(5-year-old's review, typed by her dad)

3 because you just get to run around and then there's the Peter one. And there's only a Peter Pan one. It only has four levels, but that's the only level that's there! And that's why I did 3 stars because it's not that good. DONE.

[Dad's note: She only played the demo.]

This was a disappointing one for me. I enjoyed this studio's previous game, The Council, for bringing role-playing style stats into a TellTale style game. I wasn't blown away by the story, and the graphics and voice acting could've definitely been better, but I enjoyed it well enough paired with the gameplay mechanics that I had an overall positive experience with it. One of the things Swansong revealed to me about how I play games now, is that I'm just not willing to read through a bunch of superfluous text unless it's exceptionally well written. I used to be the type of player who would read every single codex entry in a BioWare game, and when I played The Council which also has tons of reading, I read through everything I found even if I found it boring sometimes. My playstyle has since changed however, and I'm no longer willing to give my time to something like that unless I view it as being worth my time, and in the case of this game I don't think that it was. My only prior experience with the Vampire: The Masquerade universe being Bloodlines, I've already had an experience with a very well done role-playing style story in this universe in video game form. The central conflict between the Camarilla and the Anarchs in that game is thematically rich and compelling. The conflict in this game just didn't grip me in the same way, and didn't compel me to scrounge through in-game books to try to learn more about it, especially when not everything you can read is crucial or even interesting. When a large amount of the game is about investigating, and I'm too bored to care to read up on the things I'm investigating, that's a bad sign.

I also think that Disco Elysium has just ruined this kind of game for me because it did stat-based storytelling too well. In Disco Elysium every possible way you could think to build your character is valid, and the game itself is more about playing it the way that you want, because there are options for every build imaginable. Swansong on the other hand, having only played through once, really feels like there are certain stats that you could min/max to simply get the "best" outcome. Investing points into your four core dialogue stats seems way too strong, and I never felt like I was choosing between these in an interesting way. It was more "sometimes this will come up and if you have points you'll win easier" and less "multiple of these will come up and you'll make an interesting character choice." I do hope that this studio can get a couple more shots at refining their formula because I do love the concept of RPG meets TellTale. Hopefully they look at how a game like Disco Elysium does this in a CRPG format and can apply it to the kind of game they make. But for this game, it just didn't really grab me.

The biggest let down of 2022 for me. I enjoyed Big Bad Wolf's previous outing, The Council, and assumed that putting the formula to work in the World of Darkness setting could yield nothing but positive results.

Unfortunately, Swansong suffers from uneven character build diversity, strange pacing decisions, and huge story threads that can be easily missed. While the use of RPG elements in a narrative adventure is still a neat concept, Swansongs three POV characters basically need to be built a certain way to make the most of their story paths. If you decide to play through Swansong, do yourself a favor and use a wiki to build your Kindred with the ideal skillset so that you can avoid needless pressure points.

It's (or, rather, it could have been) a solid, narrative-driven adventure-RPG with quite a good story, three protagonists and multiple endings. However, it's so full of glitches, performance issues and game-breaking bugs, even now, months after its release, that it's quite difficult, or even impossible to focus on the game's few merits. Some scenes I had to restart from the beginning several times because I got stuck in a room or in the middle of a puzzle (but only after some heavy swearing and rage quitting). If you want something similar, you should just play The Council instead, trust me. Should you decide to give this one a try anyway, be very familiar with the lore, or be prepared for a lot of reading on the World of Darkness, otherwise, you might feel a bit lost, especially during the first few scenes.

Mobile backloggd keeps erasing my attempts at entries on this so I'll make it short. I enjoyed this game but this is the third version of Sam Barlow doing a game that consists of "watch these FMV clips randomly and see if you can piece together the story". It's a well done format but I'm getting tired of it. What's worse is, despite it centering two topics of personal interest to me, immortality and film, the foray into the supernatural and an ambiguous ending has ultimately left me disappointed. I wanted a bit more. That said, I don't think this tops out Her Story for me. There's a finality in that and there's greater character motivation. Immortality thrives on HOLY SHIT SOMEONE JUST INTERRUPTED ME AGAIN I SWEAR TO GOD IF I LOSE THIS REVIEW A FOURTH TIME ok we're cool. What was I saying? Oh right. Immortality is at its best when its being creepy and fourth wall breaking but even that gets kinda old as it starts to become the main focus. It's like that scene in Bill and Ted 2 (or Spy Kids 2, whatever generation this review hits) where they fall in a pit for a long time and at first its intense but after a while its kinda dull? It's like that.

Anyway, the game is good like the other ones Sam Barlow has done. If you haven't played any of his games you're likely to enjoy this one more. I personally wish he would team up with someone who can program a compelling video game and write them an interesting story. Then again, are Sam Barlow's stories even interesting or is it just the manner in which you uncover them? Either way, while I enjoyed this, I think I'm good on his games for a while unless he does something drastically different. Still a good recommend, especially if you have game pass but wew