What a disappointment - I was really excited for this game. Unfortunately, the gameplay completely ruined the experience for me. The immersion into early 20th-century Poland in the Russian partitian was easy to focus on over the gameplay until the dialogue tried to fit in quirky modern gaming references... ugh.

Anyways, I thought it was insanely cool to see a game not BASED around early 20th century Eastern Europe, but actually SET in the area and time itself. I thought it was insanely cool that it seemed to follow SMT in a way with the ability to collect + fight with different demons from the area. I am a big fan of SMT and a big fan of Eastern European history, I thought this game would be a natural 5/5 for me! The story and setting are amazing. I loved the historical humor, I loved seeing the mixing of so many different cultures (something I rarely seen mentioned in the West when talking about Eastern Europe), and I love-love-loved gathering my demons and seeing which they would give me next... especially since a good chunk were from Slavic Paganism.

As much as I enjoyed these aspects, the lows of the game are just too low, to the point that I was dreading turning it back on and playing through. The fight sequences are awful, I don't know if I was doing it wrong, but they're painfully slow and very tedious. You never get a move that lets you attack everyone at once, instead forcing you to attack one-by-one. There's never an attack you can do that one shots people either. I mostly started focusing on just making them lose their sanity and hitting them then, or by draining them with a move Wiktor has that has the enemy slowly lose HP each round, and then hitting them with the demon they're weakest to. I dunno, I really started to dread getting into fights, which is a big part of the gameplay. The other part of the gameplay I was fine with, but that's all I could get myself to reach, just being fine with it. That part is finding clues to fight your next enemy. You simply right click to see what's around you to investigate, and then move to the next part in the map to continue doing the same until eventually you reach the group you need to fight. It's my least favorite adventure game form! Just go from point A to point B to point C until you reach a boss fight. Rinse and repeat. The involvement of the Polish Revolution is super interesting, but when you go to do things involving the culture, they don't show you the area, they often just draw you a picture of what the cultural event was; such as telescope viewing, cola tasting, or even visiting a gentleman's club. It's a small complaint, but it bothered me... totally not because I was so excited to see that Gentleman's Club! But it's okay, your character goes to a very depressing brothal later LOL. Later in the game, they also start adding in modern gaming references such as saying "I gotta catch them all!" - it was super awkward, I really didn't like it.

I would say you should check out this game if you're interested in the history, but I had a better time just reading a history book. The gameplay just hit all my pet-peeves and then some, even with the gorgeous (AA) graphics. I unfortunately couldn't bring myself to finish it because of these issues. Check it out if you'd like, otherwise I would recommend playing an SMT game or reading a book on the 1905 Polish Revolution... I think I might go pick up one myself.

2/5