ends up. But you can try and understand people along the way. Make connections, even if they falter. Do good in little pieces
This game is just delightful. If you're a fan of Vibes and point and click, its worth full price.
Norco
2022
It is a shame that a game like this, which had moments of legitimately good writing and occasional glimpses of interesting ideas, was published in an essentially half-finished state. When the credits roll and you've seen all the answers, you realize that the totality of this game is less than the sum of its parts, and ultimately anything of meaning it tried to say was drowned in self-indulgence. In full seriousness, the game is better if you drop it after Act 2. So do that, and go play one of the many far better games which stylistically influenced this one.
Norco
2022
Once I got to the end of Norco I really didn't feel anything, prior to that the game had definitely got a mixture of emotions out of me but this game, one with fantastic world building, great dialogue and beautiful pixel art - this game, one I thought I would love I just felt... nothing really.
Like a cliché break-up maybe it's me and not you (Norco) but the game didn't click how I expected it to and maybe it just wasn't our time.
I sit here trying to figure why I didn't care for Norco as much as others, as much as I expected to myself.
I look to see if different endings would make me care more, they don't.
Maybe it's because some of it's comedy didn't hit? But that's not it, it made me laugh more than once and game writing is not always the best for that.
The only negatives I can really say and there are three that come to mind are all either minor or arguably not true.
Games are subjective after all I guess?
The first is the "combat" there's a few bits of combat in the game and they're basically QTE's with a JRPG-like display and really they were easy, pointless and added nothing.
I'd have much preferred the "combat" taken place in the writing, especially when we've seen how effective that can be with the likes of Disco Elysium.
The other two negative points go hand-in-hand.
The world building is good, there's a lot of detail but I felt a lot of it was front loaded or at least I struggled to make a picture of this world as easily as I should have because I was battered with it from the start before I'd even got to move a cursor.
This ties into Blake, the brother. He felt like a completely blank slate and the dialogue choices at the start which where there to help paint a picture didn't feel at all like interesting or powerful decisions.
For me, the entire game long quest to search him felt off, he felt more like a McGuffin than a character.
Considering this game is "free" and not particularly long, I may reappraise it in the future. Right now I can still recommend it but who knows, maybe my hollow feeling will actually temper expectations of anyone playing it after and they will enjoy it more.
Possibly the world's stupidest review because honestly, I think it does everything right but also it definitely doesn't but I can't figure out what.
It's me Norco.
Like a cliché break-up maybe it's me and not you (Norco) but the game didn't click how I expected it to and maybe it just wasn't our time.
I sit here trying to figure why I didn't care for Norco as much as others, as much as I expected to myself.
I look to see if different endings would make me care more, they don't.
Maybe it's because some of it's comedy didn't hit? But that's not it, it made me laugh more than once and game writing is not always the best for that.
The only negatives I can really say and there are three that come to mind are all either minor or arguably not true.
Games are subjective after all I guess?
The first is the "combat" there's a few bits of combat in the game and they're basically QTE's with a JRPG-like display and really they were easy, pointless and added nothing.
I'd have much preferred the "combat" taken place in the writing, especially when we've seen how effective that can be with the likes of Disco Elysium.
The other two negative points go hand-in-hand.
The world building is good, there's a lot of detail but I felt a lot of it was front loaded or at least I struggled to make a picture of this world as easily as I should have because I was battered with it from the start before I'd even got to move a cursor.
This ties into Blake, the brother. He felt like a completely blank slate and the dialogue choices at the start which where there to help paint a picture didn't feel at all like interesting or powerful decisions.
For me, the entire game long quest to search him felt off, he felt more like a McGuffin than a character.
Considering this game is "free" and not particularly long, I may reappraise it in the future. Right now I can still recommend it but who knows, maybe my hollow feeling will actually temper expectations of anyone playing it after and they will enjoy it more.
Possibly the world's stupidest review because honestly, I think it does everything right but also it definitely doesn't but I can't figure out what.
It's me Norco.
Coffee Talk
2020
" What if I made a fantasy world where all fantasy races lived in peace "
Me: 🙂🙂🙂
" And then you had a comfy coffee shop with a diverse cast of costumers "
Me: 😄😄😄
" But the world was filled with prejudice and xenophobia "
Me: 😓😓😓
" And they used memes to describe structural racism "
Me: 😞😞😞
" And orcs are like... black people! "
Me: 😔😔😔
Me: 🙂🙂🙂
" And then you had a comfy coffee shop with a diverse cast of costumers "
Me: 😄😄😄
" But the world was filled with prejudice and xenophobia "
Me: 😓😓😓
" And they used memes to describe structural racism "
Me: 😞😞😞
" And orcs are like... black people! "
Me: 😔😔😔
This could never happen in Alberta.