I was in the mood to play a CRPG and looked at all the well-known classics and modern hits of the genre that I have yet to play... Disco Elysium, Pillars of Eternity, Planescape: Torment, Tyranny.... the list goes on. And then I installed Geneforge: Mutagen instead - I game I knew nothing about and no one I know had ever played it either. And hey guess what. It isn't very good. The pitch of being a summoner-type guy who can alter the genes or whatever of the creatures you summon is such a cool pitch but then it's an extremely basic system of "spend 2 extra points to boost their strength and 2 extra points to give them an aoe attack" type shit. Wildly underwhelming! And the writing here is so so so so so basic. You wash up on the shore of an abandoned island that is full of "Serviles" (aka humanoid creatures summoned by The Shapers to serve as slaves) and there's three factions and you have to pick one to ally with to get yourself off the island. Will you join the ones who want to peacefully be equals with the Shapers, the ones who want to destroy the shapers, or the ones who just really really like being slaves. I only got a couple hours in but absolutely nothing of what I saw made me think this is worth trudging through the forty hours of playtime to see this thing through so I'm just gonna quit before I get too invested in some dumb shit and go play a Good video game instead.

It's very funny to me that when you create your character the game says "okay you can play as the cool summoner who has the gimmick that the entire game is built around or you can play as a knight or a rogue, if you wanna, I guess." Who is doing that. Who is looking at the game about summoning critters and saying "no thank you, I would like to hit things with a sword instead"