Decided to buy this and play with my linguist partner as they are not overly into most games after hearing the games novel mechanic and plot praised a few times. The game certainly delivered on these aspects, but felt a bit tedious at some points.
Getting around on the nightingale feels a bit clumsy at times, sometimes you have to re-place words five times while translating a phrase because you guessed some apostrophes wrong, stuff like that.
That being said, we probably tried to complete the game too hard. After finishing the story, you are allowed to restart the game while keeping your knowledge of the ancient language you acquired. Since there is a lot of optional content and various choices to be made, it's probably better to decide to go for two playthroughs instead of one very grindy one.
The game made care about it's characters, world and history. Many twists and suprises caught me off guard as they steered clear of many tropes. Characters have actual agency rather than being just puzzles for the player to solve and you can sense that this was made by people with experiences that differ from most other studios and care about the games they create.
Overall, I would definetly pick this up if you are into creative indie games, care about novel narrative experiences and are willing to power through some dry points in the story.

Decided to buy this and play with my linguist partner as they are not overly into most games after hearing the games novel mechanic and plot praised a few times. The game certainly delivered on these aspects, but felt a bit tedious at some points. Getting around on the nightingale feels a bit clumsy at times, sometimes you have to re-place words five times while translating a phrase because you guessed some apostrophes wrong, stuff like that. That being said, we probably tried to complete the game too hard. After finishing the story, you are allowed to restart the game while keeping your knowledge of the ancient language you acquired. Since there is a lot of optional content and various choices to be made, it's probably better to decide to go for two playthroughs instead of one very grindy one. The game made care about it's characters, world and history. Many twists and suprises caught me off guard as they steered clear of many tropes. Characters have actual agency rather than being just puzzles for the player to solve and you can sense that this was made by people with experiences that differ from most other studios and care about the games they create. Overall, I would definetly pick this up if you are into creative indie games, care about novel narrative experiences and are willing to power through some dry points in the story.