Unnecessarily Long Review

[Lithwil]

I want to wrote this review in English because i think developers are really concerned with our criticism which is a good thing. And I really wanted to love this game because CRPGs kinda my go to genre when i'm playing games.

But i'm not native in English and i don't usually do this, so i'm sorry if i couldn't be clear enough.

-No spoilers for now btw

So i played the game and i have mixed feelings about it. I think at this point we have a love&hate relationship with this game. When i first saw the demo i immediately played it and i thought it has really good potential.

First of all, I'm in love with graphic design choices that you made. It's really good and it was really variable between quests. So i got satisfied with it. It's basically awesome.

Worldbuilding is insane. I really love the idea behind Game detectives and how they really needed because of those Twisted & Perverted type of virtual worlds.

I liked the story details of the game. I liked how the quests are prepared in terms of investigating and crime. I liked the parts that the game makes us think about the world itself. Generally, the script has a good crime-sci fi novel potential.

But like every other RPG storylines, there is one same problem in this one as well. We are a game detective, probably kinda good one because we can get jobs from very rich high standard people like Haggis. Besides those things, we have to unlock so many things in skill tree that actually should require basic information for us. Like hacking, cheating etc. I know if there is no skill tree, the game would be less interactive but still i think it's a bit annoying. (But it's about me being extremely picky so it's probably not an objective criticism, it's normal for these type of games. Like in every other RPG game, we are basic human beings and starting to save the entire World. So it is normal, i just wanted to say)

The game is boring at time to time with texts. There are lots of stuff that you didn't need to bother to read. NPCs are giving so much detail about their life. **It's a good thing for being more realistic and natural because if it wasn't like that it would be so unnaturally forced for ending the quests. But it's also being so annoying because in some of the investigations there are minimum 10 NPCs to talk and i don't really want to know so many things about their life.

I wouldn't be so bothered by the fact that we are reading a lot, if we could affect more things in-game. Because I loved the quest opens after Fallen Hero. Sorry i forgot the name of it, It was Knight something. There was remarkably good interactions (for example: Umbra's house things, fan mission, 15 bells system**, minigames like forge area and the things we have to do in terms of text parts are both have designed very good.)
But it was the only one that was really enjoyable. The labyrinth thing was fun at first but it gets boring fast because it was so random for certain parts and i think it wastes so much time and effort. Twisted & Perverted map was so tiny and because of that, it didn't felt like i literally made an investigation by myself it felt forced by game. Harvest Time was really good in investigating parts and Deductions but farm minigame(?) were useless and repetitive. In Fallen Hero, Low City design looked good at first but hacking was unclear and it was the only interesting thing about that part. And when even the only interesting thing is kinda unclear, things get boring very fast.

**15 bells system is a nice idea because it makes you made things with a strategic approach. but this game is all about with talking and exploring and that world is the one of the most playable world that existed in this game. So when the game itself puts you in a tiny part that you can only do things in 15 bells, it makes everything annoying.

And the ending part was really rushed. There was so many things going on and it was so fast for processing those informations and make decisions.

SPOILER

Eleanor and 314 came very fast. Even if i'm not okay with the ideology that 314 brings to us, there was no reason to side with Jester because he did no thing but harm. He killed Ken etc. So it felt like We don't have any option. I didn't like the attitude that 314 made but even if i didn't like them , it was the right idea so i had to side with them anyways.

There was 6 endings. I don't want to discuss about ending types because it depends on your view. But really, when we pick something it literally starts a power point slide that shows what we did. And after that, it ends with "You pick something blabla". We can't see the results, we can't see what happens to the world after our decision. It's being sad when we played this 10-14 hours and only 1-2 hours of gameplay is directly related to the ending and it is completely different point of view to this story because it bombs to us the entirely different, huge Matrix content. And after all of those, we couldn't even read an explanation about what happens.

END OF THE SPOILER

After all of my complaining parts, i really enjoyed most of the game. I loved that It has a different approach to sci fi cyberpunk worlds and i really enjoyed the parts that we exposed with the world itself.

But I don't think it has a good playable gaming content. I don't expect this game to be Baldur’s Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Planescape or Divinity. Because it doesn't offer that type of gameplay. It shouldn't advertised like CRPG or Isometric RPG. Because even if i like the game generally, you can't effect the storyline, when you make a mistake it's seen at the ending slide, and when making decisions is the only thing that makes this game playable, it should effect more things than just a slide.

I appreciate the effort that you guys put into and i hope you'll be improve yourselves. I'll keep support because I like the ideas that you've tried to make for this game. When You'll make another game probably it'll turn out better. But you should consider the differences between the people playing computer game and tabletop card game. Because the things that makes this game boring are easily fixable with more experienced gamers and game designers.

And I appreciate you for making this game affordable for my country because probably if you didn't do that, i couldn't play.

[oku]

I appreciate your effort in creating a balanced review. This was well done and I enjoyed reading it.