The game's start is stunning. I've been waiting for a new part of this universe for so long. Part 3 disappointed me, but this one brings good feelings from the start.

A decade ago I used to be a passionate fan of Beholder and even won a key for Beholder 2 in the Wise Leader quiz. However, I had to skip the third game entirely after realizing what kind of a dumpster fire it was. As a result of "inertia" I did not really follow the development of Conductor and only recently played the demo. Even though I wasn't impressed with it, I decided to give the full game a shot, maybe it'd get better? Well, it didn't.

Before we begin, let's briefly revisit what made the original Beholder so amazing. One, it was a more "static" experience in a sense you started and ended the game as a landlord in the basement. Two, it was very grounded and your motivations were simple and relatable - you had a family to care for, a retirement plan to secure, a cat to feed. Three, you got to know the characters for an extended period of time by virtue of sharing the same space with them. Which led to them growing on you and you actually caring about their ultimate fate and the decisions you made.

Conductor takes the winning formula and throws it out of the window. The train setting is the #1 issue of this game that to an extent leads to every other one. Sure, it makes more sense to get promoted to conductor first class as opposed to being yeeted from floor 12 all the way to floor 25 of the ministry in Beholder 2, and promotions allow you to experience different social classes with their stories and perspectives. However, the downside is promotion-centric gameplay where promotions drive the story, as a result you must go out of your way to get them, because otherwise you literally get a game over. This is terrible in two ways simultaneously: it creates a cheap way of incentivizing you to play as the "bad guy"; and it makes your choice an illusion - no matter if you helped the prisoner escape or stopped him, your boss will tell you've done a great job, as the game can't advance the plot otherwise.

In this reality, the only case where you see impact of your actions becomes NPC themselves. You are supposed to care about them, but, remember, they are literally "fellow travellers on a train". You don't get to know them for more than 10 minutes and will never meet them again, so why should you care, right? All of them bar a few are forgettable, interchangeable... including the main character himself. Winston is as generic as they come, his family we don't get to see or know, so while his motivation perhaps makes sense to him, I just can't feel invested in his story as a player. He also comes with a "background" that takes place entirely off-screen and boils down to him doing something in the past and now having to do things for the blackmailer. This is yet another strange way how Conductor strips your agency and pigeon-holes you into doing questionable acts.

Even though Conductor doesn't quite understand what made Beholder great, it still desperately clings to legitimacy of the first game by randomly dropping lore bits as well as inserting its characters into this new story - whether it makes sense according to that game's plot or not, to the point it starts to feel like a parody. Perhaps it's a result of the developers realizing you can't form a connection with a character over a short time you meet them, hence relying on characters we already know?

However, you don't really get to ask yourself all this questions while playing, as Conductor is a quite a stressful game that has you juggling many plates at a time. Not only did it preserve the original's minigames - it added more. Like I said, there's only a short while before your passengers reach their destination and are gone forever, so you're always in a rush to get things done. Main quests, side quests, reports. Oh look, this guy just left his room and who knows if he'll ever leave it again, you should dash over there and search his luggage! And the entire game is like that. As a result, we just don't really have the time to care about NPC and their stories - or anything outside of an immediate task. Anything you do feels like it comes with an opportunity cost.

Worst part? You can do pretty much anything, but you're never sure if you should do it. You have a task to make 3 reports, you find an NPC carrying an apple in their luggage (despicable!), you report them... boom! - you've just eliminated an NPC along with their quests and opportunities. Your cat (yes, you get a cat again) will get sick and die because the only NPC who could treat him is no longer around. The hot girl won't have sex with you, because you can no longer complete her questline. When you need an item to solve a quest, the item is nowhere to be found. But - guess what - the station vendor had this item in his stock an hour of gameplay ago, who would've thought you'd need it, huh? Or maybe you bought the item and wasted it on a trivial side-quest which has no bearing on the plot anyway? All of it leads to constant frustration due to missing out on content and having to replay large chunks of the game again, and ultimately makes Conductor the kind of game that's hardly enjoyable without a walkthrough.

First class car feels like devs realizing this issue and trying to "reign in" the player by reintroducing "protected" status which makes it so NPC can't be reported. However, say hello to another issue, and that is softlocks. Imagine you need 10000 money to furnish two rooms (out of your pocket, for some reason), however you've just blown 15000 on a bribe to get promoted in the first place, and so you got none. And if passengers don't get a room - you can't interact with them, and they keep complaining, chipping away at your resources. And since you retain access to your previous areas and continue to get quests there, your map size has just effectively doubled. Yay, more plates to juggle. And that point I was so tired and frustrated I had no desire to continue. Making it the only Beholder game I'll probably never finish.

Overall, Conductor is a uninspired, mediocre title. While it grasps the fundamentals, it never quite reaches the heights of Beholder for me. Returning characters from the first game are a band-aid for dull story and otherwise forgettable NPC, while a clutter of pointless minigames is a band-aid for derivative core gameplay. Conductor revels in making you feel like piece of human trash and constantly finds a way to deprive you of your agenda just to hammer the point home. Combined with game design which actively makes your experience miserable unless you follow a walkthrough, as well as some things that were plain poorly tested or poorly thought-out, overall it leads to a reality where I cannot recommend this one.

P.S. To be honest, I'm not quite sure where the franchise should go from here. The success of the first game led to Alawar making a franchise out of it. However, as we've seen after 3 attempts, they just can't pull the proverbial recapture of lightning in the bottle. If I had to oversimplify it by singling out a reason though, I'd say the promotion-centric gameplay is at the root of the issue, because it breaks one of Beholder's core pillars in that your choices matter. In the ideal world, you should be able to choose not to get promoted - and the game should respect your choice and provide you with more quests and characters. This content, however, would be invisible to other players and would likely push the scope and budget of such game outside of what Alawar can reasonably allocate to a Beholder title. And do we even need another Beholder title? The themes Beholder games explore felt quaint and novel a decade ago, but this days? This days authoritarian regimes are on the rise and freedom of speech is challenged in many countries across the globe, to the point what used to feel like fantasy now feels like a documentary - a sad reminder of the world outside the window. We play games for escapism, not to be sad, right?

A worthy continuation of the Beholder series!
Conductor really lives up to the name — the atmosphere is tense in all the right ways, and I like this pixe art style. Fits the game perfectly.

The story’s shaping up to be really interesting so far - I’m totally hooked.
Also, the searching mechanic is oddly satisfying. Didn’t expect to enjoy rummaging through bags this much xD And yes... peeking on passengers in the bathroom weirdly fun

If you’re like orginal Beholder you’re gonna enjoy this ride.