A solid game for the price (but) : review

[lebeststratege]

I have to say I came across this game randomly, I hadn't heard about it and so my expectations were low.

The strongest point of this game is undoubtly the narration, as well as the authenticy of the character, historical setting, and even the psychology behind the flaws (although I would have loved to come across people being the opposite of thaumaturges => people stealing the qualities of others).

But I know I'll won't make another run of this game. And it's because of two elements both at the root of the game :

The exploration while giving off great feeling at start, slowly devolve (coming in act 2) into a walkaton looking for clues (the game need those clues to be floating ALL the time, not just when MC snap fingers) as well as FOMO triggering out. (and this FOMO is mandated because some optionnal flaws as well as 1 salutor are gated behind random third rate quest and that's discounting the xp you gain doing it).

The combat in this game start great but quickly become boring, repetitive, slow as hell, and not a challenge in 97% of encounters (I miscalculted once leading to a loss in the entire run). Even worse, the npc's damages are toned down to the point that neither having allies or being 3 or 4v1 feels epic (taking a bullet can deal the MC 2 or 3 pt damage out of 40 hp)

Saddly we can't play the game without those elements, because the heart of the story is great.

I regret the handling of Ligia, both as a character (which loses everything should you take a certain decision getting rid of a mandatory problem in act 2, as if she's defined only through that) and for interaction : she act agressive when we do what she asks, says we don't care for her whether we tell her the truth or not, whether we activelly seek to include her or not in our decisions and whether we support her or not, as if some end stays loose in the game design (notably we CAN'T out her most fervent lover despite this being a major plot point in the history of the family).

Rasputin's story is really good, with just the amount of mystery in the mix to make it work, the story surrounding abauricy is great too (the guy is fun, would have liked to see him more). Voronin, Wanda, Rofe and all are all great characters. Skalon feels a bit weak, as well as the act2 being both too long (too many exploration, including of places we already ran through that have new "clues" to find) and too short (some lose ends, nothing major, but especially aroung okhrana)

Overall a good game for it's price tag.