Recent reviews by Falar

Citizen Sleeper is extremely fine. The dice system is somewhat innovative if a little repetitive, the writing is mostly decent, the overall narrative arc is an uncommon blend of hopeful and somber, and the save system is forgiving so getting all endings and 100% achievements was relatively painless. Unfortunately, for the most part neither the characters nor the setting really feel "alive", and somewhere around ~two thirds of the way through my play through I'd lost interest in the game beyond the desire to actually finish it. This is a case where it would be great if Steam offered a Mixed option. On the balance I'd give the game a 6/10, but if someone asked whether I recommend it my answer would be "not really".

As a big fan of narrative-focused games, I've seen several comments that are both favorable and unfavorable comparisons between this game and Disco Elysium. I fall squarely in the camp that Disco Elysium is a masterpiece, and this game is not. For anyone who enjoys the genre and is looking for a similar experience to Citizen Sleeper (albeit with a different genre, and more plot-focused than character-driven), I'd give also give a strong recommendation to Roadwarden.

This game is a masterpiece. Introspective, hilarious, melancholy, absurd, Disco Elysium is one of my favorite gaming experiences.

Despite its excellence, this game is not for everyone. At the minimum you must like to read (or be read at), because you will be doing a ton of it. You must be patient, because you will enter a world about which you know nothing and your classes will be taught by a gaggle of pretentious political science post-grads. You must be willing to empathize with trauma and suffering, because Revachol is full of it. And on a practical level, you need to be okay with point-and-click style gameplay - you will run around, inspect objects, and talk to people. Even then, the game has basically nothing in the way of mechanical puzzles, and the entire experience hinges on the strength of its writing and story. That writing is excellent: frequently unhinged, aimlessly encyclopedic, flippantly spiritual, somehow across everything it drips with the most flair I've ever seen in a disco-themed detective mystery.

There is a lot that could be said about everything the game does right, and so for the sake of brevity I will end with this: Disco Elysium is the best version of itself. 10/10

I wish there was a mixed feelings option, but the game does enough right to earn a recommendation with caveats.

Pros:
+They did an awesome job recreating the feel of an MMO world
+Tons (tons!) of options in combat
+Varied and interesting boss fights
+A healthy number of alternate modes (time trials, tower defense, escort missions, etc)
+Lots of different traits for different builds
+The temple puzzles are pretty good. Once you understand how they work and what you're supposed to be doing, they're generally not too difficult
+Decent story. I don't think it was groundbreaking, but it's serviceable and the main character Lea is great
+Solid supporting cast

Cons
-Navigating some of the landscapes is confusing. Failing jumps because you misjudged elevation or a gap is a little too wide is frustrating and tedious
-Some enemy designs are really frustrating to fight. Later stages have several variations of enemies that hide underground or fly and are literally impossible to hit 60% of the time
-The crafting system. You kill enemies and plants to farm ingredients to use in crafting, but the ingredients required to craft the same item (e.g. a basic healing food) change depending on the region you're in. The higher-tier items also require rare ingredients that only drop from plants that spawn in limited numbers. The whole thing feels like a massive chore
-Early temples are WAY too long
-Side quests are repetitive, boring, and frequently don't provide significant rewards for the effort. Most of the side quests have no meaningful story and are mean't to recreate generic MMO quests, which are arguably one of the worst aspects of the genre

Before anything else: Kentucky Route zero is more art than game. Considering that one of the "intermissions" is literally a play, the overall experience is more like a semi-interactive story.

The world of Kentucky Route Zero is mysterious and surreal, but also tinted by its characters mistakes and failures. Despite its underpinnings of tragedy and loss, there are a few moments in this game that feel like real magic: exploring the Zero for the first time feels like diving into something unknown and unknowable. That initial wonder will fade as the narrative unfolds into a broader tapestry and draws together its group of wanderers, but there are remarkable moments even in the later acts.

While the game manages to strike a range of emotional chords far beyond basic "happy" and "sad", parts of it can feel haphazard. Major characters introduced later are needlessly eccentric and unconnected to the narrative flow, and gameplay mechanics in the third and fourth acts sag towards tedium.

Even with those flaws, this is a road worth traveling. If you enter the Zero with conventional expectations about what it should be, you're guaranteed to come away bored and disappointed. If you're willing to embrace a unique literary and artistic experience, then you won't find anything else like this.

This isn't a bad game - I'd give it a 6 out of 10 - but if someone asked whether they should play it, my answer would be a fairly definitive no.

I found the game consistently underwhelming: the characters are bland and generally lack personality; the story does a poor job balancing a generic plot with the heavy themes of the real-world conflict; and while gameplay was forgiving, some of the puzzle/event sequences in the latter half of the game were tedious. Across the ~7 hour playthrough, I was rarely having fun.

On more positive notes, the inclusion of real-world history was a nice touch. Collectibles with historical tidbits are scattered across the entire game and are easy to find, so taking a few extra minutes to hunt them rarely interrupted progression. Puzzles are generally intuitive, and they put the dog to good use as a companion.

Overall, while it's awesome to see a game giving a serious treatment to one of the greatest conflicts in human history, neither the story nor the gameplay is interesting enough to turn this into an engaging experience.

Roadwarden was a pleasant surprise, and there's a lot of positive things I could say about it. Excellent writing and world building, complex characters, meaningful choices, and several well-constructed mysteries make this game a hidden gem. Strongly recommend to anyone looking for an atmospheric, story-centric experience in a hostile but not merciless world.

For a bit of context, I've finished my playthrough on Original (hardest) difficulty while completing all chapters without killing any non-mandatory characters. I think any review for this game needs to have two sections - first impressions, and then a second look after completing.

My initial response was that Gods Will Be Watching is not fun. It is not difficult. It is not challenging, or clever, or engaging. It is a grueling grind against a random number generator with a thin layer of plot plastered over.

However, having completed the game, I can say that every decision the developers made was justified. There's a kind of elegant brilliance to the story, and the characters become really fleshed out both through their actions and how you interact with them. An overarching purpose ties together chapters that initially appear disconnected, and it's rewarding to see all the pieces come together in the final (free) DLC chapter, which is the capstone of the whole game. To put it simply, the epilogue is a masterpiece.

So why the negative recommendation?

The game is it's own greatest enemy. Most of the dialogue is really well-written, but it completely loses it's impact when you've seen it ten or twenty or fifty times. For every chapter that is balanced but difficult, there is one where random chance will punish you again and again. The narrative itself is a unique experience, but demands grueling hours of repetition to discover.

The hardest part about the above is that everything works exactly as the developers intended it, and once you've finished it you can see why they wanted it that way; but the gameplay itself is never really "fun". Gods Will Be Watching would be a great game for the way it integrates its gameplay into a compelling narrative, but it's a missed opportunity because so much of that gameplay is frustrating or rage-inducing.

The experience is too bipolar for me to make a recommendation, although if you have the patience to beat it, it might be worth considering on sale. That said - once you start, I highly recommend you commit to finishing. The tunnel is long, but there's light at the end of it.