Masquerada: Songs and Shadows

The story is very good and is propped up by something I rarely notice - amazing voice acting. The characters leave lasting impressions and the script provides some very memorable moments. Music is on point the whole time. The world is absolutely brimming with life - so much more lore than I'd expect out of a 12-14 hour game. I really liked both the linear nature and the character progression. The game never, ever wasted my time. So many of these open world games and more traditional RPGs send me on fetch quests, offer me pointless side quests, and fill my inventory with garbage loot to sell. All actions feel important to the story. Character progression is a skill tree with 4 active abilities that can be leveled up after key points in the game. Various Mascherines change the character ultimates. Finally, a ink "tattoo" system of sorts provides substitutes for typical weapon/armor. Unfortunately, some flaws mar an otherwise fantastic game. First, the lore is overwhelming. You will be hit with an avalanche of foreign terms. Be prepared to read the in game encyclopedia or just miss some things. Second, though I liked the idea of "tattoos" replacing weapon/armor, they never felt that impactful. Likewise on Mascherines, by the time I used an ultimate the battle was over (or I was fighting a boss). All of this feeds into the game's biggest weakness - combat. You'll approach every battle the same. Spam abilities and dodge various telegraphed attacks. After you have your skills setup, it basically plays itself. Though the game isn't super challenging on hard, you may occasionally die. The game only saves on scene changes so you might die on your 3rd battle, forcing you to repeat the easier battles. This would be fine if the battles were connected AT ALL, but they aren't. It makes no sense not to either implement carry over effects (like HP) or allow retries after battles in this system. Hopefully Masquerada 2 fixes "tattoos" and combat - if so, I'll be all in.

All in all it's an enjoyful adventure, the story is nice, the characters are interesting and some really likeable. There are some little problems here and there, it doesn't feel like a game, more reading a fantasy book with lots and lots of backstory and worldbuilding, combined with a few fights. In the later game all the new information about regions around the city and some culture stuff was getting a little tedious, since it was so disconnected from the story on the one hand, and just didn't help the flow of things on the other. There is a difference between learning some stuff about a place you just entered, or some region you never see in the game and doesn't have any connection to you, the story or anything. There are text heavy games that get their wall of text in a little less blunt, do it more narratively. The fighting system with stopping the fight to give new orders to your heros has been done before, and better I might add. Some extra button to just slow down the fight would have been nice, getting something between full stop and full speed which ended in many "oh my good my guy is running back to the danger zone while I try to get the other one moved". The fights are rather easy, the last boss takes forever due to high Hitpoints, but at least on normal nothing was really challenging. All in all a nice adventure if you are into those games, the RPG part is really small.

The characters, the story, that's alright. The plot is focused on masks, gives that kinda anime-vibe, with that posh, elegance vibe. The gameplay tho, well it's very linear. I can't understand why they didn't add a save function. So, basically if you leave the game after winning a difficult fight. You have to fight again, because loading means you are at the start of the *situation*. I'm not a big fan of that design, that's why I give 2 stars. Imagine you HAVE TO leave, and the game doesn't let you save that exact moment. It is annoying. You get rewarded with more lore, instead of skill points, for exploring. It's just annoying. Anyway, if you enjoy visual novels. This has that visual novel vibe, for sure, however there are fights too. So, if you enjoy that kind of stuff. Then this game is for you.

This game is not really an RPG but rather akin to an interactive comic book with RPG-style combat. The story is completely linear. The only choices to be made are the composition of the party--only two characters can accompany the protagonist at a time--and the skills to develop in each character. There is no inventory besides the collection of masks found. There are a couple of labyrinths to navigate through, but most levels progress in a strictly predefined fashion. Exploration is very limited, though it totally pays off in terms of game lore, which is scattered and sometimes hidden all around the game world. Interaction points are obvious. The game offers a New Game+ mode with more boss fights, but the replayability factor seems to be low. In other words, if you are looking for yet another Baldur's Gate, this is not the right game for you. On the other hand, if you want a break from overly complex RPGs and are looking for a captivating story with many unexpected twists, really well-developed characters, tons of lore to read through, detailed comic art style graphics with beautiful backdrops that don't require a high-end GPU, satisfying--and at times challenging--combat, and incredible music, look no further than Masquerada and grant yourself hours of pure enjoyment. One complex part of the game is the party AI, which allows for some detailed configuration. That supposedly reduces combat micromanagement, but I never tweaked it and it was all fine. The rest of the game mechanics are very simple--you just move around, interact with marked areas, and collect masks (weapons), lore items, and weapon upgrades. A word of caution: The Windows version has a bug in the mask inventory, which displays black most of the time though it still respons to mouse clicks. The macOS verison is not affected.

I'd call Masquerada a "light" version of an RPG set in a fantasy Renaissance world with magic Carnival of Venice masks. Some aspects reminded me of Dragon Age Origins, e.g. the pausable realtime fights, selecting two companions from your party for each mission and having lengthy conversions with your companions to deepen the relationship with them. However, Masquerada is strictly linear, offers no choices (not even in dialogs), has no skill trees other than for Mascherine magic and actually consists only of dialogs and fights. Like there is no real inventory or map or anything else you would expect in a normal role playing game. In a nutshell, each room is a hand drawn 2D bitmap where your cell shaded party can walk around to some spots marked in different colors where you can either collect an ink, a mask, story piece, trigger a conversation or leave to the next room. Now and then you will run into enemies which starts a fight where you can use several powers that come from magical masks called Mascherines. You can pause the fight and control every member of your party, but actually most fights are rather easy and a bit of a huddle so basically you use your best attacks, wait for your power to recharge and repeat that until all opponents are dead. There are a few (three or so) boss fights which need a bit of tactics (prevent healing of boss), but all in all the fights are pretty easy. I didn't really like the mix of somewhat blurry 2D background and sharp cell shaded 3D characters but the total lack of interaction with the static background is my main concern. There also isn't any lighting at all which makes everything look even more bland and static. While there is a system to make foreground objects transparent, it's rarely used in the 1st 75% of the game. So it wasn't really my thing and the Mask menu was broken for me, but it's obvious that lots of effort went into dialogs, story etc. and the nearly 12h I put into this didn't feel like a total waste of time.