Recent reviews by Sepia_Knight

A great murder mystery in the style of Danganronpa.

The storytelling is focused, with no fluff - it's engaging and interesting throughout. My playthrough took 12 hours to 100% the game and I enjoyed all of it.

A review by AfroBot matches my thoughts about the game very closely.

I'd strongly recommend this to anyone who likes murder mystery games where you actually make the deductions yourself.

Of the Quantic Dream games I've played (Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, Detroit: Become Human and this), I'd say this is my favourite. It has a great story, compellingly told. The QTE's are okay - failing them usually has only a minor impact on the story. The tone of the game is generally quite serious, with few moments of levity. The voice performances are excellent.

I enjoyed this game a lot and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys story-centric action games with sci-fi and supernatural themes.

Highly addictive and fun. Farm some resources, kill a boss and then build up your camp. Rinse and repeat. It's done very well. The campaign can be completed in a lot less than the 62 hours I played - I just enjoyed the farming.

Great game - minesweeper on a hex grid with some extra rules.

The game has excellent level and sound design.

I'd strongly recommend this to anyone who likes puzzle games.

The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante is an excellent game. It's a visual novel set in a low-magic world where inhabitants each have one of three Lots: the Lot of the Noble, the Lot of the Priest and the Lot of the Commoner.

The gameplay consists of being presented with a series of events in the life of Sir Brante and after each event making a decision. These decisions are impactful, often affecting Sir Brante's statistics, his relationship with others and even the world around him. The game has a range of different endings, depending on the decisions you take throughout the game and particularly towards its conclusion.

The story and its telling are both done very well - an impressive achievement considering the many decisions you can make that significantly affect so much of the tale. The characters are interesting and well-designed and it's easy to become attached to some of them, particularly the family and the (optional) love interests.

Partway through the game, you can choose Sir Brante's Lot. The choice of Lot greatly affects the story from that point onwards. I played through each of the Lots at least once and really enjoyed seeing the different sides to the characters and their stories depending on the decisions I had taken. I was very impressed with how well the game's many interlinked stories were constructed.

The soundtrack is excellent, drawing the player into the game, its world and the life of Sir Brante. There is very little voice acting (just in the cutscenes introducing each chapter), but it didn't feel needed.

Overall, I would strongly recommend this game to anyone looking for a great visual novel with many choices.

I enjoyed playing both Kingdom of Loathing (browser game set in the same universe) and West of Loathing (the prequel to this game on Steam) so I decided to play this one too. It's pretty good -I'd say I found West of Loathing funnier, but this was well worth a playthrough.

The gameplay, sound design and story were all great.

I'd recommend this game to anyone wanting a comedy RPG.

- Frequent Blue Screens of Death, even after reinstall.
- Many unavoidable game-breaking bugs.
- Some levels literally unplayable, with a crash to desktop or permanent freeze at the start.
- Have to log in with a Microsoft account to play in any mode.

Shockingly bad experience, especially for a large company like Microsoft.

Great puzzle game - one of the best I've played. The puzzle difficulty was perfect for me and I really enjoyed my playthrough. The UI and atmosphere both really suited the game. The game is short (it took me about 5 hours to 100% it) but it felt like the right length.

A tip: play in hard mode (flaming devil icon in top-right) from the start - you get the hard mode achievements at the same time as the normal ones that way.

I really enjoy games where you gradually build up a collection of cards throughout the game without them being reset on each run and this game achieved that very successfully, with an interesting array of impactful and varied cards.

The story was engaging and well-told.

The fights were pretty easy on Hard (Koldunya) difficulty. I would probably recommend Hardest (Nightmare) difficulty to others and even then I don't think it would be too hard. The toughest fight is probably the first boss. From the second seal, you get some cards that make surviving much simpler.

I'd recommend this game for anyone looking for a fun card game with a lot of atmosphere.

Very good game of iterated social deduction against AI. The gameplay and story both work well together to create an engaging game. There's more gameplay segments than VN ones and the balance between the two has been chosen well. I'd compare it favourably to Danganronpa and the Zero Escape series, though the gameplay is quite different.

Edited: I've now replayed it from the start for another ~30 hour playthrough. This is the first VN I've done that for (aside from ones with multiple-endings). I'd strongly recommend this game - I've not found any other quite like it.