Recent reviews by essi

Stray features a wonderful atmosphere, beautiful and vibrant environments, and a compelling story; it also includes a lot of cat cuddles.

Loved the story. Characters were well-written, especially the ones you meet early. Combat mechanics are great and varied. The story is somewhat more linear than you'd assume, but well-crafted. As for side quests, gigs (typical merc missions) are interesting but can feel somewhat repetitive (similar to contracts in W3), while the larger side jobs are truly the heart of this game and contain lots of story. Side jobs are often split into multiple parts, so you can go back to doing gigs and then get updates after a while from key characters, prompting you to continue their storylines, This feels really natural. I never grew tired of the city, as I was continuously urged to visit other parts of town.

I wish some characters, like Vic, would have had some more side quests (or other interactions) attached to them. Additionally, some characters were a bit shallow. Most of the time this worked well, as the game is set in a cynical world where trust is hard to come by, but I wish some of the side characters, especially the fixers (contract givers) had some more depth or maybe more of a "completeness" to them.

Based on other reviews I think it's important not to expect to get through one play-through per character background. As I understand it, the only true differences between play-throughs will be the intro quest, some dialogue options (which provide flavor but don't really impact the story) and the end of the main quest (which is not dependant on the background). I loved these parts of the game, but they are quite short compared to the rest of the game. It's probably wise to consider the starting background to be spice, rather than a different dish.

Ran well on Medium settings on my 3 year old gaming laptop.

This game is about best friends, teenage issues and HOLY CRAP THE WORLD IS ENDING

Beautiful, terrifying, made me cry.

So ... I can't remember how I got to own this game, but I for some reason had it installed when I opened Steam today. I've played it for a couple of hours now and I'm not quite sure what the hell I'm playing. Or who I was. Or how I died.