Recent reviews by dnaod

Yeah no. Not for me. I was hoping for a game that was something like XCom, or maybe Shadowrun Returns -style combat. This has some of the gameplay with some pretty frustrating design choices that made it far less fun. Like ammo. I ran out of ammo pretty quickly and realized that inventory restrictions meant ammo scarcity was going to be a thing throughout this game. There's enough frustrations in the gameplay to add ammo conservation on top of it.

Yeah, I'm not going to finish this game. After your n-th time of being stuck on a puzzle for 30 minutes, looking up the answer, and realizing you'd never would have solved such a ridiculous, illogical, arbitrary puzzle, the enjoyment of the game is lost.

Pity too. It's beautiful in it's humorous writing, glorious soundtrack, and amazing cut scenes. But damn... the puzzles are just so stupid and nonsensical in their solutions.

Make some progress, get stuck for another 30 minutes, look it up to find out you were supposed to repeat that action 3x to trigger the advancement. But why?!?!! It's just a game of experimentation with no aha moments. Just moments of, "you're kidding me. _That_ was the solution?!?!"

If you enjoy random experimentation and hunt and click, you might like it. If you like being rewarded for clever thinking and subtle connections, this is not the game for you.

And my play timer is wrong. I played for longer than 2.7 hours.

This game will be very polarizing. I love RPGs that are a mix of narrative and... well... anything else. This game is really only narrative driven. There's some really interesting mechanics thrown in like the ability to assign problems to your subconscious for thinking in the background, the skill tree is fascinating, etc, but ultimately, the game comes down to just listening to very long, well-written narratives and response trees. Did I mention that it's VERY well written? Did I mention that the conversations are very, very, very long?

And yet, I just ended up having to admit that I wasn't enjoying the game at all. I felt like I was supposed to be enjoying it because it receives such high praise but I just didn't like the character I was playing nor the pace of the game. I found it frustratingly restrictive and each time I started it, dreaded having to remember everything that happened last time, how much pointless dialog I was going to have to sit through for very little progress.

Ultimately, I don't know how you know whether you'll like this game or not. I love the Shadowrun RPGs and yet didn't like this game. But it sure sounds like if this is a game for you, you'll really like it. I didn't.

I wish I could go back and experience this game for the first time again and again.

Beautiful little puzzle platformer. But please play this game on the biggest, brightest, highest resolution, highest dpi display you have. I started it on the SteamDeck and it was lacklustre. It wasn't until I moved to my PC that I was really taken aback by the incredible art, colours, and beauty. The use of camera pulling back quite far from the character during gameplay makes it not a really great game for small screens.

It breaks my heart to write this review but I just feel others need to be warned of what they are getting in to if they purchase this game.

First off, this game is excellent. I have enjoyed so much of it. The story has been great, the gameplay fun, the flow an excellent combination of peaceful awe and beauty with high-tension moments of terror.

BUT... I've now encountered my SECOND game breaking bug. I was stuck for a good week and a half on a mission called Signal to Noise because the game scripting did not work as it intended. It took multiple sessions of retracing my steps of that mission to find a workaround for the issue. But I did and I was happy.

Until two weeks ago when I encountered a second bug on a mission called The Power Plant. Now admittedly, it would be pretty easy at various points in this mission to think there's a bug when there isn't due to the challenge of getting all the valves in the right positions. Except I'm at the "tutorial" door where there's only one valve. This first door is bugged and moving the steam pipe valve melts the door's ice but the door never unlocks. I've watched YouTube videos, read FAQs, and more to see if I missed something other than the one valve that needs moving. Nope. My game is bugged. I've tried reloading some previous save points that were reasonably close to the point I was at but the bug persists.

I'm stuck completely and it's game breaking for me. I can't proceed in the story.

I've reached out to Hinterland Support for both game-breaking bugs. I have yet to even receive a response. I'm not going to replay the whole game to this point. I've really liked this game so far. But I'm horribly disappointed that I can't even finish the game without starting over. Frankly, I'm just not sure what to do at this point.

I'm just sad. Anyhow, that's my warning if you are thinking of buying this game. If you do, I really do hope you don't encounter the same severe bugs that I have.

Enjoyable game with strong writing.

Even though this review claims that I've played this game for only two hours, that is not true. This is the 3rd time I've installed the game and will likely be the last.

Over the past few years it's always annoyed me that I didn't progress further in this game. The atmosphere is great, it's dripping with suspense, the levels are really interesting and feel realistic.

Before I make my next statement, let me just say that I usually crank most modern games to the hardest difficulty setting immediately. I don't want route markers, I want the hardest challenge possible, I don't want hints. But I left this game at the normal difficult setting because I wasn't sure what I was getting into yet.

And the first section of the game was great. Up until the encounter with the 3 antagonistic humans in the Spyre. And this is as far as I've gotten through all 3 of my installs. It's brutal. I know you're supposed to stealth and play the avoidance game and yet this is near impossible. Even when you're standing still, enemies still hear "something" and death is only a few seconds away. I like hard games but...

... this is just not fun. And sadly, I've just come to the realization that this is not the game I want it to be and it won't be no matter how many times I reinstall it. As much as I want it to be. This game is just not fun due to the soul crushing difficulty of it. There's too many great games out there to waste any more time on trying to get past the same point over and over - over multiple years of trying.

So I just finished this game over the weekend. What a great little game.

Let's be clear. This is not an open world game. It is a game on rails. If you can leave the beaten path, it's because there's a collectable. But wow! What a jaw dropping environment it takes you through. I found myself just stopping sometimes to look at the exquisitly crafted world around me. It is quite the experience. And a little hard to believe that this was created in 2013. It was well beyond it's time.

Secondly, the story is a great one. Thoroughly enjoyable although at times some of the acts felt like they might have been bolted on to keep the story going. But the overarching story line was great with a satisfying conclusion. And it matched the atmosphere perfectly. I think that's why I kept going for almost two days straight. Not a common occurrence for me.

The combat? Pretty fun actually. But very challenging especially if you haven't setup your combos correctly. So here's where some criticism comes in. The combo lab UI is WAY more confusing than it needs to be. And the language used to describe how to make combos and combine the "pressens"? Terribly confusing. If the designers had just stuck with normal language to describe the combo system, the whole thing would have been far easier to figure it out.

Once I did wrap my head around the combo system, I began to realize the genius of it. It's pretty cool actually. Especially in some of the later battles where it's pretty unlikely you're going to get many 8 button (sorry pressens <rolling_eyes/>) combos in. So how can you craft the combos to get back focus, health, or do damage while dodging up to 10 baddies at the same time? It's a real exercise in positioning and strategy.

All in all, I'm very happy I finally installed this game and played it.

How did it play on Linux and ProtonPlay? The occasional sound cut-out for a second or two. At one point, my screen tinted pink and didn't correct itself resulting in a closing of the game and restarting even though it was still playable. And in one scene, the smoke didn't render properly resulting in a chunky black blocks where the smoke should have been. All in all, barely noticeable throughout the game.

Recommend this game and story.

According to my daughter: It's amazing.