isaiaheverin
BACKER
2023
This is either the worst good game I've ever played or the most creative bad game I've ever played. If it weren't for the immensely cool art and some really bold swings that the designers made in the dungeons, puzzles, and class designs, I would rate this a 1/5 on the balancing of the gameplay experience alone. I can't invest the time into fully laying out all of my thoughts on it because most of them would be negative and honestly the list of nitpicky, lack-of-polish issues I have is beyond my ability to recollect without scrubbing through my recordings of playing through the whole thing.
Having played a full Veteran Campaign with 2-3 player co-op, and having jumped around some friends' campaigns, I got a good sense of most of the bosses, different quests, and general game balance. A handful of bosses are good, but a lot of bosses are just straight up the rudest, least interactive, and most annoying bosses I've ever seen in a video game. Also, a lot of the game is full of bugs -- the worst I encountered was that my entire town of NPCs had their dialog trees reset in the last act of the game! And this bug is common! I work on video games, I know how save states work, and I deeply fear the codebase that allows that to even happen. However, the end of the game's story literally doesn't matter or have any weight, so I guess really the bugs had ludonarrative relevance.
The game is also pretty much incomplete -- I expect a TON of balancing and economy changes to be added between now and the inevitable DLC. This is not a live-service game with a battle pass and steady stream of content, so the absolutely busted balancing and item economy being fixed after launch isn't really something that feels acceptable in my eyes. Most players play a game in the first month and do not return to it, and this game probably should've just been in early access for 6 months in order to release in an actually tested and balanced state.
The dungeons, puzzles, and quests have a lot of really cool highlights and also some of the dumbest bullshit I've ever heard of in a game. The creativity is off the wall, but the wildly inconsistent methods through which various secrets are hidden means that probably >75% of players will simply be using guides through the ENTIRE experience. I personally like puzzles that feel like I have a good chance of being able to figure them out on my own, but in this case, literally entire sub-classes are hidden behind interactions that no one would ever organically discover. There were 2 specific weapons I wanted to try out a specific type of build, and it turned out it was nearly impossible to even get the conditions to spawn in the biome necessary for one of those weapons, so I gave up after 2 hours. Additionally, you literally CAN'T use public matchmaking to seek out more obscure puzzles and rewards because there is NO method to communicate inside the game itself.
My closing thought is that this game has NOTHING fundamentally in common with the experience of a Soulslike game in some VERY crucial ways. The most important issue is that NO MATTER WHAT, regardless of your grinding, regardless of your progression, regardless of your build, you WILL die in 1 hit to MANY boss attacks throughout the ENTIRE experience of this game on Veteran or above while playing co-op. You WILL die in 2 hits to almost ALL OTHER boss attacks. Additionally, there is NOTHING you can do to get a pause or cooldown in any boss fight, they will NEVER stop attacking, you cannot get away from them, and you cannot see everything that they are doing to damage you at all times.
This is NOT the experience of a "hard but fair game," this is an experience that only maintains its co-op "hard game balance" through a grueling and unforgiving slog of endless attacks, endless arena-spanning hazards, and damage values that constantly try your patience. No sweat to anyone who LIKES that experience, but it cannot be said that this is ANYTHING like the experience of any other product found in this game's DNA.
Having played a full Veteran Campaign with 2-3 player co-op, and having jumped around some friends' campaigns, I got a good sense of most of the bosses, different quests, and general game balance. A handful of bosses are good, but a lot of bosses are just straight up the rudest, least interactive, and most annoying bosses I've ever seen in a video game. Also, a lot of the game is full of bugs -- the worst I encountered was that my entire town of NPCs had their dialog trees reset in the last act of the game! And this bug is common! I work on video games, I know how save states work, and I deeply fear the codebase that allows that to even happen. However, the end of the game's story literally doesn't matter or have any weight, so I guess really the bugs had ludonarrative relevance.
The game is also pretty much incomplete -- I expect a TON of balancing and economy changes to be added between now and the inevitable DLC. This is not a live-service game with a battle pass and steady stream of content, so the absolutely busted balancing and item economy being fixed after launch isn't really something that feels acceptable in my eyes. Most players play a game in the first month and do not return to it, and this game probably should've just been in early access for 6 months in order to release in an actually tested and balanced state.
The dungeons, puzzles, and quests have a lot of really cool highlights and also some of the dumbest bullshit I've ever heard of in a game. The creativity is off the wall, but the wildly inconsistent methods through which various secrets are hidden means that probably >75% of players will simply be using guides through the ENTIRE experience. I personally like puzzles that feel like I have a good chance of being able to figure them out on my own, but in this case, literally entire sub-classes are hidden behind interactions that no one would ever organically discover. There were 2 specific weapons I wanted to try out a specific type of build, and it turned out it was nearly impossible to even get the conditions to spawn in the biome necessary for one of those weapons, so I gave up after 2 hours. Additionally, you literally CAN'T use public matchmaking to seek out more obscure puzzles and rewards because there is NO method to communicate inside the game itself.
My closing thought is that this game has NOTHING fundamentally in common with the experience of a Soulslike game in some VERY crucial ways. The most important issue is that NO MATTER WHAT, regardless of your grinding, regardless of your progression, regardless of your build, you WILL die in 1 hit to MANY boss attacks throughout the ENTIRE experience of this game on Veteran or above while playing co-op. You WILL die in 2 hits to almost ALL OTHER boss attacks. Additionally, there is NOTHING you can do to get a pause or cooldown in any boss fight, they will NEVER stop attacking, you cannot get away from them, and you cannot see everything that they are doing to damage you at all times.
This is NOT the experience of a "hard but fair game," this is an experience that only maintains its co-op "hard game balance" through a grueling and unforgiving slog of endless attacks, endless arena-spanning hazards, and damage values that constantly try your patience. No sweat to anyone who LIKES that experience, but it cannot be said that this is ANYTHING like the experience of any other product found in this game's DNA.
2023
I may well one day write thousands of words resolving how this game is fundamentally opposed to every single value I hold dear in terms of writing and storytelling. The number of better works I've seen called boring or pretentious by people who would praise this game is nearly staggering enough to give me depression. It is what I feel is some of the worst writing I've ever seen praised in my entire life, and I would have truly felt I was trapped in a hell of my own making with how bad I think this is if it weren't for living with two people who thankfully agree with everything I see wrong in it. Beyond that, it may literally be the least fun I've ever had finishing a AAA video game (because normally I quit games I don't like, but I had to see this one through for reasons deeply personal to me)...but for now I'll just say this...
To me, this is as bad as a David Cage game, but if one took all of the deeply offensive conceptions of human beings, veiled hatred of women, and sloppy plot beats and traded them for a script that's 90% just the most bland exposition imaginable about the most boring story you've ever heard. It is utterly sterile, sanitized of any sincerely dangerous, risky, or unappealing emotion or human quality, saying literally nothing about human existence that isn't fit to tell a 10-year-old, all while being dressed up in enough Twin Peaks cosplay to trick someone into thinking it was actually remotely dark, horrifying, or interesting on its own merits. It is the epitome of a work demanding the audience finds it interesting while saying nothing interesting at all, and it's amazing to me how well that apparently works because it has good graphics and points a sniper scope directly at the specific weak spot in the human mind that says "this is really goofy and strange and weird, just don't think about it."
An award for "Best Narrative" is a crime against writing, and an award for "Game of the Year" is a crime against game design. Someone must get Alex Casey to look into this. I fear everyone who praises the writing or gameplay must have joined the cult that thinks Alan Wake is a good writer.
To me, this is as bad as a David Cage game, but if one took all of the deeply offensive conceptions of human beings, veiled hatred of women, and sloppy plot beats and traded them for a script that's 90% just the most bland exposition imaginable about the most boring story you've ever heard. It is utterly sterile, sanitized of any sincerely dangerous, risky, or unappealing emotion or human quality, saying literally nothing about human existence that isn't fit to tell a 10-year-old, all while being dressed up in enough Twin Peaks cosplay to trick someone into thinking it was actually remotely dark, horrifying, or interesting on its own merits. It is the epitome of a work demanding the audience finds it interesting while saying nothing interesting at all, and it's amazing to me how well that apparently works because it has good graphics and points a sniper scope directly at the specific weak spot in the human mind that says "this is really goofy and strange and weird, just don't think about it."
An award for "Best Narrative" is a crime against writing, and an award for "Game of the Year" is a crime against game design. Someone must get Alex Casey to look into this. I fear everyone who praises the writing or gameplay must have joined the cult that thinks Alan Wake is a good writer.
2022
In terms of gameplay, at the end of the day, it's a very conventional and basic point-and-click adventure game with no deviations from the formula other than how some things are presented. They get the structure of that done perfectly, there was never a moment where I was majorly confused as to what to do next, the interactions and critical path were very clear, and a lot of the optional content was easy to engage with, though I know I must have missed some more obscure things. My favorite thing that they did differently was how they log all of the things you've learned in a "mind map," which makes getting exposition about the (very weird) story very easy.
What this little adventure game gets perfectly right are tone and setting. The art, sounds, and demeanor of all of the characters come together into a vivid picture of the world that the creators aim to immerse you in. It's grimy and it's weird and it's kind of uncomfortable, but it's also fascinating, and the classic "point and click adventure" formula fits right against the setting incredibly well.
What the game does decently is character writing, as it comes to making clear and evocative characters. However, while the dialog is incredibly evocative and does well to make crystal clear characters, what the characters actually SAY is not particularly compelling. The prose and dialog try very hard at a poetic "mystique" contrasted to plain vulgarity, but because there's so much more of a focus on vibe over substance, you don't really get anything out of any individual line no matter how poetic or funny it might be trying to be. Ultimately I lump "character writing" of this type into "tone and setting," because the characters end up serving as strong pillars of the setting without ever providing compelling arcs or drama in their own right.
The story and plot are riveting in terms of dramatic beats to get you invested in how absurd the scenario is that is unfolding. However, there is a lot about the setting and events that undermine the story, with the setting presenting a very mundane and dry presentation of MOST aspects of the world (going into so much detail about the nature of the environment, the politics, what it's like to really live in this situation) and then proceeds to have most characters not truly question just how absurd the premise of the plot actually is. Sure, some people say "man, that's crazy!", but that's not really enough when what's happening is so insane. Just calling something crazy is not the same as actually questioning and analyzing it, and this story is NOT interested in characters actually trying to understand the situations that they're experiencing (whether that means understanding the situations literally, personally, or emotionally).
The best example of this is when the protagonist meets his mom's friend who is the "originator" of the "Superduck," a sentient biological super entity. He literally explains the craziest shit imaginable to the protagonist, and she has NO QUESTIONS about ANY of it. The story just acts like people would accept things that they obviously wouldn't, especially given other things they've questioned or not accepted. If stuff like this was happening all over the world all the time, that would be one thing, but there's a clear insinuation that all of this is new, weird, and scary. I can see that the writer is trying to get across a theme of "the world is always weird and scary, why would these salt-of-the-earth people care about some new weird and scary thing," but I just don't feel like the setting is absurd enough to support the absurd story, and this just causes a lot of tonal dissonances.
My last major issue is that the story itself is too full of vague poeticism. There are a lot of ideas thrown at the screen, but I'm not convinced they really have any kind of interesting interplay. I'm not left thinking about or considering anything meaningful about what was presented after finishing the game, it just kind of boils down to nihilistic absurdism with only a veneer of heart. The implications of what it means for your character to "succeed" at the end are immediately undercut with a sense of imminent doom in their future regardless of the outcome of what happened in the story. I am fairly certain I got the "good ending" because of one or two things I collected earlier in the game, but the story is so obsessed with its own nihilistic tone that there can't actually be a "good ending."
The real issue with "vibe" versus "substance" here is that none of the themes presented really go anywhere or have anything to do with each other, and the themes, story, and character arcs do not interweave in such a way that they elevate or progress one another. You've got a hodgepodge of themes that go nowhere: corporate greed, religious absurdity, modern technological absurdity, family "trauma", etc. The events that occur don't really resolve any of these themes, the themes don't really have anything to do with each other, and at the end of the game, it just feels kind of like you went on a slow-paced Disneyland ride through someone's bizarre hallucinogen-fueled dreams about their fucked up childhood growing up in Louisiana.
Obviously, that was enough to get me to finish the game, but the writing clearly has literary aspirations that it's unfortunately not living up to.
Narrative Design: 4/10
Tone/Setting: 8/10
Plot/Drama: 7/10
Story: 4/10
Themes: 2/10
Character Arcs: 4/10
Dialog: 4/10
What this little adventure game gets perfectly right are tone and setting. The art, sounds, and demeanor of all of the characters come together into a vivid picture of the world that the creators aim to immerse you in. It's grimy and it's weird and it's kind of uncomfortable, but it's also fascinating, and the classic "point and click adventure" formula fits right against the setting incredibly well.
What the game does decently is character writing, as it comes to making clear and evocative characters. However, while the dialog is incredibly evocative and does well to make crystal clear characters, what the characters actually SAY is not particularly compelling. The prose and dialog try very hard at a poetic "mystique" contrasted to plain vulgarity, but because there's so much more of a focus on vibe over substance, you don't really get anything out of any individual line no matter how poetic or funny it might be trying to be. Ultimately I lump "character writing" of this type into "tone and setting," because the characters end up serving as strong pillars of the setting without ever providing compelling arcs or drama in their own right.
The story and plot are riveting in terms of dramatic beats to get you invested in how absurd the scenario is that is unfolding. However, there is a lot about the setting and events that undermine the story, with the setting presenting a very mundane and dry presentation of MOST aspects of the world (going into so much detail about the nature of the environment, the politics, what it's like to really live in this situation) and then proceeds to have most characters not truly question just how absurd the premise of the plot actually is. Sure, some people say "man, that's crazy!", but that's not really enough when what's happening is so insane. Just calling something crazy is not the same as actually questioning and analyzing it, and this story is NOT interested in characters actually trying to understand the situations that they're experiencing (whether that means understanding the situations literally, personally, or emotionally).
The best example of this is when the protagonist meets his mom's friend who is the "originator" of the "Superduck," a sentient biological super entity. He literally explains the craziest shit imaginable to the protagonist, and she has NO QUESTIONS about ANY of it. The story just acts like people would accept things that they obviously wouldn't, especially given other things they've questioned or not accepted. If stuff like this was happening all over the world all the time, that would be one thing, but there's a clear insinuation that all of this is new, weird, and scary. I can see that the writer is trying to get across a theme of "the world is always weird and scary, why would these salt-of-the-earth people care about some new weird and scary thing," but I just don't feel like the setting is absurd enough to support the absurd story, and this just causes a lot of tonal dissonances.
My last major issue is that the story itself is too full of vague poeticism. There are a lot of ideas thrown at the screen, but I'm not convinced they really have any kind of interesting interplay. I'm not left thinking about or considering anything meaningful about what was presented after finishing the game, it just kind of boils down to nihilistic absurdism with only a veneer of heart. The implications of what it means for your character to "succeed" at the end are immediately undercut with a sense of imminent doom in their future regardless of the outcome of what happened in the story. I am fairly certain I got the "good ending" because of one or two things I collected earlier in the game, but the story is so obsessed with its own nihilistic tone that there can't actually be a "good ending."
The real issue with "vibe" versus "substance" here is that none of the themes presented really go anywhere or have anything to do with each other, and the themes, story, and character arcs do not interweave in such a way that they elevate or progress one another. You've got a hodgepodge of themes that go nowhere: corporate greed, religious absurdity, modern technological absurdity, family "trauma", etc. The events that occur don't really resolve any of these themes, the themes don't really have anything to do with each other, and at the end of the game, it just feels kind of like you went on a slow-paced Disneyland ride through someone's bizarre hallucinogen-fueled dreams about their fucked up childhood growing up in Louisiana.
Obviously, that was enough to get me to finish the game, but the writing clearly has literary aspirations that it's unfortunately not living up to.
Narrative Design: 4/10
Tone/Setting: 8/10
Plot/Drama: 7/10
Story: 4/10
Themes: 2/10
Character Arcs: 4/10
Dialog: 4/10
2024
Likely won't come back to write more later when I'm done because I'm honestly just sticking it out to the end out of curiosity and for reference to compared to other Soulslikes and Metroidvanias. There are people who may disagree with all of this, that's fine, I'm pretty sure most of them are better at these games than they realize, but I've played, replayed, and studied enough of these to feel pretty confident this one is not going to land for a LOT of people who like these games without lowering the difficulty.
[edit] Only 4% of players have the "beat on standard mode" achievement. When you pick difficulty, the other option is literally called "story mode." I think perhaps something very major was lost in the translation of the English terminology here, folks. The last boss took me nearly 4 hours, and that's WITHOUT the extra phase for the true ending (because the game has a point of no return that I didn't catch the dialog describing, and I forgot to use a guide like you always have to for that kinda bullshit).
This game is obnoxiously hard compared to many other major games in the genre. It's got difficulty sliders (that I've opted not to use because I want to understand the intended experience), but I don't know if making the game marginally easier through just modifying damage values would really improve the experience, depends on how you feel about that as a player. I generally feel like it defeats the point in certain types of combat design, and this is one of them for me -- it's clearly all designed around a kind of nearly flawless style of play and raising the margin for error would just make you not really see what they were going for.
The parry system is fundamentally more input-intensive and punishing than all the games that inspired this one. Every other game I've played has a more reliable block/parry mechanic other than Lies of P. It's nothing like Sekiro, so those comparisons are really misleading -- I think the average player who has actually played them both in a recent enough window would find this game moderately harder. That could be a positive for some, but it is definitely worth warning people going in.
As for Hollow Knight comparisons, it's also just not really close. Exploration is muuuuch more tedious, with far more frequent enemy placements and hazards that all do very obnoxious things. I say this as someone who barely ever dies in Hollow Knight, Sekiro, Souls games, etc, outside of boss fights, I've died just exploring in this game more than any game I've ever played that wasn't just a platformer with more checkpoints. The best Soulslikes AND Metroidvanias are very easy to not die during exploration while basically sprinting past 90% of enemies in the game when backtracking, this one is full of so many projectiles, flying enemies, sequence-based moving platforms, room-spanning hazards, and back-to-back elite enemies, you've gotta kill 30%-100% of what's on the path if you ever redo a room. (A lot of fans of these games don't realize how few enemies you actually have to kill when they're tuned well.)
I'm enjoying the experience enough to potentially finish it, biggest positive is the bosses are incredibly cool even if the fundamental design (especially in the first third) is overly frustrating, but I can't in good conscience add to an overall "recommend" on Steam because it's really not the kind of game it seems like it would be.
[edit] Only 4% of players have the "beat on standard mode" achievement. When you pick difficulty, the other option is literally called "story mode." I think perhaps something very major was lost in the translation of the English terminology here, folks. The last boss took me nearly 4 hours, and that's WITHOUT the extra phase for the true ending (because the game has a point of no return that I didn't catch the dialog describing, and I forgot to use a guide like you always have to for that kinda bullshit).
This game is obnoxiously hard compared to many other major games in the genre. It's got difficulty sliders (that I've opted not to use because I want to understand the intended experience), but I don't know if making the game marginally easier through just modifying damage values would really improve the experience, depends on how you feel about that as a player. I generally feel like it defeats the point in certain types of combat design, and this is one of them for me -- it's clearly all designed around a kind of nearly flawless style of play and raising the margin for error would just make you not really see what they were going for.
The parry system is fundamentally more input-intensive and punishing than all the games that inspired this one. Every other game I've played has a more reliable block/parry mechanic other than Lies of P. It's nothing like Sekiro, so those comparisons are really misleading -- I think the average player who has actually played them both in a recent enough window would find this game moderately harder. That could be a positive for some, but it is definitely worth warning people going in.
As for Hollow Knight comparisons, it's also just not really close. Exploration is muuuuch more tedious, with far more frequent enemy placements and hazards that all do very obnoxious things. I say this as someone who barely ever dies in Hollow Knight, Sekiro, Souls games, etc, outside of boss fights, I've died just exploring in this game more than any game I've ever played that wasn't just a platformer with more checkpoints. The best Soulslikes AND Metroidvanias are very easy to not die during exploration while basically sprinting past 90% of enemies in the game when backtracking, this one is full of so many projectiles, flying enemies, sequence-based moving platforms, room-spanning hazards, and back-to-back elite enemies, you've gotta kill 30%-100% of what's on the path if you ever redo a room. (A lot of fans of these games don't realize how few enemies you actually have to kill when they're tuned well.)
I'm enjoying the experience enough to potentially finish it, biggest positive is the bosses are incredibly cool even if the fundamental design (especially in the first third) is overly frustrating, but I can't in good conscience add to an overall "recommend" on Steam because it's really not the kind of game it seems like it would be.
2023
Sorry to the dev, they are a VERY brilliant level designer, but I can't in good conscience "recommend" this game because it's just not going to be accessible to the vast majority of players, even people who love and play a lot of platformers or even first-person platformers. There is a small audience of players who either: 1. are good enough to not make mistakes consistently, 2. have the patience to replay content dozens and dozens of times when they do make small mistakes.
This is the first time I've tried a game like this knowing it would probably try my patience too much, and I did really enjoy the time I spent with it, but it's disheartening to me to feel like I'd be another 15+ hours of replaying the same content to get to the end because I don't have the ability to not make small mistakes in games (I'm 32, I know what my hands are capable of, they make little slip-ups once per 10-15 minutes, it's just how things go).
I got to ~290m after 13 hours of playing, and I'm just tired of replaying some sections of this game too much to consider continuing. My friends who are still playing are at 300-350m and regularly falling back down to 150m, requiring hours of replay just to get to the last failed jump. That's by design, obviously, but I don't think very many people will have the patience to get to the top if it takes 15+ hours of mostly replaying previous content to do so.
Great game feel, great camera setup, and, as stated above, absolutely brilliant level design. Looking for shortcuts is pretty fun, many sections I've replayed a dozen times I absolutely loved for some amount of time, but emotionally the negative feeling of falling to 100m-150m has grown to the point of completely ruining any enjoyment of playing the game.
Would love to play something similar from the developer that has a different approach to losing progress or gives more difficulty options or control to the player, their level design sensibilities are immensely good.
Level Design: 9/10
Locomotion Design: 8/10
Accessibility: 1/10
This is the first time I've tried a game like this knowing it would probably try my patience too much, and I did really enjoy the time I spent with it, but it's disheartening to me to feel like I'd be another 15+ hours of replaying the same content to get to the end because I don't have the ability to not make small mistakes in games (I'm 32, I know what my hands are capable of, they make little slip-ups once per 10-15 minutes, it's just how things go).
I got to ~290m after 13 hours of playing, and I'm just tired of replaying some sections of this game too much to consider continuing. My friends who are still playing are at 300-350m and regularly falling back down to 150m, requiring hours of replay just to get to the last failed jump. That's by design, obviously, but I don't think very many people will have the patience to get to the top if it takes 15+ hours of mostly replaying previous content to do so.
Great game feel, great camera setup, and, as stated above, absolutely brilliant level design. Looking for shortcuts is pretty fun, many sections I've replayed a dozen times I absolutely loved for some amount of time, but emotionally the negative feeling of falling to 100m-150m has grown to the point of completely ruining any enjoyment of playing the game.
Would love to play something similar from the developer that has a different approach to losing progress or gives more difficulty options or control to the player, their level design sensibilities are immensely good.
Level Design: 9/10
Locomotion Design: 8/10
Accessibility: 1/10
Their efforts to make Norman "My Son Is Sick So I Filled Him With Alien Goo" Osborn an emotionally sympathetic character is very funny. Not gonna write a full review on this one, just have to say I'm really confused by any praise for the story, characters, or dialog. It's overwrought, it's shallow, it's poorly paced, and the canonically witty and funny characters Peter Parker and Miles Morales did not make an actual joke in the entire game (let alone a funny one). For a game with so many words, somehow they didn't manage to figure out how to write any of them in a good order.
I'm going to link my enemy combat design video series because so much of what's frustrating or disappointing in this game ties directly to what I care about most as a combat designer and why I created these videos in the first place. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaAa7EbxLMGOqF1EKT-ppDtgAUdrHC_ps
Overall, Jedi Survivor takes the successes of Jedi Fallen Order and fans them with the hot flames of more and more gameplay scope, much of which does little to improve the established formula.
Performance Gripes
This game's performance sucks. It's not optimized. I waited a year to play it, hoping it would get better, and it did, but barely. The variance in how well the game could run in different areas (on an RTX 3080 and 12th Gen Intel i7) ranged from 15fps to 60fps, probably averaging 45 with massive slowdowns in certain areas (the worst was outdoors on Jedha, which was unplayable without me pausing the game to lower the graphics settings to the minimum temporarily, and it still ran at <45fps). It doesn't fully utilize my CPU or GPU (and I explored all the fixes players have tried to find), so it's a mystery how the studio employed Unreal Engine so poorly.
Environment Art
Aside from issues with clarity in level design and lighting (below), this game is GORGEOUS. The art is the biggest reason I did not stop playing despite my annoyance with its gameplay. The fundamental Star Wars identity is crystal clear, the fidelity and range of environments are beautiful to look at, and spaces feel engaging to explore even when the level design becomes convoluted or unclear. No complaints here!
Story
Meh. It's not much of anything, it's barely even a story. The few meaningful plot beats are flimsy, the core motivation for the quest barely makes sense, and every time someone started yammering about "Tanalorr," my eyes glazed over. The characters are charming, I particularly liked Bode, but the game does very little with them. The immensely copious, mostly boring, and expository conversations with the various denizens that Cal can collect for his saloon also did nothing for me (other than stab me directly in the heart with the trauma of the KotOR Remake team I worked on having been dissolved). There's nothing positive to say here, but there's also not much negative to say because, frankly, there's nothing of substance going on in the first place, good or bad.
World Design
The maps are so big and jammed so full of collectibles that they border on being a 90s throwback. There are literally HUNDREDS of collectibles, most of which feel frivolous and time-wasting, with an imbalanced spread between the rare "Wow, that challenge was enjoyable to overcome to get this!" to the more common "Why on earth would you put this here? The environment is completely unreadable, and I don't feel bad I couldn't find it."
One of the core collectible types is just a faint blue aura, which, in some environments, looks exactly like everything else that is visible around the player at all times. One of the core collectible types is literally invisible and only conveyed through a response from the droid on Cal's shoulder, often tied to innocuous environmental objects that a player would have no reason to want to look at. There's a guy the player can meet who captures fish FOR the player, and one can only assume this was a fishing minigame that was reasonably cut from the game's absurd scope. Why can I plant seeds on a roof? This doesn't feel like a gameplay verb that is doing much of anything for this experience.
I don't have anything fundamentally against the overall design of adding a big hub world with lots of objectives to do, but outside of the critical path, Koboh honestly starts to feel like a huge mess the longer the game goes on. One big part of this is that the map is simply too big and becomes utterly unreadable other than "Did I go through this door before?" Beyond that, there are SO many "return to this with a new mechanic" moments that basically incentivize the player to ignore the entire planet until they're near the end of the game. At this point, I was exhausted with so many other flaws that the idea of trying to do meaningful side content (the actual quests, not just fetching hundreds of collectibles) felt like a waste of my time -- especially given the basis of PACING in a game, which is "evenly distribute side content alongside the main story."
It really feels like the scope of Koboh completely escaped the team, and they lost any sense of why a player would engage with it at any specific moment in the game. There was no basis from other games they were drawing on for this experiment, and I don't think the experiment was particularly successful.
The critical path in terms of level design, however, is generally... pretty good! The visual differentiation between various areas on Koboh was overall quite cool (though some are more boring than others), and the other planets the player visits at least have a clear visual identity, though were mostly less exciting for sci-fi locales. The level design of traversal was basic for most of the game until all the mechanics were unlocked, and from there, the game offered a few zones that felt engaging (though almost always straightforward). Some puzzles are fine but not impressive. There are a billion shortcuts, which feels convenient since I wouldn't want to replay most level segments even if I had to. They go out of their way to make everything so interconnected that a player who hates fast travel could never use it, which is certainly a choice in a game that's this big.
The level design would be best described as visually awesome but imperfectly conceived. The biggest flaws, as mentioned earlier, are in the side-path design of some areas where the environment art and lighting render certain paths totally unreadable, which feels like a knock-on from the game being too high-scope and the team not having time to refine their visual approach to player level design affordances.
Combat Design
The player has more abilities, attacks, and weapon styles, but all of these have some of the least refined animations and controls I've seen in a recent and well-received AAA action title. Combat is more chaotic than ever, with encounters involving up to a dozen enemies simultaneously attacking from all directions. However, only one of the weapons (dual lightsabers) can cancel from attack animations to block the constant staggered enemy attacks. The blaster and lightsaber combo is great for managing enemies (overpowered on lower difficulties, to be honest), but its sword attack animations are visually awkward and don't feel like something a Jedi would do. The "heavy lightsaber" is a neat callback to other action games, but it also makes zero sense given a lightsaber doesn't weigh anything, and Cal seems to be handling it like an 8lb claymore (it also doesn't feel well-balanced for any encounter with more than 2 enemies).
I personally played on the medium difficulty, which is trivially easy compared to the same difficulty in the previous game, after watching my roommate force himself through the highest difficulty with nothing but constant complaints. The team went from Souls-inspired deliberate animation-based gameplay with a good variety of enemies for the game's quick pace to something that felt more like pure chaos at worst and overly repetitive at best. Large encounters are just silly, with projectiles endlessly flying from 4 directions while 3-5 melee enemies take turns swinging within < 2-second windows one at a time, making the player's optimal actions "spam the block button and hope some of these enemies get parried and just throw out wide attacks as much as possible to try to break some of their stun meters." Small encounters are relatively fine but get pretty boring when the spread of new enemies stops growing less than halfway through the game.
Why does Cal have force powers when most enemies are immune to them for most of the game? The balance between "pure power fantasy" and "difficult and deliberate action game" is completely lost. On the highest difficulty, combat is just a slow attrition of throwing out safe attacks and ranged attacks because the enemies are utterly relentless, especially if fighting more than one at a time. It's optimal to mind-control enemies as often as possible, but then this feels like trivializing the experience and turning Cal into a coward even further.
In Dark Souls and Sekiro, the games that originally inspired this or were similar to it, most basic enemies have fewer than 4 animations to choose from, which are dead simple and easy to understand. Nearly every enemy in this game is capable of throwing out what feels like 5-10 unique melee attacks (potentially also ranged attacks, potentially also dodging) on top of having super armor as long as their stagger meter isn't empty as well as parry attacks they throw out after blocking multiple attacks. This means handling >3 enemies means tracking 3 completely different animations, and hitting 3 enemies means at least one of them will randomly pivot from blocking the player to attacking them. This whole "block and then parry and then attack the player" concept was brilliant in Sekiro where engagements are generally 1v1 (and the player can easily position enemies to fight them one at a time), but here, it's often optimal to use weapons with wide attacks to deal with weaker mobs of enemies and then just accept the punishment that one of them will probably super armor through it and hit you in the middle of your combo.
Oh, also...bosses? Mostly boring! Only the main boss was interesting. Otherwise, the animation quality and variety were just a step back from the first game. Most of the big creatures were very basic and largely annoying rather than engaging. They re-use "raiders who stole lightsabers" way too much, probably because it seems like they struggled to find an excuse to put lightsabers on screen with their story, but those guys re-used the same animations constantly and also had effectively zero weight in terms of story. I didn't bother looking for the bounty hunters because my friend convinced me they weren't interesting. VFX and animation timing clarity on many boss attacks also just isn't great -- all stuff that, again, feels like it suffered for the team reaching beyond their resources and time a bit.
Overall, the pacing and flow of player and enemy attacks just feels...like a mess. It's fine, it's playable, and it's not terribly boring or worth uninstalling the game over, but I just don't see a single improvement over the original game, nor do I feel like this team of combat designers has a great understanding of what makes the games that inspire them work so well.
Conclusion
I largely agree with one of my best friends on this: if the series continues on the path established by this game and keeps lacking refinement, insisting on a massive scope beyond what the team has the resources to polish, then I probably will not return to their games. There's a foundation of a great game between the cracks here, but it's remarkable how many steps back the team made from what was a BETTER foundation on the last game.
Overall, Jedi Survivor takes the successes of Jedi Fallen Order and fans them with the hot flames of more and more gameplay scope, much of which does little to improve the established formula.
Performance Gripes
This game's performance sucks. It's not optimized. I waited a year to play it, hoping it would get better, and it did, but barely. The variance in how well the game could run in different areas (on an RTX 3080 and 12th Gen Intel i7) ranged from 15fps to 60fps, probably averaging 45 with massive slowdowns in certain areas (the worst was outdoors on Jedha, which was unplayable without me pausing the game to lower the graphics settings to the minimum temporarily, and it still ran at <45fps). It doesn't fully utilize my CPU or GPU (and I explored all the fixes players have tried to find), so it's a mystery how the studio employed Unreal Engine so poorly.
Environment Art
Aside from issues with clarity in level design and lighting (below), this game is GORGEOUS. The art is the biggest reason I did not stop playing despite my annoyance with its gameplay. The fundamental Star Wars identity is crystal clear, the fidelity and range of environments are beautiful to look at, and spaces feel engaging to explore even when the level design becomes convoluted or unclear. No complaints here!
Story
Meh. It's not much of anything, it's barely even a story. The few meaningful plot beats are flimsy, the core motivation for the quest barely makes sense, and every time someone started yammering about "Tanalorr," my eyes glazed over. The characters are charming, I particularly liked Bode, but the game does very little with them. The immensely copious, mostly boring, and expository conversations with the various denizens that Cal can collect for his saloon also did nothing for me (other than stab me directly in the heart with the trauma of the KotOR Remake team I worked on having been dissolved). There's nothing positive to say here, but there's also not much negative to say because, frankly, there's nothing of substance going on in the first place, good or bad.
World Design
The maps are so big and jammed so full of collectibles that they border on being a 90s throwback. There are literally HUNDREDS of collectibles, most of which feel frivolous and time-wasting, with an imbalanced spread between the rare "Wow, that challenge was enjoyable to overcome to get this!" to the more common "Why on earth would you put this here? The environment is completely unreadable, and I don't feel bad I couldn't find it."
One of the core collectible types is just a faint blue aura, which, in some environments, looks exactly like everything else that is visible around the player at all times. One of the core collectible types is literally invisible and only conveyed through a response from the droid on Cal's shoulder, often tied to innocuous environmental objects that a player would have no reason to want to look at. There's a guy the player can meet who captures fish FOR the player, and one can only assume this was a fishing minigame that was reasonably cut from the game's absurd scope. Why can I plant seeds on a roof? This doesn't feel like a gameplay verb that is doing much of anything for this experience.
I don't have anything fundamentally against the overall design of adding a big hub world with lots of objectives to do, but outside of the critical path, Koboh honestly starts to feel like a huge mess the longer the game goes on. One big part of this is that the map is simply too big and becomes utterly unreadable other than "Did I go through this door before?" Beyond that, there are SO many "return to this with a new mechanic" moments that basically incentivize the player to ignore the entire planet until they're near the end of the game. At this point, I was exhausted with so many other flaws that the idea of trying to do meaningful side content (the actual quests, not just fetching hundreds of collectibles) felt like a waste of my time -- especially given the basis of PACING in a game, which is "evenly distribute side content alongside the main story."
It really feels like the scope of Koboh completely escaped the team, and they lost any sense of why a player would engage with it at any specific moment in the game. There was no basis from other games they were drawing on for this experiment, and I don't think the experiment was particularly successful.
The critical path in terms of level design, however, is generally... pretty good! The visual differentiation between various areas on Koboh was overall quite cool (though some are more boring than others), and the other planets the player visits at least have a clear visual identity, though were mostly less exciting for sci-fi locales. The level design of traversal was basic for most of the game until all the mechanics were unlocked, and from there, the game offered a few zones that felt engaging (though almost always straightforward). Some puzzles are fine but not impressive. There are a billion shortcuts, which feels convenient since I wouldn't want to replay most level segments even if I had to. They go out of their way to make everything so interconnected that a player who hates fast travel could never use it, which is certainly a choice in a game that's this big.
The level design would be best described as visually awesome but imperfectly conceived. The biggest flaws, as mentioned earlier, are in the side-path design of some areas where the environment art and lighting render certain paths totally unreadable, which feels like a knock-on from the game being too high-scope and the team not having time to refine their visual approach to player level design affordances.
Combat Design
The player has more abilities, attacks, and weapon styles, but all of these have some of the least refined animations and controls I've seen in a recent and well-received AAA action title. Combat is more chaotic than ever, with encounters involving up to a dozen enemies simultaneously attacking from all directions. However, only one of the weapons (dual lightsabers) can cancel from attack animations to block the constant staggered enemy attacks. The blaster and lightsaber combo is great for managing enemies (overpowered on lower difficulties, to be honest), but its sword attack animations are visually awkward and don't feel like something a Jedi would do. The "heavy lightsaber" is a neat callback to other action games, but it also makes zero sense given a lightsaber doesn't weigh anything, and Cal seems to be handling it like an 8lb claymore (it also doesn't feel well-balanced for any encounter with more than 2 enemies).
I personally played on the medium difficulty, which is trivially easy compared to the same difficulty in the previous game, after watching my roommate force himself through the highest difficulty with nothing but constant complaints. The team went from Souls-inspired deliberate animation-based gameplay with a good variety of enemies for the game's quick pace to something that felt more like pure chaos at worst and overly repetitive at best. Large encounters are just silly, with projectiles endlessly flying from 4 directions while 3-5 melee enemies take turns swinging within < 2-second windows one at a time, making the player's optimal actions "spam the block button and hope some of these enemies get parried and just throw out wide attacks as much as possible to try to break some of their stun meters." Small encounters are relatively fine but get pretty boring when the spread of new enemies stops growing less than halfway through the game.
Why does Cal have force powers when most enemies are immune to them for most of the game? The balance between "pure power fantasy" and "difficult and deliberate action game" is completely lost. On the highest difficulty, combat is just a slow attrition of throwing out safe attacks and ranged attacks because the enemies are utterly relentless, especially if fighting more than one at a time. It's optimal to mind-control enemies as often as possible, but then this feels like trivializing the experience and turning Cal into a coward even further.
In Dark Souls and Sekiro, the games that originally inspired this or were similar to it, most basic enemies have fewer than 4 animations to choose from, which are dead simple and easy to understand. Nearly every enemy in this game is capable of throwing out what feels like 5-10 unique melee attacks (potentially also ranged attacks, potentially also dodging) on top of having super armor as long as their stagger meter isn't empty as well as parry attacks they throw out after blocking multiple attacks. This means handling >3 enemies means tracking 3 completely different animations, and hitting 3 enemies means at least one of them will randomly pivot from blocking the player to attacking them. This whole "block and then parry and then attack the player" concept was brilliant in Sekiro where engagements are generally 1v1 (and the player can easily position enemies to fight them one at a time), but here, it's often optimal to use weapons with wide attacks to deal with weaker mobs of enemies and then just accept the punishment that one of them will probably super armor through it and hit you in the middle of your combo.
Oh, also...bosses? Mostly boring! Only the main boss was interesting. Otherwise, the animation quality and variety were just a step back from the first game. Most of the big creatures were very basic and largely annoying rather than engaging. They re-use "raiders who stole lightsabers" way too much, probably because it seems like they struggled to find an excuse to put lightsabers on screen with their story, but those guys re-used the same animations constantly and also had effectively zero weight in terms of story. I didn't bother looking for the bounty hunters because my friend convinced me they weren't interesting. VFX and animation timing clarity on many boss attacks also just isn't great -- all stuff that, again, feels like it suffered for the team reaching beyond their resources and time a bit.
Overall, the pacing and flow of player and enemy attacks just feels...like a mess. It's fine, it's playable, and it's not terribly boring or worth uninstalling the game over, but I just don't see a single improvement over the original game, nor do I feel like this team of combat designers has a great understanding of what makes the games that inspire them work so well.
Conclusion
I largely agree with one of my best friends on this: if the series continues on the path established by this game and keeps lacking refinement, insisting on a massive scope beyond what the team has the resources to polish, then I probably will not return to their games. There's a foundation of a great game between the cracks here, but it's remarkable how many steps back the team made from what was a BETTER foundation on the last game.
[EDIT 2 - Updated for proper context after initial writing, along with some details on how people who do like it have treated me. These occasions are so deeply indicative of why I often avoid talking to random strangers about subjective experiences of media, and why I'm seeking out healthier communities where complex disagreements can happen without conversations devolving into childlike behavior. A "negative review" I'll leave on this profile as an indicator of my values (both in games and in socialization), I'm not saying this game is BAD, I'm explaining why this game does not appeal to me and many others like me.]
So for context, I played this for 20ish hours for the Action Button Discord game club. I spent a good amount of time on the server, there were some dope people, but, uh, stay away? It's a very toxic place. All you gotta know is the mods encourage bullying and have a thread dedicated to letting a clique of their favored users bully anyone they want on the server behind their backs (obviously myself included). If you ever visit and notice it feels weirdly hostile all the time, this is why, the clique at the heart of the server actively fosters an immensely hostile attitude because they think it makes them cool or something. I won't post the screenshots of the things they say there, it doesn't even merit attention, it's just a generic bad online community.
Anyways, I said "I have played several and I don't like any JRPGs, they're not for me," knowing JRPGs are quite popular on the server. In reaction to me (and many other users who felt the same), a LARGE number of users aimed to convince people who don't like JRPGs that they should play THIS GAME specifically. In retrospect, this was stated with ZERO context as to WHY -- no analysis of tone, gameplay, structure, themes, or formal qualities. Simply bold assertions that "people who don't like this ENTIRE GENRE should obviously play this because it's amazing." Also, some of them dumped on all other JRPGs while making this recommendation? Which was... Interesting. Among my friends, it's pretty normal to provide more context because we understand that, you know, we don't all like the same kinds of things?
What followed was me trying a game I knew was NOT FOR ME, yet I really wanted to go into with a good faith effort to understand why people felt SO strongly that they'd try to convince people who DON'T LIKE THIS KIND OF GAME to play it anyways. I also wanted to be part of a community and see how it went, obviously! Maybe I'd be wrong. I told my roommates and friends, "Well, I guess I'm trying this thing I know isn't for me because I want to at least try to understand why people might love it so much."
But after 20 hours, I had too many other games to play, and I started to get into making video essays, which didn't leave me with time to do things I wasn't exceptionally loving. Ultimately, I wrote all of this as lesson for myself and others regarding the immense lack of understanding people can have about why other people enjoy and love any given aesthetic experience and why some people DON'T. The reasons I didn't like this game were strong and multitude, and after being treated beligerently for months in a community I realized in retrospect was quite toxic, I really didn't feel like tossing them in the trash rather than laying them out at least for myself.
When it comes to JRPGs, I have fond memories of FFIX as a child, and then I played some subsequent FF games, I've tried many turn-based games and RPGs, but I don't think I've finished a single one. The only JRPG I've liked AS A GAME is FFXII because it let me script my party members and feel smart without the thing I hate most about the genre. I find turn-based combat without a grid to be interminably boring, I just cannot ever get into it (and with a grid, I think it's cool, but I also kinda suck at it or eventually find it too repetitive, so I still don't finish those either). I've now tried TWO of the "great contemporary JRPGs," DQ11 and Persona 5, and they're both still VERY boring to me, though for different reasons.
As for the combat of DQ11, I immediately turned on auto-battle and cranked the gameplay speed up to max. I tried taking control a couple of times, but every time it felt pointless, there were no decisions I made that weren't obvious, nor any decisions I saw the AI make that weren't the same as I would make. It took 20 hours for me to see a battle where the AI made a couple of odd decisions, only to learn that it was programmed to understand future moves the enemies would make so it could choose the right moments to heal. After 20 hours, I reached a point where when combat started, I would sometimes put my Steam Deck down and watch TV and just wait for the battle to end to pick it back up. The game plays itself flawlessly, the choices I made out of combat (gear, skills) also felt completely inconsequential, and I considered this all a boon because I would've quit trying to see what the game was about sooner if it was any other way. Some seemed to enjoy taking control, others thought it was a better JRPG because it played itself? Either way, this showed me that in gameplay, I'm fundamentally disconnected from the people who like such an experience.
The only credit I could give to the combat with MY values is the monster designs. For me, they're 3x better (more charming, more aesthetically appealing) than Pokemon, and I honestly wanted to befriend or capture them more than kill them. I actually found butchering them in the hundreds to honestly just be a bit tonally dissonant and bizarre. Why would I want to kill things that are cute and charming?
Exploration was fine, the levels are simple and easy to explore. There are some creative moments I found in exploring towns specifically, I would expect those to evolve further over the course of the very long game. But I found most of my engagements with the world to be relatively shallow and like anything I've ever experienced in a 3d game. It didn't do enough to awaken or even tickle the exploration addict in me, especially as the primary reward mechanism was tiny chests and smashing every single pot in the world (which, I get it, that's how these games have always been, but...I didn't like it then any more than I like it now). I don't assume anyone who loves the game would put level design at the top of the pillars of their conception of its greatness.
So how about the story? Kind of...the main appeal of RPGs? Welp, in this case, I felt more detached from the core audience here than I've felt from any game in a long time.
I got 60 hours into P5 because it has a mature and compelling story that focuses on adult and human problems, has generally relatable stakes, distinct and clear themes, a deep and IMMEDIATE focus on character relationships and character progression, etc. All the reasons people say it's amazing. I may even finish it one day!
DQ11 by contrast is best described as a children's storybook, and I cannot say that with the fond and loving tone that people who love the game do. Within 20 hours, not a single emotionally impactful moment happened. When the protagonist witnessed the burning remains of the town he grew up in, he stared at the wreckage dead-eyed and eternally silent, his companion made a blithe remark, and then I looted the wreckage of his childhood home for pots to break (full of worthless items). Whatever depth one might claim to occur in this game's first 20 hours could easily be argued not to be occurring in the text itself, any "deep" take I can imagine would just be interpretation weakly supported by the dialog or events of the story. Most I've seen who love the story evangelize its simplicity, I don't think I even saw a positive remark about these story beats (all the remarks I saw regarded how charming people found the companions and NPCs). Extreme storybook simplicity appears to be the explicit INTENT of the story.
But... Personally, I haven't read children's storybooks of this nature since I was 8 years old. I can't even really remember liking them, to be honest, even as a small child, I feel like they just HAPPENED to me. I didn't start enjoying or caring about stories and reading until my friend's mom read us the first couple of Harry Potter books, and then my brain EXPLODED with an OBSESSION for reading, sending me spiraling into Enders Game, which then sent me into that entire series, quickly picking up more adult fantasy/sci-fi fiction alongside YA fiction. By the end of high school, I didn't even read YA much any longer.
And that may come across like I'm trying to "I am very smart" about reading. But no, I'm 32 as of writing this, I really don't care what someone thinks of my (admittedly not even very good) reading history. I'm just clarifying what I enjoyed as a child and why that led to who I am as an adult. I wasn't 12 years old saying "Wow, I'm too smart for baby books," I just read what was on my mom's bookshelf. The "criticism" levied at me by uncharitable people who are bad at talking like adults was: "You should just get over yourself, it's really just a skill issue that you can't enjoy such delightful bedtime story vibes." Of course, that response is massively more insulting than anything I'm saying here about what I enjoy and value personally -- but I've come to discover many people who pretend like subjectivity is the highest moral good are also often the rudest and most insulting towards anyone who has a even slightly differing opinion to them and actually bothers explaining it with formal language. Oh well!
So... While I was fascinated to see a Discord server full of adults -- some I know in their 30s like myself, many of whom I know love esoteric cinema, presumably complex adult media, literature, philosophy, etc -- get incredible joy and comfort and warm feelings from the video game version of an epic-length children's storybook, I can't fundamentally empathize with what they feel. It's not a frame of mind I can EXPERIENCE, let alone enjoy. I tried my best to "get it" from their perspective, that's why I tried the game in the first place. I don't look down on anyone who can enjoy this, I can actually admit that seeing what other people could enjoy here opened my eyes to aspects of game interests I never really bothered engaging with and trying to understand, and I'm glad I tried. Still, ultimately the experience clarified the CANYONS of value differences between me and the demographic of this game.
In the 20 hours I played, I spent 99% of the time bored, frustrated, and confused, challenging the dialog, challenging the plot beats, challenging the world-building, and showing my roommates in bafflement to see if they felt similar to me. I think fans would say I shouldn't even TRY to analyze the plot, themes, or character writing in an analytical way, or "do so in a way that meets the product at its level," but that level is very explicitly... That of a child. I don't want to be in the frame of mind of a child. Frankly, I've almost NEVER wanted to be in the frame of mind of a child, even a lot of the time when I was a child!
The best the game may have done for me is to be funny, and it even didn't accomplish that to my taste. I consume tons of comedy from across the globe, and the humor here (such as a scripted event where you walk a dog up to a guard to make the guard who is scared of dogs run away, that's it, that's the whole joke) just made me feel like I was witnessing something made for a primary audience of 8-year-olds. I understand some people get something out of warm and simple comedy that exists more as a tonal effort than as an effort toward "clever comedy," but that just doesn't register for me as anything beyond "huh, this is for kids I guess?" Sometimes a work of media needs a BIT of comedy like that to get the engine going, but I can't enjoy it as the primary substance. (I have a sneaking suspicion that some adults who love this game because those elements are delivered with a JRPG would never touch a book or TV show or movie that has exactly the same tone or substance.)
The structure and feel of the towns were quite neat, but it didn't entice me the way similar areas in something like FFIX do. Something about the aesthetic here feels... Basic? Washed over with the storybook aesthetic and very little of substance or nuance beyond simple signals and symbols -- this is the city where we have a horse race, this is the city where we have a fighting tournament, this is the city where people speak in haikus. Again, I have this suspicion that maybe the story gets more profound or more serious dozens of hours in? (Spoiler: There is some huge twist in Act 2.) I don't know, but the world so far felt like it had less depth or maturity than even "Avatar: The Last Airbender," something still a bit too childish for me personally, which I know is a more controversial take than all this. (Note: Two of my favorite media products in existence are "Steven Universe" and "Adventure Time," and I've also recently rewatched early "Spong Bob" to confirm that it's a work of comedic genius, so I am not at all principally against children's media universally -- in those cases I specifically like them because the writing and comedy do not infantilize the audience. "Appealing to children" is not a negative quality, but to me "appealing PRIMARILY to children" doesn't leave me as a member of the audience -- escapism into a comforting frame of mind is not of value to me, I seek comfort in many other places.)
Some folks who like this game in that server had obvious acerbic, sarcastic, and/or dismissive responses to anything I've written here. Since writing the unedited version of this review, I've been thoroughly insulted by multiple adults for not liking this video game explicitly designed for <10-year-olds as the primary audience (they actually ended up so hung up on this review that they were complaining about it weeks later). I didn't bother expressing any of my opinions in their discussion thread until after abandoning it (to explore how receptive the community would even be to a differing opinion) because the thread was basically nothing but adoration and I knew I'd just be hit with an attitude of "you're not the audience, soft sweet cartoon games should not be analyzed the way your brain thinks, get out."
Regardless, I've done my best to filter my opinions about this game to be as charitable as I can while still being true to how I feel based on my own values, and to clarify the enormous canyons that can exist between value systems -- the lesson being that you probably know what you like better than any pushy stranger on the internet who can't properly filter their opinions into something useful for anyone who doesn't already feel the same way that they do. (Well, actually the REAL lesson is that if you find yourself in a community that's full of impolite conversations, constant sarcasm, a tone of endless insincere insulting irony from people who really should have aged out of that already, and passive-aggressive bullying, a lot of which is not only perpetuated by the mods but actively supported by them -- uh, maybe you should just leave and not try to figure out how to fit in! It turns out there are definitely communities where NONE of this happens.)
The closest I can get to empathizing with people who like this game is a realization after trying it out. If FFIX were remade, I would want it in exactly the same format as this. I love that world -- its stories, characters, dialog, aesthetic, coziness, complexity, and simplicity -- in the closest way I can get to the way other people love this one. I haven't been able to make myself replay it because I cannot tolerate experiencing that kind of JRPG combat, and so I'd love to get to "play" FFIX as a narrative adventure with combat that manages itself. DQ11 and FFIX share MANY of the same aesthetic principles, but FFIX has a stronger appeal to writing sentiments I care for, including a much more IMMEDIATELY deeper approach to character writing, dialog, and emotional adult storytelling that is requisite for me to begin to enjoy any work of writing of this kind.
So for context, I played this for 20ish hours for the Action Button Discord game club. I spent a good amount of time on the server, there were some dope people, but, uh, stay away? It's a very toxic place. All you gotta know is the mods encourage bullying and have a thread dedicated to letting a clique of their favored users bully anyone they want on the server behind their backs (obviously myself included). If you ever visit and notice it feels weirdly hostile all the time, this is why, the clique at the heart of the server actively fosters an immensely hostile attitude because they think it makes them cool or something. I won't post the screenshots of the things they say there, it doesn't even merit attention, it's just a generic bad online community.
Anyways, I said "I have played several and I don't like any JRPGs, they're not for me," knowing JRPGs are quite popular on the server. In reaction to me (and many other users who felt the same), a LARGE number of users aimed to convince people who don't like JRPGs that they should play THIS GAME specifically. In retrospect, this was stated with ZERO context as to WHY -- no analysis of tone, gameplay, structure, themes, or formal qualities. Simply bold assertions that "people who don't like this ENTIRE GENRE should obviously play this because it's amazing." Also, some of them dumped on all other JRPGs while making this recommendation? Which was... Interesting. Among my friends, it's pretty normal to provide more context because we understand that, you know, we don't all like the same kinds of things?
What followed was me trying a game I knew was NOT FOR ME, yet I really wanted to go into with a good faith effort to understand why people felt SO strongly that they'd try to convince people who DON'T LIKE THIS KIND OF GAME to play it anyways. I also wanted to be part of a community and see how it went, obviously! Maybe I'd be wrong. I told my roommates and friends, "Well, I guess I'm trying this thing I know isn't for me because I want to at least try to understand why people might love it so much."
But after 20 hours, I had too many other games to play, and I started to get into making video essays, which didn't leave me with time to do things I wasn't exceptionally loving. Ultimately, I wrote all of this as lesson for myself and others regarding the immense lack of understanding people can have about why other people enjoy and love any given aesthetic experience and why some people DON'T. The reasons I didn't like this game were strong and multitude, and after being treated beligerently for months in a community I realized in retrospect was quite toxic, I really didn't feel like tossing them in the trash rather than laying them out at least for myself.
When it comes to JRPGs, I have fond memories of FFIX as a child, and then I played some subsequent FF games, I've tried many turn-based games and RPGs, but I don't think I've finished a single one. The only JRPG I've liked AS A GAME is FFXII because it let me script my party members and feel smart without the thing I hate most about the genre. I find turn-based combat without a grid to be interminably boring, I just cannot ever get into it (and with a grid, I think it's cool, but I also kinda suck at it or eventually find it too repetitive, so I still don't finish those either). I've now tried TWO of the "great contemporary JRPGs," DQ11 and Persona 5, and they're both still VERY boring to me, though for different reasons.
As for the combat of DQ11, I immediately turned on auto-battle and cranked the gameplay speed up to max. I tried taking control a couple of times, but every time it felt pointless, there were no decisions I made that weren't obvious, nor any decisions I saw the AI make that weren't the same as I would make. It took 20 hours for me to see a battle where the AI made a couple of odd decisions, only to learn that it was programmed to understand future moves the enemies would make so it could choose the right moments to heal. After 20 hours, I reached a point where when combat started, I would sometimes put my Steam Deck down and watch TV and just wait for the battle to end to pick it back up. The game plays itself flawlessly, the choices I made out of combat (gear, skills) also felt completely inconsequential, and I considered this all a boon because I would've quit trying to see what the game was about sooner if it was any other way. Some seemed to enjoy taking control, others thought it was a better JRPG because it played itself? Either way, this showed me that in gameplay, I'm fundamentally disconnected from the people who like such an experience.
The only credit I could give to the combat with MY values is the monster designs. For me, they're 3x better (more charming, more aesthetically appealing) than Pokemon, and I honestly wanted to befriend or capture them more than kill them. I actually found butchering them in the hundreds to honestly just be a bit tonally dissonant and bizarre. Why would I want to kill things that are cute and charming?
Exploration was fine, the levels are simple and easy to explore. There are some creative moments I found in exploring towns specifically, I would expect those to evolve further over the course of the very long game. But I found most of my engagements with the world to be relatively shallow and like anything I've ever experienced in a 3d game. It didn't do enough to awaken or even tickle the exploration addict in me, especially as the primary reward mechanism was tiny chests and smashing every single pot in the world (which, I get it, that's how these games have always been, but...I didn't like it then any more than I like it now). I don't assume anyone who loves the game would put level design at the top of the pillars of their conception of its greatness.
So how about the story? Kind of...the main appeal of RPGs? Welp, in this case, I felt more detached from the core audience here than I've felt from any game in a long time.
I got 60 hours into P5 because it has a mature and compelling story that focuses on adult and human problems, has generally relatable stakes, distinct and clear themes, a deep and IMMEDIATE focus on character relationships and character progression, etc. All the reasons people say it's amazing. I may even finish it one day!
DQ11 by contrast is best described as a children's storybook, and I cannot say that with the fond and loving tone that people who love the game do. Within 20 hours, not a single emotionally impactful moment happened. When the protagonist witnessed the burning remains of the town he grew up in, he stared at the wreckage dead-eyed and eternally silent, his companion made a blithe remark, and then I looted the wreckage of his childhood home for pots to break (full of worthless items). Whatever depth one might claim to occur in this game's first 20 hours could easily be argued not to be occurring in the text itself, any "deep" take I can imagine would just be interpretation weakly supported by the dialog or events of the story. Most I've seen who love the story evangelize its simplicity, I don't think I even saw a positive remark about these story beats (all the remarks I saw regarded how charming people found the companions and NPCs). Extreme storybook simplicity appears to be the explicit INTENT of the story.
But... Personally, I haven't read children's storybooks of this nature since I was 8 years old. I can't even really remember liking them, to be honest, even as a small child, I feel like they just HAPPENED to me. I didn't start enjoying or caring about stories and reading until my friend's mom read us the first couple of Harry Potter books, and then my brain EXPLODED with an OBSESSION for reading, sending me spiraling into Enders Game, which then sent me into that entire series, quickly picking up more adult fantasy/sci-fi fiction alongside YA fiction. By the end of high school, I didn't even read YA much any longer.
And that may come across like I'm trying to "I am very smart" about reading. But no, I'm 32 as of writing this, I really don't care what someone thinks of my (admittedly not even very good) reading history. I'm just clarifying what I enjoyed as a child and why that led to who I am as an adult. I wasn't 12 years old saying "Wow, I'm too smart for baby books," I just read what was on my mom's bookshelf. The "criticism" levied at me by uncharitable people who are bad at talking like adults was: "You should just get over yourself, it's really just a skill issue that you can't enjoy such delightful bedtime story vibes." Of course, that response is massively more insulting than anything I'm saying here about what I enjoy and value personally -- but I've come to discover many people who pretend like subjectivity is the highest moral good are also often the rudest and most insulting towards anyone who has a even slightly differing opinion to them and actually bothers explaining it with formal language. Oh well!
So... While I was fascinated to see a Discord server full of adults -- some I know in their 30s like myself, many of whom I know love esoteric cinema, presumably complex adult media, literature, philosophy, etc -- get incredible joy and comfort and warm feelings from the video game version of an epic-length children's storybook, I can't fundamentally empathize with what they feel. It's not a frame of mind I can EXPERIENCE, let alone enjoy. I tried my best to "get it" from their perspective, that's why I tried the game in the first place. I don't look down on anyone who can enjoy this, I can actually admit that seeing what other people could enjoy here opened my eyes to aspects of game interests I never really bothered engaging with and trying to understand, and I'm glad I tried. Still, ultimately the experience clarified the CANYONS of value differences between me and the demographic of this game.
In the 20 hours I played, I spent 99% of the time bored, frustrated, and confused, challenging the dialog, challenging the plot beats, challenging the world-building, and showing my roommates in bafflement to see if they felt similar to me. I think fans would say I shouldn't even TRY to analyze the plot, themes, or character writing in an analytical way, or "do so in a way that meets the product at its level," but that level is very explicitly... That of a child. I don't want to be in the frame of mind of a child. Frankly, I've almost NEVER wanted to be in the frame of mind of a child, even a lot of the time when I was a child!
The best the game may have done for me is to be funny, and it even didn't accomplish that to my taste. I consume tons of comedy from across the globe, and the humor here (such as a scripted event where you walk a dog up to a guard to make the guard who is scared of dogs run away, that's it, that's the whole joke) just made me feel like I was witnessing something made for a primary audience of 8-year-olds. I understand some people get something out of warm and simple comedy that exists more as a tonal effort than as an effort toward "clever comedy," but that just doesn't register for me as anything beyond "huh, this is for kids I guess?" Sometimes a work of media needs a BIT of comedy like that to get the engine going, but I can't enjoy it as the primary substance. (I have a sneaking suspicion that some adults who love this game because those elements are delivered with a JRPG would never touch a book or TV show or movie that has exactly the same tone or substance.)
The structure and feel of the towns were quite neat, but it didn't entice me the way similar areas in something like FFIX do. Something about the aesthetic here feels... Basic? Washed over with the storybook aesthetic and very little of substance or nuance beyond simple signals and symbols -- this is the city where we have a horse race, this is the city where we have a fighting tournament, this is the city where people speak in haikus. Again, I have this suspicion that maybe the story gets more profound or more serious dozens of hours in? (Spoiler: There is some huge twist in Act 2.) I don't know, but the world so far felt like it had less depth or maturity than even "Avatar: The Last Airbender," something still a bit too childish for me personally, which I know is a more controversial take than all this. (Note: Two of my favorite media products in existence are "Steven Universe" and "Adventure Time," and I've also recently rewatched early "Spong Bob" to confirm that it's a work of comedic genius, so I am not at all principally against children's media universally -- in those cases I specifically like them because the writing and comedy do not infantilize the audience. "Appealing to children" is not a negative quality, but to me "appealing PRIMARILY to children" doesn't leave me as a member of the audience -- escapism into a comforting frame of mind is not of value to me, I seek comfort in many other places.)
Some folks who like this game in that server had obvious acerbic, sarcastic, and/or dismissive responses to anything I've written here. Since writing the unedited version of this review, I've been thoroughly insulted by multiple adults for not liking this video game explicitly designed for <10-year-olds as the primary audience (they actually ended up so hung up on this review that they were complaining about it weeks later). I didn't bother expressing any of my opinions in their discussion thread until after abandoning it (to explore how receptive the community would even be to a differing opinion) because the thread was basically nothing but adoration and I knew I'd just be hit with an attitude of "you're not the audience, soft sweet cartoon games should not be analyzed the way your brain thinks, get out."
Regardless, I've done my best to filter my opinions about this game to be as charitable as I can while still being true to how I feel based on my own values, and to clarify the enormous canyons that can exist between value systems -- the lesson being that you probably know what you like better than any pushy stranger on the internet who can't properly filter their opinions into something useful for anyone who doesn't already feel the same way that they do. (Well, actually the REAL lesson is that if you find yourself in a community that's full of impolite conversations, constant sarcasm, a tone of endless insincere insulting irony from people who really should have aged out of that already, and passive-aggressive bullying, a lot of which is not only perpetuated by the mods but actively supported by them -- uh, maybe you should just leave and not try to figure out how to fit in! It turns out there are definitely communities where NONE of this happens.)
The closest I can get to empathizing with people who like this game is a realization after trying it out. If FFIX were remade, I would want it in exactly the same format as this. I love that world -- its stories, characters, dialog, aesthetic, coziness, complexity, and simplicity -- in the closest way I can get to the way other people love this one. I haven't been able to make myself replay it because I cannot tolerate experiencing that kind of JRPG combat, and so I'd love to get to "play" FFIX as a narrative adventure with combat that manages itself. DQ11 and FFIX share MANY of the same aesthetic principles, but FFIX has a stronger appeal to writing sentiments I care for, including a much more IMMEDIATELY deeper approach to character writing, dialog, and emotional adult storytelling that is requisite for me to begin to enjoy any work of writing of this kind.
2009
There's a reason this is one of the most popular games of all time, and there's also a reason so many people are so salty about it after being addicted to it for years at a time. At the end of the day, it's one of the most polished and fun PvP video games ever created and it has only gotten better with time.
2018
Like other reviews have outlined, this game is far too pre-occupied with a few things that hold it back from being an overall cool/fun/engaging experience:
- Too many tedious "plate-spinning" mechanics. Coming back to the game 6+ months after I first played it, I realized I couldn't even remember enough of the SUPER SPECIFIC ways you survive the early game, and the idea of reading a bunch of guides or failing 5 times again to figure them all out just didn't feel worth it.
- Way too many vague mechanics with incredibly specific solutions. You can literally fail a run just because you didn't buy a book when it was offered to you (since there apparently is a limited number of each book). You could survive HOURS of a run without knowing that there is NO available solutions to you left.
- The way time is managed in the game just isn't a fun gameplay loop. Some sort of turn-based system (that just auto-skips over turns while you're waiting) would be far better, since you have to pause the game so much anyways that the existence of a "real-time clock" isn't doing anything productive.
What I can say positive about the game is that it has inspired me as a game design more potently than almost any game I've ever played. That's not reason enough for me to recommend it to other people, but it is notable. There are a LOT of fascinating mechanics and interactions and ideas in this game, and I think there is a version of it that could be one of the coolest games ever...but unfortunately, for me, this isn't it. It needs a lot of refinement. Someone who puts 15+ hours into trying to understand and progress in a game like this -- a person who loves the type of game it is and wants to connect with it -- and then comes out of that time feeling like they've made barely any progress...that's not a great game in my eyes.
Gameplay Design: 5/10
User Experience: 6/10
Narrative Design: 6/10
Plot/Story: 3/10
Narrative Themes: 6/10
Visuals: 7/10
- Too many tedious "plate-spinning" mechanics. Coming back to the game 6+ months after I first played it, I realized I couldn't even remember enough of the SUPER SPECIFIC ways you survive the early game, and the idea of reading a bunch of guides or failing 5 times again to figure them all out just didn't feel worth it.
- Way too many vague mechanics with incredibly specific solutions. You can literally fail a run just because you didn't buy a book when it was offered to you (since there apparently is a limited number of each book). You could survive HOURS of a run without knowing that there is NO available solutions to you left.
- The way time is managed in the game just isn't a fun gameplay loop. Some sort of turn-based system (that just auto-skips over turns while you're waiting) would be far better, since you have to pause the game so much anyways that the existence of a "real-time clock" isn't doing anything productive.
What I can say positive about the game is that it has inspired me as a game design more potently than almost any game I've ever played. That's not reason enough for me to recommend it to other people, but it is notable. There are a LOT of fascinating mechanics and interactions and ideas in this game, and I think there is a version of it that could be one of the coolest games ever...but unfortunately, for me, this isn't it. It needs a lot of refinement. Someone who puts 15+ hours into trying to understand and progress in a game like this -- a person who loves the type of game it is and wants to connect with it -- and then comes out of that time feeling like they've made barely any progress...that's not a great game in my eyes.
Gameplay Design: 5/10
User Experience: 6/10
Narrative Design: 6/10
Plot/Story: 3/10
Narrative Themes: 6/10
Visuals: 7/10
2021
It's fine. People clamoring for this to be "best indie of 2022" are a little off their rockers, IMO. This is like 50% of the way to what I would think the best version of this concept could be. It's very haphazard, clearly largely slapped together. A game that does everything this game is doing and adds visual polish, mechanical polish, more depth and a little bit more player agency in choices would really be remarkable enough to impress me. The first few hours are also not good at all, it takes a little too long to get to the "actual pop-off" moment, and then past that moment very little changes beyond just sort of squeezing more particle FX varieties out.
It was very satisfying as a way to give me the bare minimum of interaction to enjoy something while listening to video essays for like 30 hours, so a solid B on that front.
It was very satisfying as a way to give me the bare minimum of interaction to enjoy something while listening to video essays for like 30 hours, so a solid B on that front.
2023
Easily one of the most beautiful works of visual media I've ever experienced. It's not just the alien beauty of the environments, it's the immense attention to detail in every facet of how those things move and interact. There's a fascinating interplay of organic, inorganic, and abstract visual concepts that are all flawlessly employed into an interactive space with so many moments of sublime and wondrous environmental motion offered as a reward for solving puzzles and interacting with the world.
The gameplay, on the other hand, is only pretty good. There are some solid puzzles on offer here, but it rides a really weird line between the simplicity of Limbo and Inside and a much more abstract puzzle design space that begs for a more fully realized and longer puzzle game. For me, that causes it to land in an unsatisfying spot. Some people don't like Inside for being too easy or simplistic, but if something is going to be mostly about atmosphere and art, I'd personally prefer the gameplay to be a bit more straightforward. Similarly, if a puzzle is going to make me think, I want it to make me think in a way where resetting the state of the puzzle is fast and most of the complexity lies in figuring things out top-down rather than just carrying objects slowly around large levels to figure out where to slot something for the next (usually simple) step.
It's not braindead easy, but the most difficult moments just feel obtuse not because the conceptual tissue is lacking but because the layouts of the level obfuscate how things connect often due to requiring the player to travel unsatisfyingly large distances between the pieces of the puzzle. The most complex world layering puzzles at the end also have some really annoying setups in terms of how much space has to be traversed to reset elements of the puzzle when the player makes mistakes, and every case of this is implemented in an unnecessary way (the distances could all easily be halved in terms of level design).
There are also weirdly some bosses, they're... Fine? A little bit too long on waiting on behavior cycles in some cases, but not frustrating or boring. Not a lot to say there. Also a bit annoyed I missed 2 of 12 collectibles, but there's no backtracking whatsoever, so it happens.
Overall worth the play experience for the art alone, but the gameplay offered an itch that it never fully scratched.
The gameplay, on the other hand, is only pretty good. There are some solid puzzles on offer here, but it rides a really weird line between the simplicity of Limbo and Inside and a much more abstract puzzle design space that begs for a more fully realized and longer puzzle game. For me, that causes it to land in an unsatisfying spot. Some people don't like Inside for being too easy or simplistic, but if something is going to be mostly about atmosphere and art, I'd personally prefer the gameplay to be a bit more straightforward. Similarly, if a puzzle is going to make me think, I want it to make me think in a way where resetting the state of the puzzle is fast and most of the complexity lies in figuring things out top-down rather than just carrying objects slowly around large levels to figure out where to slot something for the next (usually simple) step.
It's not braindead easy, but the most difficult moments just feel obtuse not because the conceptual tissue is lacking but because the layouts of the level obfuscate how things connect often due to requiring the player to travel unsatisfyingly large distances between the pieces of the puzzle. The most complex world layering puzzles at the end also have some really annoying setups in terms of how much space has to be traversed to reset elements of the puzzle when the player makes mistakes, and every case of this is implemented in an unnecessary way (the distances could all easily be halved in terms of level design).
There are also weirdly some bosses, they're... Fine? A little bit too long on waiting on behavior cycles in some cases, but not frustrating or boring. Not a lot to say there. Also a bit annoyed I missed 2 of 12 collectibles, but there's no backtracking whatsoever, so it happens.
Overall worth the play experience for the art alone, but the gameplay offered an itch that it never fully scratched.
2023
The art is beautiful, the voice acting is excellent, and the atmosphere is impeccable, but all of the actual substance of this work is doing little to nothing for me. This is one of my longer reviews that's mostly just negative because I have far too much to say about this topic. I care too much about metafiction, and in some ways, this is precisely the sort of game I'd like to make (if I weren't too financially cowardly to tie myself to working for bigger game studios for now). I'm giving this a "Recommend" on Steam because I can't say it's BAD. It's beautiful and well-delivered and thoroughly considered, but I have to unload what I feel about the substance of the story.
Also, note that there's a degree to which I feel less bad being really critical of the dialog in this game due to how verbose and sarcastic the game is, especially when one goes about checking out more endings than necessary to get to the true ending.
Spoilers Ahead.
Game Structure
First, a caveat on the macrostructure of the game. I saw it was a "collect all the endings for 97 achievements" type of thing, so I used the ten pages of save files to do that efficiently. It was only a conversation on Discord that revealed to me individual save states contain all of your choices that matter to unlock the true ending -- you can't jump across saves. Given that, I hopped into a save, blasted through a couple more endings (luckily, I had a few in one save), and got to the "true ending" in 15 minutes. However, it appears the benefits it gives of tracking which endings I already got in a single save might be gone anyway (you have to start a New Game), meaning going for more endings means doing more of what I was doing in the first place.
I'm not sure I understand the author's intent of how a player is supposed to engage with this, given they slapped 97 achievements on it, but I can confidently say I disagree with their approach. I don't accept the premise of "be satisfied with the handful of endings you get and set it aside" in something that functions precisely like The Stanley Parable regarding how many branching paths are condensed into 10-15 minute loops. The game's most passionate audience will read it all, so why not accept that as a given and account for it in the game structure more directly?
Story
As for the story...having seen over a dozen individual endings, I'd say it's a work that is far too preoccupied with itself in a meta context. It's not just the time looping -- it's the actual characters, the dialog and exposition, and the choices available to the player. It's all completely about itself while saying almost nothing beyond: the princess is fucked up and weird, the narrator thinks she's terrible and wants to follow the script, the situation is absurd and constructed, and the protagonist can and will question anything and everything about the situation across dozens of playthroughs despite the answer to every possible question having already been provided dozens of times. There is a "true ending" that contextualizes all of this, but the context is obvious. It's what I assumed it would be from the outset.
For a game with so many endings and unique dialog, the paths are almost all fundamentally the same. A spooky/weird/scary thing happens, the player chooses from a handful of contrived options to try to find a path they haven't done already, the spooky thing escalates, the player "dies," the narrator doesn't know it's a time loop, there are absurdly far too many lines of the protagonist/princess/narrator commenting on what is or isn't a time loop and what is or isn't a contrived situation (to the point where I started just skipping them because they all play out the same despite, incredibly, all being unique VO), and then the thread ends and that's it. After a few endings, you don't learn anything of substance about the princess, the narrator, the protagonist, or the situation you didn't already know, and the conversations start to sound the same.
And the real bummer is that the titular Princess is functionally not a character. All of this is a construct from the perspective of the Princess. She couldn't care less how any situation steers or ends up. There's nothing to learn about her. She has no wants or needs outside of the construct of being a vessel to do horrifying things and make meta or blithe remarks, and, in effect, she knows this and plays into it. Doing meta stories is fine, but, for me, a writer needs a LOT more substance at the heart of their meta characters to make all the overly contrived structure and constant sarcastic or repetitive meta-commentary worth the audience's time. I have to say Rick from Rick and Morty is the obvious great example of doing this well, fully knowing >50% of people who might read this will find this example terrible and write me off for it (which is ironic because this game is vastly more similar than not in terms of some fundamental principles and themes). It would also be nice if the meta-commentary said something of substance, but I can even enjoy meta works that say barely anything as long as there is substance elsewhere in the work. Unfortunately, I could not find substance here.
I feel like I have to acknowledge the meta ending character who ties all the endings together. Well... wildly, to me specifically, it just feels... lazy, to be honest. I've been obsessed with metafiction and even meta horror for years, and an entity who exists beyond the script to consume the outcomes of the story into some overly vague and (to be generous) poetic monologs implying a greater fantastical force that doesn't operate on a thematic or worldbuilding level to contribute much of anything to the work is... Yeah, like I said, it just feels lazy and obvious. I've written similar things in first drafts or notes, and they feel like half-finished ideas that I'd like to have taken further because I think a metafictional horror force should at least have substantive character to it. Or the worldbuilding around it should be impeccable to allow for how innately obnoxious it is as a concept. I can forgive this type of character in an SCP short story or something because that's a low-scope and lower-effort work, but this game puts SO much effort forward.
Even setting aside "how a meta entity should function in fiction," I also think that entity should say clever or interesting things, not just aimless and contextless poeticism. "I am an ocean of possibility, I am endless and consuming change, I am Isaiah's complete lack of surprise or curiosity at anything I am saying (except I am not that because I am not a work that is up to the task of meaningfully criticizing itself (despite being endlessly meta and sarcastic))." Like, I entirely got it the first time it was explained, and adding another 1000 words of exposition about it after that didn't make it more compelling or emotionally engaging for me.
Conclusion
The whole thing, as Peter Griffin would say, insists upon itself. I walked away with the thought that it has great vibes, an ambitious structure, and also that the whole thing must have been MUCH easier to write this many branching paths for by constraining the three available characters to be so simplistic that they only exist to support the fundamental structure. In no way do I mean to diminish the effort put in -- I acknowledge this is a monumentally sizeable creative work -- but the whole thing is an immense web of effort that seems to insist it is much more emotionally substantive than I felt about it as a player.
Also, note that there's a degree to which I feel less bad being really critical of the dialog in this game due to how verbose and sarcastic the game is, especially when one goes about checking out more endings than necessary to get to the true ending.
Spoilers Ahead.
Game Structure
First, a caveat on the macrostructure of the game. I saw it was a "collect all the endings for 97 achievements" type of thing, so I used the ten pages of save files to do that efficiently. It was only a conversation on Discord that revealed to me individual save states contain all of your choices that matter to unlock the true ending -- you can't jump across saves. Given that, I hopped into a save, blasted through a couple more endings (luckily, I had a few in one save), and got to the "true ending" in 15 minutes. However, it appears the benefits it gives of tracking which endings I already got in a single save might be gone anyway (you have to start a New Game), meaning going for more endings means doing more of what I was doing in the first place.
I'm not sure I understand the author's intent of how a player is supposed to engage with this, given they slapped 97 achievements on it, but I can confidently say I disagree with their approach. I don't accept the premise of "be satisfied with the handful of endings you get and set it aside" in something that functions precisely like The Stanley Parable regarding how many branching paths are condensed into 10-15 minute loops. The game's most passionate audience will read it all, so why not accept that as a given and account for it in the game structure more directly?
Story
As for the story...having seen over a dozen individual endings, I'd say it's a work that is far too preoccupied with itself in a meta context. It's not just the time looping -- it's the actual characters, the dialog and exposition, and the choices available to the player. It's all completely about itself while saying almost nothing beyond: the princess is fucked up and weird, the narrator thinks she's terrible and wants to follow the script, the situation is absurd and constructed, and the protagonist can and will question anything and everything about the situation across dozens of playthroughs despite the answer to every possible question having already been provided dozens of times. There is a "true ending" that contextualizes all of this, but the context is obvious. It's what I assumed it would be from the outset.
For a game with so many endings and unique dialog, the paths are almost all fundamentally the same. A spooky/weird/scary thing happens, the player chooses from a handful of contrived options to try to find a path they haven't done already, the spooky thing escalates, the player "dies," the narrator doesn't know it's a time loop, there are absurdly far too many lines of the protagonist/princess/narrator commenting on what is or isn't a time loop and what is or isn't a contrived situation (to the point where I started just skipping them because they all play out the same despite, incredibly, all being unique VO), and then the thread ends and that's it. After a few endings, you don't learn anything of substance about the princess, the narrator, the protagonist, or the situation you didn't already know, and the conversations start to sound the same.
And the real bummer is that the titular Princess is functionally not a character. All of this is a construct from the perspective of the Princess. She couldn't care less how any situation steers or ends up. There's nothing to learn about her. She has no wants or needs outside of the construct of being a vessel to do horrifying things and make meta or blithe remarks, and, in effect, she knows this and plays into it. Doing meta stories is fine, but, for me, a writer needs a LOT more substance at the heart of their meta characters to make all the overly contrived structure and constant sarcastic or repetitive meta-commentary worth the audience's time. I have to say Rick from Rick and Morty is the obvious great example of doing this well, fully knowing >50% of people who might read this will find this example terrible and write me off for it (which is ironic because this game is vastly more similar than not in terms of some fundamental principles and themes). It would also be nice if the meta-commentary said something of substance, but I can even enjoy meta works that say barely anything as long as there is substance elsewhere in the work. Unfortunately, I could not find substance here.
I feel like I have to acknowledge the meta ending character who ties all the endings together. Well... wildly, to me specifically, it just feels... lazy, to be honest. I've been obsessed with metafiction and even meta horror for years, and an entity who exists beyond the script to consume the outcomes of the story into some overly vague and (to be generous) poetic monologs implying a greater fantastical force that doesn't operate on a thematic or worldbuilding level to contribute much of anything to the work is... Yeah, like I said, it just feels lazy and obvious. I've written similar things in first drafts or notes, and they feel like half-finished ideas that I'd like to have taken further because I think a metafictional horror force should at least have substantive character to it. Or the worldbuilding around it should be impeccable to allow for how innately obnoxious it is as a concept. I can forgive this type of character in an SCP short story or something because that's a low-scope and lower-effort work, but this game puts SO much effort forward.
Even setting aside "how a meta entity should function in fiction," I also think that entity should say clever or interesting things, not just aimless and contextless poeticism. "I am an ocean of possibility, I am endless and consuming change, I am Isaiah's complete lack of surprise or curiosity at anything I am saying (except I am not that because I am not a work that is up to the task of meaningfully criticizing itself (despite being endlessly meta and sarcastic))." Like, I entirely got it the first time it was explained, and adding another 1000 words of exposition about it after that didn't make it more compelling or emotionally engaging for me.
Conclusion
The whole thing, as Peter Griffin would say, insists upon itself. I walked away with the thought that it has great vibes, an ambitious structure, and also that the whole thing must have been MUCH easier to write this many branching paths for by constraining the three available characters to be so simplistic that they only exist to support the fundamental structure. In no way do I mean to diminish the effort put in -- I acknowledge this is a monumentally sizeable creative work -- but the whole thing is an immense web of effort that seems to insist it is much more emotionally substantive than I felt about it as a player.
2022
Among challenging platformers with something like time-based medals, usually the completionist mindset is only allowed for the best of all players. The optional content in such games usually is somewhat tedious, incredibly difficult, and mind-numbing to accomplish. By contrast, the best aspect of "Neon White" is a challenge level that does not expect flawless execution but rewards knowledge and careful thinking. It's not easy to 100% the game's challenges, but it is attainable without being overly frustrating or annoying. For people who want more than that, they can chase beating their friends' scores or speedrunning.
Aside from that, there's not a lot to say about what makes "Neon White" fun aside from the fact that it mixes up all the different forms of moving through 3d space in endlessly satisfying ways. Nearly every cool thing you've ever done to get around platforming with an FPS camera is served up here, and they're all celebrated and combined with impeccably satisfying level design and unique twists that render all of them utterly compelling.
The only bad thing one could say about the game is that the storytelling is a bit obnoxious and not as compelling or deep as it should be for how much dialog is present. The characters are fine, but it does not explore them with much nuance or detail, and thematically there's not much of anything to pay attention to, let alone anything remotely related to your experience of the gameplay. It's arguable that without the aesthetic and story, the game wouldn't feel quite as satisfying, but it can also just be argued that there's no reason for the writing to not be either better than it is or less present than it is.
Overall, my top game of 2022. Incredibly satisfying.
Level Design: 10/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Music: 10/10
Story: 4/10
Characters: 5/10
Dialog: 5/10
Aside from that, there's not a lot to say about what makes "Neon White" fun aside from the fact that it mixes up all the different forms of moving through 3d space in endlessly satisfying ways. Nearly every cool thing you've ever done to get around platforming with an FPS camera is served up here, and they're all celebrated and combined with impeccably satisfying level design and unique twists that render all of them utterly compelling.
The only bad thing one could say about the game is that the storytelling is a bit obnoxious and not as compelling or deep as it should be for how much dialog is present. The characters are fine, but it does not explore them with much nuance or detail, and thematically there's not much of anything to pay attention to, let alone anything remotely related to your experience of the gameplay. It's arguable that without the aesthetic and story, the game wouldn't feel quite as satisfying, but it can also just be argued that there's no reason for the writing to not be either better than it is or less present than it is.
Overall, my top game of 2022. Incredibly satisfying.
Level Design: 10/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Music: 10/10
Story: 4/10
Characters: 5/10
Dialog: 5/10
2022
The short verdict is that Pentiment is an amazing narrative adventure game, second only to Disco Elysium with the goal of telling a coherent interactive story with clear themes that seamlessly braid into a compelling plot delivered through a lot of really interesting choices and consequences. Some people will surely write really long and engaging essays about the themes and substance and delivery of this game, but, honestly, it's so dense that I don't feel like I can really scratch the surface of that kind of analysis without playing it multiple times and treating it like a college essay, so I'll instead just lightly cover why I enjoyed it as much as I did across the important elements of narrative gameplay.
STORY / PLOT - 8/10
The game's plot is a series of interconnected mysteries spanning three separate time periods. The plot isn't riveting in the sense of a dramatic thriller, but that's because the focus of the game ends up being the characters and the larger narrative of the town. The mystery is used as a structural skeleton to weave together the stories of the townsfolk and those living in the church on the hill above them. The game is, by volume, actually more "slice of life" than it is "murder mystery", as even talking to townsfolks about the mystery or recent dramatic events often takes place during literal meals that you share with them.
Given that premise, the plot is serviceable and keeps the ball rolling. It's not going to blow your mind, and at times it might even feel a bit frustrating because not everything delivers a clear or direct conclusion when and how you might expect in a murder mystery. However, the plot does its job and ultimately pays off in a relatively satisfying way that ties all of the story and theme threads together.
DIALOG - 8/10
In terms of raw prose, the dialog is spartan and naturalistic. There is a lot of levity and sarcasm, and while I can't say the game actually made me laugh a single time, it all flows in a way that feels relatable and incredibly human. You feel at home with the characters fairly quickly, and the way soft personality-driven humor comes through in the vast majority of conversation is one of the major components of making the game feel real and relatable.
There is a real sense of economy of words, as all dialog is delivered in speech bubbles instead of the giant text boxes common in Obsidian's (and similar) titles. You can tell this "word-per-bubble" budget genuinely forced the writers to actually edit their ideas down and not waste the player's time. Conversations flow very organically, with interruptions and asides, and everything feels timed out such that it's the closest feeling you can get to voice acting without actual voice acting.
CHARACTERS - 6/10
The naturalistic style flows into the characters. No single character is a standout -- no one steals the scene, no one is hilarious, and no one is the most charismatic or the most memorable. This is because the town is the "main character," and everyone makes up its corpus in a meaningful way. Even while some characters are more or less "plot-relevant," if you take the time to actually talk to everyone, you see that everyone is the star of their own little story, and they're all focused on their immediate lives and relationships. The details about each character's life flesh out the setting more than tell you individual compelling narratives that will stick in your mind, yet their delivery of those details is at all times enjoyable as a result of the very believable naturalistic dialog.
Unlike classic Obsidian (and similar) games, talking to every "NPC" in this game doesn't feel like you're just bouncing from exposition dump to exposition dump. People tell you how they feel and who they are in ways that are poignant and direct, which is enhanced by the word economy that the speech bubbles enforce. You learn exactly as much as you need to about any given character, no more or less. Death, relationships, and raising children are ubiquitous topics, and how each person speaks about these things gives you a sincere dive into the time and society in that they live.
PACING / STRUCTURE - 8/10
The game is broken into three acts. Fully explaining how these acts are structured is impossible without spoiling the flow of the game, and experiencing how those parts flow into each other without foreknowledge can greatly enhance one's experience of the game.
So without spoilers, it can simply be said that the structure and pacing of the game are quite good. There are lulls at certain steps, periods where you talk to a LOT more people in a dozen disparate little stories, and then there are parts where you're only allowed to experience the plot on rails and not allowed to explore or talk to anyone. Some of the flaws in pacing tie to narrative design flaws explained below, but all things considered, the highs and lows of the story structure are compelling, and the slowest moments of the game are also the richest in character and tone, so it never feels boring even if sometimes you are mozying and other times you are running.
NARRATIVE DESIGN - 7/10
It's a very simple game with very basic mechanics.
- You can pick background details for your character that unlock special dialog options.
- You can talk to people and select dialog options.
- You can sometimes "persuade people" (which shows you a meter being filled/emptied based on things you've said or done that affect that persuasion positively or negatively, and the only way to "succeed the check" is to have enough positives to fill the meter).
- You can walk through (many) interconnected locations, most of which are always available but some of which are contextually available (such as based on time of day) or only available at specific plot beats.
- You can interact with a small number of interactable things that are prominently highlighted with a big interactable icon (there is no "pixel hunting" like in a point-and-click game, anything you can do in a location is completely obvious).
- You can choose how to "fill your time" within certain windows where the resulting scene will move time forwards to the next time block.
So how do you create a compelling murder investigation with multiple possible outcomes with those limited mechanics? Well, to really explain the answer to that would mean spoiling the entire story. One of the strongest elements of the entire story and narrative structure can only be understood after finishing the game, experiencing the outcomes based on your choices, and then looking up the other outcomes you didn't choose. Without spoiling anything, suffice it to say that the game does a pretty good job at making it so every possible outcome feels narratively satisfying, even if it may suffer a bit from the "well technically there is still a best choice" syndrome so common in games like this.
Taking it in good faith that all of the narrative design is fundamentally okay and enjoyable, let's look at some of the frustrations a player might run into. All of these flaws are very common in narrative games, and almost no game has "solved" the frustrations these types of things can result in for players who think really hard about how they interact with games (though, again, the game that has solved all of these issues is Disco Elysium).
First off, it's not always obvious who you can talk to at what time of day. If you're thorough and a completionist, you'll eventually realize that you are basically obligated to talk to everyone, everywhere, every day if you want all of the content. It's often very random who has something new to say and who doesn't, and there are even some special events in places you might not expect to look at some times in the day, encouraging a completionist to walk through every screen of the entire game during every time period and trying to talk to every person (which would easily add ~2-3 hours to the game given the number of days there are). This is arguably not fixed by playing multiple times, since most of the time you won't find something somewhere you didn't expect to, so it wouldn't feel like you're exploring story branches in a second play, it would just feel like you're wandering around randomly hoping to see something you maybe missed.
The above problem also results in a lot of paranoia about "how you use your time." It turns out an enormous amount of the narrative is NOT something that uses up your time block. In any given time block, you can and should talk to many people, sometimes every single character in the entire game, if you want to best get all of the information you can get before proceeding to choose a scene that will progress the time block. This makes the pacing of the game feel very weird because it's obvious that the designers intend for you to maybe talk to a few different people at different times of day and what they have to say will be the same whether you did it in the morning or afternoon, but the time pressure the game puts on your makes the "gamer brain" constantly paranoid whether they're going to miss something that there was no reason to miss.
Next, when it comes to choice and consequence, it turns out most of the game states are very binary. Many outcomes result from a large number of prior dialog choices you've made, but in most of these cases, getting what you want out of the situation is a result of simply being polite and agreeable to everyone all the time (go along with what they say, respect them, don't make a fuss). It's arguable this "agreeable" bias ties to the themes (see below), but there are not many opinion-driven outcomes wherein siding with one versus another idea results in equal narrative pay-off. You're often not choosing A or B (or N) but instead choosing A or !A. This failure in narrative design is very common, Disco Elysium may be the only narrative game that manages to avoid it for the majority of its runtime.
Many outcomes are dependent on specific character backgrounds that you pick at the start of the game, so you're allotted a handful of things that seem like you could interact with (in conversations and in the world), but in reality, you can't unless you have the right background. As an example, in Act 3, there are three conversations wherein three people each ask you for advice and the conversations each end with a choice, and then to convince them to do the thing you choose (your advice) you must succeed a "persuasion check." However, in this game persuasion checks are tied to accumulating "positive points" based on dialog choices you've made, and in ALL three of these conversations, being able to gain "positive points" is tied to conversation options that are only shown based on your background. If you don't have the relevant background(s), you see few dialog options that can change the outcome at all, and the persuasion check at the end is completely impossible, leaving you wondering why and possibly just looking up the solution. (Also, START MINOR SPOILERS to make matters worse, you can make them do what you want by telling them to do the opposite thing and then failing the persuasion check, which in this case does not feel like a thematic and purposeful narrative decision regarding "reverse psychology actually works" or something. END MINOR SPOILERS)
THEMES - 10/10
This game has a LOT of themes, and it manages to weave all of them into the entire story and even somehow manages to make all of them relevant to the murder mystery and the final outcomes of the story. It's a rare occasion to see game writing that understands themes at all, let alone makes it a rule to make them present in every single aspect of the narrative and every conversation you have in the game. This is the meat where someone could write a very thorough essay on every one of these.
- Agreeability and mob mentality.
- Social bonds and obligations.
- Myths and legends evolving with culture.
- Proletariat versus the rich.
- Mortality contrasted to daily living.
It's also remarkable that it's a game where Catholicism is ever-present (you literally talk to over a dozen monks/priests/nuns) and yet it doesn't actually feel like religious doctrine and religiosity are being shoved down the audience's collective throat. Some might actually get ruffled at the idea of being forced to play as a character who participates in a highly religious society without the option to meaningfully not be religious, but the thorough focus on making all of the characters feel human first and religious second (or third or fourth) helps you to understand this is just how it is. The story does not specifically regard Christianity or Catholicism in any real detail -- it's historical fiction for sure, but it's "light" historical at best. It instead regards much more how religious and political institutions affect small societies and it just so happens in this case it's the Holy Roman Empire.
OVERALL
This is a great narrative game with an enjoyable structure, a compelling story, and interwoven intelligent themes throughout. Absolutely worth playing for anyone who enjoys storytelling-focused games, even if you think the "historical fiction" focus might not be your cup of tea.
STORY / PLOT - 8/10
The game's plot is a series of interconnected mysteries spanning three separate time periods. The plot isn't riveting in the sense of a dramatic thriller, but that's because the focus of the game ends up being the characters and the larger narrative of the town. The mystery is used as a structural skeleton to weave together the stories of the townsfolk and those living in the church on the hill above them. The game is, by volume, actually more "slice of life" than it is "murder mystery", as even talking to townsfolks about the mystery or recent dramatic events often takes place during literal meals that you share with them.
Given that premise, the plot is serviceable and keeps the ball rolling. It's not going to blow your mind, and at times it might even feel a bit frustrating because not everything delivers a clear or direct conclusion when and how you might expect in a murder mystery. However, the plot does its job and ultimately pays off in a relatively satisfying way that ties all of the story and theme threads together.
DIALOG - 8/10
In terms of raw prose, the dialog is spartan and naturalistic. There is a lot of levity and sarcasm, and while I can't say the game actually made me laugh a single time, it all flows in a way that feels relatable and incredibly human. You feel at home with the characters fairly quickly, and the way soft personality-driven humor comes through in the vast majority of conversation is one of the major components of making the game feel real and relatable.
There is a real sense of economy of words, as all dialog is delivered in speech bubbles instead of the giant text boxes common in Obsidian's (and similar) titles. You can tell this "word-per-bubble" budget genuinely forced the writers to actually edit their ideas down and not waste the player's time. Conversations flow very organically, with interruptions and asides, and everything feels timed out such that it's the closest feeling you can get to voice acting without actual voice acting.
CHARACTERS - 6/10
The naturalistic style flows into the characters. No single character is a standout -- no one steals the scene, no one is hilarious, and no one is the most charismatic or the most memorable. This is because the town is the "main character," and everyone makes up its corpus in a meaningful way. Even while some characters are more or less "plot-relevant," if you take the time to actually talk to everyone, you see that everyone is the star of their own little story, and they're all focused on their immediate lives and relationships. The details about each character's life flesh out the setting more than tell you individual compelling narratives that will stick in your mind, yet their delivery of those details is at all times enjoyable as a result of the very believable naturalistic dialog.
Unlike classic Obsidian (and similar) games, talking to every "NPC" in this game doesn't feel like you're just bouncing from exposition dump to exposition dump. People tell you how they feel and who they are in ways that are poignant and direct, which is enhanced by the word economy that the speech bubbles enforce. You learn exactly as much as you need to about any given character, no more or less. Death, relationships, and raising children are ubiquitous topics, and how each person speaks about these things gives you a sincere dive into the time and society in that they live.
PACING / STRUCTURE - 8/10
The game is broken into three acts. Fully explaining how these acts are structured is impossible without spoiling the flow of the game, and experiencing how those parts flow into each other without foreknowledge can greatly enhance one's experience of the game.
So without spoilers, it can simply be said that the structure and pacing of the game are quite good. There are lulls at certain steps, periods where you talk to a LOT more people in a dozen disparate little stories, and then there are parts where you're only allowed to experience the plot on rails and not allowed to explore or talk to anyone. Some of the flaws in pacing tie to narrative design flaws explained below, but all things considered, the highs and lows of the story structure are compelling, and the slowest moments of the game are also the richest in character and tone, so it never feels boring even if sometimes you are mozying and other times you are running.
NARRATIVE DESIGN - 7/10
It's a very simple game with very basic mechanics.
- You can pick background details for your character that unlock special dialog options.
- You can talk to people and select dialog options.
- You can sometimes "persuade people" (which shows you a meter being filled/emptied based on things you've said or done that affect that persuasion positively or negatively, and the only way to "succeed the check" is to have enough positives to fill the meter).
- You can walk through (many) interconnected locations, most of which are always available but some of which are contextually available (such as based on time of day) or only available at specific plot beats.
- You can interact with a small number of interactable things that are prominently highlighted with a big interactable icon (there is no "pixel hunting" like in a point-and-click game, anything you can do in a location is completely obvious).
- You can choose how to "fill your time" within certain windows where the resulting scene will move time forwards to the next time block.
So how do you create a compelling murder investigation with multiple possible outcomes with those limited mechanics? Well, to really explain the answer to that would mean spoiling the entire story. One of the strongest elements of the entire story and narrative structure can only be understood after finishing the game, experiencing the outcomes based on your choices, and then looking up the other outcomes you didn't choose. Without spoiling anything, suffice it to say that the game does a pretty good job at making it so every possible outcome feels narratively satisfying, even if it may suffer a bit from the "well technically there is still a best choice" syndrome so common in games like this.
Taking it in good faith that all of the narrative design is fundamentally okay and enjoyable, let's look at some of the frustrations a player might run into. All of these flaws are very common in narrative games, and almost no game has "solved" the frustrations these types of things can result in for players who think really hard about how they interact with games (though, again, the game that has solved all of these issues is Disco Elysium).
First off, it's not always obvious who you can talk to at what time of day. If you're thorough and a completionist, you'll eventually realize that you are basically obligated to talk to everyone, everywhere, every day if you want all of the content. It's often very random who has something new to say and who doesn't, and there are even some special events in places you might not expect to look at some times in the day, encouraging a completionist to walk through every screen of the entire game during every time period and trying to talk to every person (which would easily add ~2-3 hours to the game given the number of days there are). This is arguably not fixed by playing multiple times, since most of the time you won't find something somewhere you didn't expect to, so it wouldn't feel like you're exploring story branches in a second play, it would just feel like you're wandering around randomly hoping to see something you maybe missed.
The above problem also results in a lot of paranoia about "how you use your time." It turns out an enormous amount of the narrative is NOT something that uses up your time block. In any given time block, you can and should talk to many people, sometimes every single character in the entire game, if you want to best get all of the information you can get before proceeding to choose a scene that will progress the time block. This makes the pacing of the game feel very weird because it's obvious that the designers intend for you to maybe talk to a few different people at different times of day and what they have to say will be the same whether you did it in the morning or afternoon, but the time pressure the game puts on your makes the "gamer brain" constantly paranoid whether they're going to miss something that there was no reason to miss.
Next, when it comes to choice and consequence, it turns out most of the game states are very binary. Many outcomes result from a large number of prior dialog choices you've made, but in most of these cases, getting what you want out of the situation is a result of simply being polite and agreeable to everyone all the time (go along with what they say, respect them, don't make a fuss). It's arguable this "agreeable" bias ties to the themes (see below), but there are not many opinion-driven outcomes wherein siding with one versus another idea results in equal narrative pay-off. You're often not choosing A or B (or N) but instead choosing A or !A. This failure in narrative design is very common, Disco Elysium may be the only narrative game that manages to avoid it for the majority of its runtime.
Many outcomes are dependent on specific character backgrounds that you pick at the start of the game, so you're allotted a handful of things that seem like you could interact with (in conversations and in the world), but in reality, you can't unless you have the right background. As an example, in Act 3, there are three conversations wherein three people each ask you for advice and the conversations each end with a choice, and then to convince them to do the thing you choose (your advice) you must succeed a "persuasion check." However, in this game persuasion checks are tied to accumulating "positive points" based on dialog choices you've made, and in ALL three of these conversations, being able to gain "positive points" is tied to conversation options that are only shown based on your background. If you don't have the relevant background(s), you see few dialog options that can change the outcome at all, and the persuasion check at the end is completely impossible, leaving you wondering why and possibly just looking up the solution. (Also, START MINOR SPOILERS to make matters worse, you can make them do what you want by telling them to do the opposite thing and then failing the persuasion check, which in this case does not feel like a thematic and purposeful narrative decision regarding "reverse psychology actually works" or something. END MINOR SPOILERS)
THEMES - 10/10
This game has a LOT of themes, and it manages to weave all of them into the entire story and even somehow manages to make all of them relevant to the murder mystery and the final outcomes of the story. It's a rare occasion to see game writing that understands themes at all, let alone makes it a rule to make them present in every single aspect of the narrative and every conversation you have in the game. This is the meat where someone could write a very thorough essay on every one of these.
- Agreeability and mob mentality.
- Social bonds and obligations.
- Myths and legends evolving with culture.
- Proletariat versus the rich.
- Mortality contrasted to daily living.
It's also remarkable that it's a game where Catholicism is ever-present (you literally talk to over a dozen monks/priests/nuns) and yet it doesn't actually feel like religious doctrine and religiosity are being shoved down the audience's collective throat. Some might actually get ruffled at the idea of being forced to play as a character who participates in a highly religious society without the option to meaningfully not be religious, but the thorough focus on making all of the characters feel human first and religious second (or third or fourth) helps you to understand this is just how it is. The story does not specifically regard Christianity or Catholicism in any real detail -- it's historical fiction for sure, but it's "light" historical at best. It instead regards much more how religious and political institutions affect small societies and it just so happens in this case it's the Holy Roman Empire.
OVERALL
This is a great narrative game with an enjoyable structure, a compelling story, and interwoven intelligent themes throughout. Absolutely worth playing for anyone who enjoys storytelling-focused games, even if you think the "historical fiction" focus might not be your cup of tea.