Marking as complete since I've finished what's currently out, but I'll update as more episodes release.

I'd somehow never heard of this game despite it apparently blowing up for being controversial, so I guess I'm not quite as online as I thought I was. A few days ago one of my friends sent me a picture of the male protagonist and told me it looked like me, a bunch of other friends in the group chimed in agreeing, and then one person told me Not!!! to relate to him because the guy was a cannibalistic freak. So naturally I looked up what the game was about and immediately played it.

First of all, there's incest in this game. If you've heard of it, you probably know that already, but if not, there's your warning. I believe it was initially a case of "it's optional, you only get it if you end up on a certain route", which is true to a degree, but the implications and comments are also there regardless of route, so if you're uncomfortable about it at all you're better off not playing it. The only 'optional' part is whether or not it actually goes in the direction of, uh... consummation.

Anyway, onto the actual content: I really dig the graphics. TCOAAL has an almost RPG Maker-esque pixel style, though the sprites are a little more detailed than RPGM's usually are, and the actual character portraits have a really nice, consistent look to them, with the thick white outlines and monochrome colours.

It contains puzzles, and they were pretty much the perfect level of difficulty for me - I enjoy puzzles that make me think, that stump me for a couple of minutes, but that aren't frustratingly hard to the point where I end up stuck on the same section for ages or have to look up a walkthrough. If you like your puzzles to be genuinely tricky, these will probably be too simple for you, but they catered to me pretty perfectly. There is one slightly bothersome dream section where you as Andrew have to get across a black void of a room by finding the right maze-like direction through the dark and making tiles appear, which wasn't difficult as much as it was just annoying to navigate, but it doesn't take long to get past.

If you like your characters to be redeemable and moral, this is definitely not the game for you. Both Ashley and Andrew, the protagonists, are varying degrees of Bad People, with Ashley being manipulative and sadistic, Andrew being apathetic and violent, and both of them being, well, cannibals and murderers. Their parents aren't much better, nor are the side characters who range from 'rude' to 'cartoonishly evil' such as the Toxisoda company, but I wasn't all that bothered by it seeing as I love a good villain protagonist.

The relationship between Andrew and Ashley is... pretty much what I expected going into it from what I'd read. Codependent, mutually toxic, obsessive, with incestuous undertones that become less undertones and more "yeah, this is where the story's headed" by the end of Episode 2 thanks to a future vision of them sleeping together. Not great, obviously, but it is an interesting dynamic to watch unfold in the space of horror fiction where it's unapologetically treated by both the narrative and those around them as fucked up and unhealthy. I gather most of the people crying "incest apologism!" about this game haven't actually played it, because it's not treated as the 'right' thing to do at all, with the narration actively warning you against the choices that take you there, and with it explicitly explained that their abusive and neglectful childhood probably resulted in their feelings in adulthood, as they had no one except each other, and that it caused that sibling protectiveness to become warped and possessive.

Some of the dialogue can be a little silly - Ashley, especially, is extremely openly crude, and she'll make sexual jokes and comments to the point of it being out of place sometimes in a way that doesn't seem intentional (that "Move your fat ass" "I think you mean my awesome fat tits" exchange comes to mind as being notably corny), but it's not as bad as I'd anticipated from other reviews. They're mentally fucked up young adults with sexual complexes and a complete lack of boundaries who talk the way you'd expect that kind of person to talk, really.

Anyway, I played it through with my fiancee and we both genuinely enjoy it so far. I'll be keeping up with updates/devlogs and hope to see the third episode out soon.

The writing and lore is pretty good, the game looks and sounds great. But my god is it the most Mid roguelike there is. Runs either end right when they're getting good or end too soon at all, floor variation isn't nearly as wide as you'd think it should be, enemies don't scale with completion they stay the same the entire time, and 100% completion is locked behind beating that same identical tower 12ish times while fighting the same 9 generic enemies and 4 bosses again and again.

There's a whole lot of potential here. Enemies could have modifiers, floors could start meshing together, the tower could get bigger, the main story could last longer than FINISH ONE RUN. The color chips are fun, buying new subs and specials are great, and I'm absolutely still going to beat it with every weapon because goddamn it am I invested in those lesbians and Acht's story.

But gameplay wise my god does it need more.

"I am a sleeper, one among thousands. I bring you a message. dagoth ur calls you, nerevarine, and you cannot deny your lord. the sixth house is risen, and dagoth is its glory"

despite the doom and gloom about oblivion, it's morrowind that serves as the elder scrolls' greatest anomaly: an inflection point that swerved the series away from faceless maximalism, monolithic breadth, and randomized content. developed during a period of fear and uncertainty about the future of the company, todd howard summed up the philosophy behind the risk taking succinctly: "what's the worst that's going to happen?"

a meticulously handcrafted world you could feasibly traverse in real time, a multitude of elaborate static questlines, lessened emphasis on level scaling, fast travel relegated solely to in-world means, rich itemization, an enhanced dialogue system, smaller dungeons that approximate real spaces... to say the changes were significant is an understatement. while established pillars like the character creation format and learn-by-doing skill system remained largely in tact, nearly everything else was reimagined or reworked to fit a game that was, among many things, more local. where bethesda once crafted abstract worlds, here they'd take on the challenge of designing, establishing, and allowing you to inhabit an actual place

nine regions spiral inward, each housing numerous geographies, cultures and settlements; each with drastically distinct architectures informed by them. the mushroom towers of the telvani, carapace huts of gnisis or ald-ruhn, stone and thatched roof settlements of the imperials, yurts of the ashlanders, and crooked daedric ruins being but a few. where previous — and to a lesser extent subsequent — entries in the series drew from a standard palette of european history and high fantasy, morrowind takes great efforts to distinguish itself as something uniquely alien, largely thanks to artist, writer, and designer michael kirkbride

fittingly, you're a stranger — a foreigner, outlander, n'wah — tasked with observing and navigating the region, its factions and religions, and the splinter groups and fractured politics within them. if you follow the narrative throughline you'll be expected to gather some body of knowledge, but most of it is offered in the way of extracurricular research and after hours inquisition

it's a congruent approach that allows for as much or as little engagement with the absurd amount of subsurface lore and worldbuilding as possible. if you choose to delve you'll get stories full of contradictions, unreliable narrators, historical records, mythological yarns, rituals, poems, lusty argonian maids, and a guy who learned to wear heavy armour so well he could walk on his hands and fuck his wife without removing it. if you choose not to you can stick to the more utile texts like the red book of 3E 426 or dismiss everything altogether. you can go the whole game without knowing what a dwemer is, but you're covered: some folks don't know shit

really, you don't have to know or do anything. once off the boat you'll amble forward all sluggish and dim and likely spend most of your time wandering aimlessly, learning elaborate public transit routes, memorizing directions, and getting lost in vivec. while there's urgency to the main quest, more often than not it'll be sending you far and wide to hobnob, get the lay of the land, and delve into tombs and caverns

and therein lies the brick wall that fells many an adventurer: the combat. in a contentious swerve morrowind is the only game in the series that binds the success of basic attacks to dice rolls. your blade may look like it's passing through one of the dozen cliff racers that've chased you from sheogorad to the ascadian isles, but the outcome is up to chance — and chance is working against you in the early hours. on its face it's a bad decision; it inarguably feels worse than any other game in the series, but that's ultimately why it proves to be the correct one

morrowind has something of a hyperbolic power curve. odds are if you're new to the game you might make a build where rats are lethal, walking up a slight incline requires you to take a break, and your understanding of your weapon is fundamentally unsound in a way that shouldn't be possible. you're basically the biggest loser to ever grace tamriel, and after you meet jiub, sign your paperwork, and get lost finding caius cosades you'll probably find yourself poisoned, paralyzed, or worse. the beauty in this is how it enables a heightened level of contrast

by the end of the game you'll be soaring over the ghostgate adorned in Exquisite Shirts and Pants that eliminate fall damage and fatigue, wielding custom swords that siphon enemy agility ("malder's gait"), and hosting a gilgameshian hoard of artifacts so valuable you'll have to sell them to a crab just to get half the money they're worth. you'll become a living cartoon on some who framed roger rabbit or space jam shit, and the juxtaposition couldn't possibly be more satisfying — all because of those shitty fuckin dice rolls

morrowind is a journey, one that's as much about murking bureaucrats, finding a smoking hot telvani wife, getting called slurs, contracting a thousand diseases, and severing the threads of prophecy as it is being ""Nerevarine"" or anything else. for all its little flaws and idiosyncrasies it continues to creep up the list of my favourite games, and hell, I guess I love it

in the end after a hard fought victory I ended up back where I started: in caius cosades house, now stacked knee high with books, glass armours, boots of flying, sixth house trinkets, and a fire hazard's worth of odds and ends. in honour of my good friend the spymaster I decided to relax, hit the Good Skooma Pipe (Quality: 0.15), and get some rest...

I sure hope nothing weird happens with The Tribunal haha!!!

blows insane plume

Are we so gullible? Do we as an audience not demand anything from our art? There's no story, no new mechanics, no real characters, no interesting or enjoyable visuals, no compelling gameplay, no original ideas at all in fact. Is a faceless strawman to antagonise really enough to get millions of people to play an Unreal Engine asset flip made as artlessly as possible? Is no one else actively disturbed by how blatantly and gracelessly this rips mechanics from every popular game of the last 2 decades, without integrating any of them together whatsoever? Has art ever felt this cynical before?

Feel free to discount my opinion. I am a 'salty Pokemon fanboy' after all, and I only gave this game an hour or so of my not particularly highly valued time. I personally just prefer the art I engage with to care for the art form it sits within, even a little bit. Palworld hates video games. It sees nothing more within them than a collection of things to do and hopes that by shovelling a flaccid farcical version of as many of them as possible into your mouth it will somehow constitute a 'video game' when all is said and done. It doesn't. I'm deeply saddened that so many gamers think so lowly of our art form that they genuinely think this is acceptable.