Recent reviews by Rokhmal

You'll definitely want to play through the Prequel "Deliver Us the Moon" before you start on this game. It takes place 10 years after the events of the prequel and focuses on the psychological trauma that occurred to the first game's primary characters. The devs do a great job of weaving that theme of trauma and its effects throughout this story. However, to someone who may not be familiar with how trauma, and specifically PTSD, affects someone's mental health, some of the motivations and reactions of certain characters may seem unrealistic at times, like they're "just being an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for no reason". It is all eventually explained as those motivations and the trauma they spring from are laid bare towards the end of the game.

The primary gameplay additions from the prequel are the use of STREAME puzzles, and free-climbing various surfaces to get from one place to another.

I've read some reviews that mention frustrations with getting the hang of the climbing mechanics. You do get a chance to practice it early on before it becomes a life or death scenario, and it took me a bit, but I got it down after the first few times of needing to use it in the game. By the end, you'll have done it enough that you're concentrating more on the environment shifting around you than whether or not you're clicking the correct mouse button.

I do feel like the overall experience of this game is significantly different from its prequel. In large part due to the focus the story places on the life experiences of the protagonist and their family members. Like I mentioned above, there's a lot of focus on the psychological trauma that the characters have been facing. I think stories like that are necessarily going to be more exposition-heavy, and that shows up in the game with more, and lengthier, cutscenes between bits of gameplay. The pacing is different from its prequel, but I don't think that's really a knock against it given the story it's trying to tell.

And the story is 100% worth the journey. I'm a player that emotionally invests in characters that are well-written, and all of these characters are complex, highly-intelligent, and have character progression throughout the game. On a personal note, I have a young kid myself. The protagonist's experiences and interactions with the rest of their family hit home for me in ways I was not expecting. A video game has not brought me to tears like this one has in decades.

Highly recommended if you like good story-writing, exploration of the unknown, and good ole platforming puzzles.

I'm a huge fan of near-future sci-fi so it was an easy pick up once it came up in my feed. I got this and its sequel in the bundle and am so glad that I went in blind. I was not prepared for how invested I was going to get in the story. The story writing is excellent and well-paced. The environment is beautifully-crafted. The characters' motivations are believable, and their voice acting top-notch. The gameplay isn't anything particularly ground-breaking, but I felt that it fit the overall story and pacing of the game. I never had an "Another cutscene!?" moment during the whole of my time playing it.

The only frustrations I had were the lack of communication of transitions between a few of the cutscenes and player-control.

For example:

There's a part where you're using a monorail to get between stations on the surface. You enter a tunnel area and are going around some turns. There's an automated voice talking the whole time in a robotic monotone that I kind of tune out to look at what we're going past as it's coming into view. Next thing I know the voice is saying "Warning. Warning", and then the monorail crashes, and you get reset back to where the monorail enters the tunnel. It felt like a cutscene because you're locked in to the monorail pilot's chair and there's nothing (apparent to me) to interact with. I went through this scenario about 4 times before I discovered that there's an interactable object at the last second before you crash. Took me about 3 more attempts to successfully target the object, then click it in time to avert the track. I ended up button-mashing before the object was targetable in order to successfully hit it in time. This broke the immersion a little bit because it felt like I was required to engage in metagaming in order to progress.

Experiences like the above were few and far between, so it didn't really affect my enjoyment of the game overall.

I was very excited to start on the sequel after finishing this game.

I already enjoy the Dark Souls series and open-world games. Upon hearing that Elden Ring was, in fact, an open-world Dark Souls, I picked it up immediately. Does not disappoint. Also very meme-able if you're into that. See r/eldenring for examples

Pros:
- This is a great social game. If you wanna be a good imposter, you have to learn how to misdirect, fly under the radar, deflect accusations onto someone else, and other nefarious social skills. Great social engineering practice.
- Can make up your own game modes by tweaking the settings + making a verbal agreement to do/not do something for the round. E.g. reduce imposter walk speed, increase kill Cooldown, decrease vision for both to minimum and start the game with a gentlemans' agreement to sabotage comms and no one fix it. Now you have your very own hide and seek mode :)
- Can run on a toaster.

Cons:
- During peak hours, sometimes the servers get overloaded and stop responding causing you to be unable to join or create a game. This is incredibly frustrating when you and your friends finally schedule a time to play together and 2 out of the 10 can't join for because of network issues. The only fix to this is to keep trying.

Tips:
- Don't forget! When you get ganked or spaced, crewmate ghosts can still finish tasks, and imposter ghosts can still sabotage!
- Learn the maps. Not every room has wires in it and lying about it as the imposter is a big red SUS flag.
- If you're playing with folks in Voice chat, it's generally considered not cool to talk during the game, and DEFINITELY not cool to talk as a ghost. Mute your mic until body reported or Emergency meeting!