Starts kinda rough but then it hooked me! I think they tried to make a game very approachable and the tutorial is a big part of that— but for me it became too handholdy and I enjoyed the game way more once I was juggling multiple tasks, could explore freely and had all of my tools. Still, that happens fairly quickly so it’s not that big of a deal.

Played the game in Spanish and it was very refreshing to read the dialogue written in a very authentic voice and all the references to the geographic zone it’s inspired by.

I don't recommend playing it unless you check out the demo and you’re extremely into it — because sadly the game gets worse the further you get.

The positives are a very good art direction, and some stunning environmental work. The game serves as a great showcase of what the studio can build in Unreal, and it almost seems intentional that by building different games inside of Gamedec, Anshar is basically proving their versatility and attention to detail in creating unique levels. It's a great "hire us" pitch, I'll admit.

The negatives are the narrative, the dialogue and some very basic quest design. The lore is so unnecessarily complicated for a game that has very little new to say. The main ideas of each level are explained in one line in a trailer they made 3 years ago. Everything else is filler, and it increases in quantity and stupidity the further you're in the game. By the end I couldn't care less about the main plot and the protagonist. There's also a lack of good secondary characters, so it's very hard to stay invested.

Gamedec is disappointing because it had a good premise and the art and production chops to pull it off. A narrative game lives and dies by its writing, though, and here it went from basic but serviceable to bad and boring.

Obviously a great achievement for how it brought the tactics genre to a new generation, but playing it in 2022 wasn’t as enjoyable or fun as I expected.

I loved the tension and atmosphere of most missions inside a city. Slowly dissipating the fog of war of the suburbs knowing that discovering a new group of aliens at the end of your turn could mess you up extremely bad is one of the best things the game offers. I also enjoyed how different the classes felt and getting attached to my top officers and bringing them all the way to the last mission.

What I didn’t enjoy is mostly the pacing, the repetitiveness of missions and a very poor job of stoytelling and progression. There are bullshit difficulty spikes, plenty of bugs that will make you lose progress and overall a lack of polish that always prevents you from fully trusting the game.

Overall I enjoyed my time with it but around the 20 hour mark I was ready for it to end. It has some great ideas that I haven’t seen anywhere else but I expected more from one of the classics of the genre.

First, the good stuff. The game is gorgeous, with beautifully painted backgrounds and small lighting flourishes that really elevate the presentation. The voice acting is also strong, and paired up with the amount of text and the chaotic but innovative dialogue system really makes the characters come to life.

Having said all of that, I never clicked with it. The story gets sidetracked constantly by all the "noise" - dialogue that doesn't matter, clever visual tricks, map backtracking, long loading screens. I couldn't care for any of it. When the ending came and the game showed me the impact of my decisions, they felt unearned and pointless, like someone had been playing for the previous 4 hours.

It’s clearly a very streamlined experience and the foundation for a larger game/platform. The RPG systems are there but very few of them shine through. The exploration is limited and almost compulsory, but it still feels rewarding. The story, atmosphere and world building are top notch, especially during the "murder mystery" part of the game. The ending left me on a sour note because of the annoying enemy waves and a couple of story twists that felt unnecessary. Overall, I really enjoyed it playing it, though, and I look forward to the sequel, which is considered the best in the trilogy.

Really liked it, and it's tremendous value (I did every side quest I could until I had to choose one path and it was around 30 hours). To be completely honest, I was somehow even less invested in the story than in the main campaign but it didn't matter, the combat and gameplay loop was so much fun. I appreciate that they tried to do something new, with some bigger areas to explore and overall the feeling that you're in a world instead of the whole world revolving around you. The factions don't have particularly memorable writing but doing little jobs for them fits better with the strengths of Solasta. Shame they couldn't land the ending. It felt janky and way too abrupt. Even months after its release, it doesn't work properly and you might get the wrong variation for some unknown reason.