i wish i had more patience for roguelike-type things bc i folded eventually and just watched a playthrough i just haaaaaaaaaaaaaate redoing stuff. this isnt a commentary on this games quality in any way! just me being miserable
anyway im obsessed w this game now. theres just so much depth to it, its mechanics, all the random things that can happen and are tied to each other, its so fun to learn about the mechanics and watching the cogwheels spin. ofc your enjoyment will heavily depend on how much you can tolerate the game's brutal RNG, especially since you can't reliably save your game so you can't savescum to experiment with what you have but well. that is the point and the feature! it's definitely not for me because i got driven insane by the adhd demons about 10 hours in, but if trying to survive in a brutal world where you are given very little information and every advantage you gain feels like something you earned then this is for you. it made me think of games like lisa the painful or pathologic, both of which i also think are great, more games should explore frustration as a mechanic even if i might not have the patience to endure them in full
another specific thing i really liked about it that also reminded me of patho is how the game gets textured by the various skills your starting character can have. cahara can pick locks, which makes it easier to avoid unnecessary combat to earn keys. enki already starts with magic, something other characters might not even encounter unless they get a lucky roll on a scroll in a library or figure out the skill system. ragnvaldr can start with devour that makes it much easier to manage his hunger. of course, as you master the game's tricks and mechanics, this will not be as crucial, but it makes the dungeons feel novel each time and recontextualizes them based on who you play as, similarly to how the town is viewed differently through the lenses of each player character of pathologic
the writing is also really fun, this is probably the first game in a long while that awakened that same feeling of reading books in TES3 and being immersed in an alien world... a lot of RPGs and what not have a codex or journals etc to read, but theyre typically either already overrun with a lot of text that reading books doesn't feel very rewarding or it's just extra information for lore nerds so it doesn't feel very interesting. meanwhile the books you randomly obtain is either the only way to learn a game mechanic, or the only way to peer into the game's story, so it felt very magical again
generally just only issues i have:
- unnecessary sexual assault / rape stuff that afaik is not a thing in the sequel so thats nice
- random bugs, some of which can lock you out of getting a specific ending and you might not even know until its too late, which really sucks for this kind of demanding game. ofc you can just slurp the ending off youtube but thats just unsatisfying in a bad way
- uh... i guess there are a lot of typos but that does not bother me much. to think that this was made by basically one person with limited help its like who even cares. titanic effort
otherwise really all love... love the artstyle, love the music, love the setting, love the gameplay even if i hate roguelikes and ended up giving up in the end. like genuinely i had... fun...? however much it is possible to have fun in a setting like this but really i quite liked trying to unearth more and push through in a gruesome world. i compared it to pathologic earlier but i dont think its a good comparison as the first game is genuinely not fun since its . just walking. this one is actually enjoyable as a game so yeah. early in the game i climbed into a shit hole to see what will happen and what happened was that i was stuck in a shit hole with no way out, effectively ending that run. 10/10. i hear the save system is a bit more lenient in the sequel though still with its own drawbacks and balances, so i might try to finish that one
anyway im obsessed w this game now. theres just so much depth to it, its mechanics, all the random things that can happen and are tied to each other, its so fun to learn about the mechanics and watching the cogwheels spin. ofc your enjoyment will heavily depend on how much you can tolerate the game's brutal RNG, especially since you can't reliably save your game so you can't savescum to experiment with what you have but well. that is the point and the feature! it's definitely not for me because i got driven insane by the adhd demons about 10 hours in, but if trying to survive in a brutal world where you are given very little information and every advantage you gain feels like something you earned then this is for you. it made me think of games like lisa the painful or pathologic, both of which i also think are great, more games should explore frustration as a mechanic even if i might not have the patience to endure them in full
another specific thing i really liked about it that also reminded me of patho is how the game gets textured by the various skills your starting character can have. cahara can pick locks, which makes it easier to avoid unnecessary combat to earn keys. enki already starts with magic, something other characters might not even encounter unless they get a lucky roll on a scroll in a library or figure out the skill system. ragnvaldr can start with devour that makes it much easier to manage his hunger. of course, as you master the game's tricks and mechanics, this will not be as crucial, but it makes the dungeons feel novel each time and recontextualizes them based on who you play as, similarly to how the town is viewed differently through the lenses of each player character of pathologic
the writing is also really fun, this is probably the first game in a long while that awakened that same feeling of reading books in TES3 and being immersed in an alien world... a lot of RPGs and what not have a codex or journals etc to read, but theyre typically either already overrun with a lot of text that reading books doesn't feel very rewarding or it's just extra information for lore nerds so it doesn't feel very interesting. meanwhile the books you randomly obtain is either the only way to learn a game mechanic, or the only way to peer into the game's story, so it felt very magical again
generally just only issues i have:
- unnecessary sexual assault / rape stuff that afaik is not a thing in the sequel so thats nice
- random bugs, some of which can lock you out of getting a specific ending and you might not even know until its too late, which really sucks for this kind of demanding game. ofc you can just slurp the ending off youtube but thats just unsatisfying in a bad way
- uh... i guess there are a lot of typos but that does not bother me much. to think that this was made by basically one person with limited help its like who even cares. titanic effort
otherwise really all love... love the artstyle, love the music, love the setting, love the gameplay even if i hate roguelikes and ended up giving up in the end. like genuinely i had... fun...? however much it is possible to have fun in a setting like this but really i quite liked trying to unearth more and push through in a gruesome world. i compared it to pathologic earlier but i dont think its a good comparison as the first game is genuinely not fun since its . just walking. this one is actually enjoyable as a game so yeah. early in the game i climbed into a shit hole to see what will happen and what happened was that i was stuck in a shit hole with no way out, effectively ending that run. 10/10. i hear the save system is a bit more lenient in the sequel though still with its own drawbacks and balances, so i might try to finish that one