I appreciate Road 96 for doing certain things like the road trip setting and its obvious that there's heart poured into this game, but it does seem to be set back by lack of time and resources.
Like many games of this type it advertises itself as a "your choices matter" kind of experience, and like many games of this type it seems bigger on the surface (maybe the order of encounters will have a different effect, maybe this dialogue choice will lead to a different path) but once you get to it the actual important choices are few and they just lead to 3 pre-determined endings (escaping by yourself, reform the country via elections or revolution). Certain situations also seems to have more than one way of solving them at first but then you quickly realize that they are pretty railroaded into getting you to do what the game wants you to do.
The other advertised aspect of this game is that its procedurally generated, but really that just means that the game choses an scenario at random. This system also makes for the story to be structured in a way where you're constantly jumping between different snippets featuring any of the repeating characters. Which was fine by me, I didn't really dislike that way of telling the story but I get that some people think it makes it feel disjointed.
The plot presumes itself of being outwardly political, which I don't think its a bad thing, but I also don't think that being political immediatly makes it good. Its subtle as a brick and while most of characters were alright by me you sometimes do get some akward dialogue.
In any case its not a bad experience, I had a good time with it and I can easily reccomend it to anyone who enjoy narrative driven experiences, I just wish they had more time/budget to get a little bit more ambitious with the concept.
Like many games of this type it advertises itself as a "your choices matter" kind of experience, and like many games of this type it seems bigger on the surface (maybe the order of encounters will have a different effect, maybe this dialogue choice will lead to a different path) but once you get to it the actual important choices are few and they just lead to 3 pre-determined endings (escaping by yourself, reform the country via elections or revolution). Certain situations also seems to have more than one way of solving them at first but then you quickly realize that they are pretty railroaded into getting you to do what the game wants you to do.
The other advertised aspect of this game is that its procedurally generated, but really that just means that the game choses an scenario at random. This system also makes for the story to be structured in a way where you're constantly jumping between different snippets featuring any of the repeating characters. Which was fine by me, I didn't really dislike that way of telling the story but I get that some people think it makes it feel disjointed.
The plot presumes itself of being outwardly political, which I don't think its a bad thing, but I also don't think that being political immediatly makes it good. Its subtle as a brick and while most of characters were alright by me you sometimes do get some akward dialogue.
In any case its not a bad experience, I had a good time with it and I can easily reccomend it to anyone who enjoy narrative driven experiences, I just wish they had more time/budget to get a little bit more ambitious with the concept.