This game has enormous potential but dosent stick the landing. The only way to get anywhere towards the late game is to completely metagame it and build points to get specific outcomes which kind of ruins the point of it being a chose driven narrative.

You can spend the whole time building towards something with logical steps and have really high points in your needed categories then for no reason at all be railroaded to inaction and true death which ends the game. Even if you build relationships, power, fighting skills, spy networks and get guns it wont matter all your building is for naught and despite having maximum willpower to act with your only options end up being surrender or cowardice without any real reason why.

Its a shame as there is so many things about this game which are great but to invest all that time in your story and the world it takes place in just to have something pointless and often contradictory happen and end the game really wore me down. As is often the case with modern RPG games this game gives the illusion of choices and consequences when actually its just a stat builder game. Even if you chose X & Y the game will come to a halt and decide you don't have the points necessary in some stat to move to Z instead it will retcon your choices to W & X so that Y never happened and you have to pick L which leads to your character being a witless coward and dying immediately for no real reason.

For example eve if you save your friend from a lord with impeccable choices it wont matter as it dosent really have that plan in place for you thus upon the next meeting your friend will just say he was on the run all this time even if you made him the commander of the guard.

I really hope they continue to make games and work on them as this game shows enormous potential but needs more work on its decision mechanisms considering its a story book game thats kind of the only thing it offers and it dosent really nail it

Man, this game made me rage. And I mean that as a compliment. What the game did is take one of the most ingrained storytelling choice-based conventions and burned it to the ground. Then made a little dance on the ashes. The convention that every possible choice is always available to you to pick. This game drives the point home that you cannot make a hard choice after a hard choice without your will wavering. It also drives the point home that a world-hating, bitter cynic will not become a hopeful idealist just because you were nice to her once, but I'm getting ahead of myself. So, first a DISCLAIMER:

This game is not for you if you want to play to "win", since it does not have a "golden ending". It only has crushingly miserable endings, up to bittersweet-if-you-squint-and-play-pretend endings.

You start your life (and suffering) as Sir [YOUR NAME HERE] Brante, a child born to a civil servant and his lowborn wife. Your elder brother is born of your father's first wife, a noble, who died in childbirth. Your elder sister is your mother's child, and a bastard child in a family that strives to push its way into the noble ranks. And your grandfather is pretty much Tywin Lannister, obsessed with bloodline and legacy. See the trouble brewing already?

It gets worse. Gods exist in this setting, two of them to be exact, and they enforce a very strict caste system, called the Lots. To act against your Lot is a sin that will condemn you to eternal torment in the Hereafter. There are the Chosen Peoples called Arknians who rule above all; then there are two classes of Nobles - hereditary, and the second-class ones who earned their title through civil service, their Lot is to rule and bear responsibility; then there is the Clergy, whose Lot is to guide the people and bring the word of the Twin Gods to them; and finally there are the Lowborn whose Lot is to break their back and accept abuse of their superiors with gratitude. The only thing the lower-caste folks get is that they get to be sent back up to three times after they die, while the Arknians and other prominent figures of power only get one life. See the trouble brewing already?

Finally, the Lowborn have been squeezed dry by the power struggles between the factions of nobility (with the side that wants to provide for the commoners and improve their lives losing), and are getting rather desperate. There's a schism in the Church of the Twins that's about to rear its head, and an increasing number of the Lowborn have been joining underground resistance. See the trouble brewing already?

The game starts at the final hour of Sir [YOUR NAME HERE] Brante, as a journal that pledges to recount his life, and back to the womb you go. No, really, the first decision you'll make is who you touch first after you're born. From then on, you will grow up and make your place in your home, the city of Anizotte, and finally the world. The world, which, as noted above, you can see trouble brewing in.

There are three possible paths, each with its own love interest (no happy endings, sorry) and dynamic as your life progresses from birth to the age of 28 years. And that's when the events culminate into an inevitable resolution, and the fate of your home city of Anizotte, as well as the Empire will be decided. What skills have you acquired along the way? What connections have you made? Whom can you trust? Who can trust you? And what of your family? Most importantly, what are the events you missed because you can't be everywhere at the same time? (Hint: Replay value)

You stand at the shores of destiny, Sir [YOUR NAME HERE] Brante, and you may be able to tip its scales, decide the fate of the Empire, and even the Twin Gods themselves! Or not. It all depends on the decisions you have made.

Sir Brante can lead many lives, many different stories can be written. None of them is more or less "true" or "canon" than another. None of them is a "win". They're all fraught with sacrifices, tough choices, and the final realization - you cannot save everyone. The world is too big for one man to decide alone. There are no heroes, there are no villains. Only the sum of choices all the people, from the lowliest of commoners, to the highest of nobles, have made. That is history.

But how will history remember you? Try and see. This game has earned my respect.

I did live my life (ironman, no consequences visible) the way I have deemed right. I have followed my principles, they took me all the way to the gallows.
I was considering playing again, but... but I wouldn't change a thing. That was my life.
This game gave me a good kind of depression. It's like Disco Elysium - all plot, only plot-relevant mechanics. No trash mob fights.

This is the poor man's version of sealed artifact 0-08. You shape a man's life from birth to death and decide many people's fate via decisions at critical moments. While the game gives you visibility of short term impacts on decisions, the long term impact of the collective decisions are not clear and therefore make your decisions carefully.

The game has great replay value as there are many different branches of how the story proceeds. The chapter 4 alone has more than 15 possible outcomes. The option to restart from selected chapter comes handy.

Achievements in the game require you to go through most of the different branches and therefore not easy to complete. First run will take about 10 - 15 hours and subsequent runs will be much faster as most of the text have been read.

The game runs perfectly on steam deck.

I was really having the time of my life with this game until I hit the final chapter where... suddenly my choices were restricted in ways that didn't logically follow from anything I'd previously done.

Overall I'd still recommend the game, but I would also recommend being very conscious of the stats because it's the only way you can really shape a story that makes sense once you reach the end. So basically...

PROs:
-incredibly complex characters, relationships and worldbuilding.
-A really interesting story with a lot of different outcomes and twists
-The choice based mechanics are responsive and impactful - you really feel like you're building a person.
-Thought provoking - stays with you for a while.
-Some replay value due to the different factions, pathways, etc you can take.

CONs:
-Frustratingly restricted in narratively illogical ways in the final chapter
-Replay value is limited by the inability to fast forward through text you've already seen
-Romances seem a little underdeveloped to me
-The choice mechanisms sometimes break with plot turns being dependent on stats instead of events and thus sometimes locking you into paths that, narratively, seem to be out of nowhere.
-Pretty depressing sometimes, I mean it's a great game but kind of a downer.

Suffering is what this is. Oh, you slipped on a banana peel early on? Now the Banana Dynasty hates your GUTS! Oh, you didn't fullfil your 10 dead commoners a day quota? Now you're denied a promotion! This is the case with mostly everything in the game. You think you're safe, but you're not. It's funny having everything completely backfire on you tho, and you spend hours of gameplay just to end up in front of a firing squad, or losing your life savings.

Fun, but also suffering.

This game is an absolute masterpiece!

To enjoy it correctly you need to play it in the following way:
- Take the day off.
- Pour a few cups of coffee.
- Have zero interruptions for the day.
- Let the world consume you with immersion... and enjoy the complexity, intrigue... and sheer psychological trauma...

It's devastating... in a way you that makes you care. It's that good.

The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante is a wonderfully crafted game that unfortunately falls short at the finish line. When playing I thought there was no way I could end up not loving the climax of the adventure and having this end up a favorite in the sort of "choose your own adventure" genre. However right at the end - the house of cards collapsed.

The games story is amazing and so are the many branching paths that I was once looking forward to a second play-through. However, when entering the climax of the game I was met with "skill checks" that the game occasionally puts in front of the player - the success and failure of these checks leads to different outcomes. I usually had no issues in the game with these outcomes - as I was picking the logical choices to tell *MY* story and if I failed those checks the results seemed to keep the wheel turning logically and perfectly fine. However, at the end you are instead bricked off of certain logical choices - something I've noticed some other reviewers have mentioned. Such as making me betray a ally or abandon them when I've been nothing but supportive of said person - and prevent me from picking the option I want - that's not a skill check that's just forcing me into a outcome I don't want and completely destroying my enjoyment and desire to play. Frankly, after being walled off from my desire option that should have been a mere choice not a pointless skill wall blocking off my path, I stopped playing. It felt as if it betrayed my story and made me go from what I thought was a amazing game to one I probably would not recommend on playing especially since this game carries a higher price point that similar ones in the genre.

I was eager to check out this publishers others games and start a separate play-through at one point in my play-through so it's possible you don't encounter that hard illogical skill check wall that I and some others did and you fully enjoy the game without it being ruined for you.

Until there is some patch notes that I might not even ever notice that fix those above issues I would not recommend this game at it's full price. With those issues this is a mere 5 - 10$ game max - wait for a sale and hope for the best.

Chapters 1 & 2 are possibly one of the best examples of how a solely story-oriented game can become a masterpiece.

In chapter 3 players are introduced to more stats which begin to interfere with how you wish for the story to progress. While annoying it still pretty much allows you to forge your own destiny.

The issues begin with chapters 4 & 5 where you're introduced to even more stats that depend on your previous choices. Some of these make no sense and some decisions are locked behind statistics solely for the sake of it.
I feel like the game suffers from it tremendously because the abundance of those statistics and the dependence on them lead players to basically min-maxing the statistics instead of actually choosing the choices they wish to make.
Not to mention the fact that you had no idea the game was gonna add those statistics in the first place. So if you haven't played the game before you won't even be ready for what is coming which could possibly lock you from the choices you desire to make.
It leads to players feeling like their progression was meaningless as now they're basically being forced into making choices they wouldn't normally do.
Everything feels like a big game of mathematical calculations rather than a story-driven novel. In the end, all choices will come down to getting enough Reputation, Unity, etc instead of actually forging your own story and seeing the consequences of those choices.

Therefore I feel like a much better choice would be to get rid of the majority or even all the unnecessary statistics and base the game solely on player choice. Allowing players absolute freedom in choosing how they want to progress without seeing the consequences of their actions.

The story itself is phenomenal and I strongly suggest picking it up on this merit alone.

Overall, an incredible game.

Pros-
Amazing Aesthetic
Amazing writing
Amazing Soundtrack

Cons-
The Biggest Issue is that when you want to get a certain ending it requires you to grind points which is dissimilar to an actual choose your own adventure story, and I think takes a moderate amount of fun out of it.