Seven: Enhanced Edition

An average rpg type roaming game like many others with good points and bad points. The good? its a nice big exploring world where you can go about where you want. Decent movement mechanics allowing you to jump, climb, stealth and disguise yourself as you roam about. The bad, like other reviewers have said, a great world to explore but with horrible game mechanics to do it. A lot of bugs that were never fixed, some gamebreaking that allow you to go someplace but not be able to get out. Quests that can't complete due to some trigger not working and no way to finish. How about just getting stuck on a railing trying to climb over it, having to reload. Then it comes down to your abilities. No way to increase stats, carry weight, no experience, no character leveling or customization. A badly put in crafting system that requires you to explore just to find recpies or upgrades for items, and even then those upgrades are piddling and not worth doing. Oh, i can increase electrical resistance on my armor! great! 5% nice! except that is only 5% increase of your current armors resist. So with armor of 6 electrical resist, you don't get 11% resist, you get 5% of 6, which means your now at 6.3% instead of 6. laughable. Since you really don't get stronger in the game, there are foes you better not try to fight more than 1 vs 1, even after 20 hours in since you don't level up, that same guard can beat you up after you've played a long time, because your puny weapon upgrades don't do nothing. So while the game looks good and has a good foundation and atmosphere, a good map and exploring, the gameplay mechanics will quickly have you going somewhere else with something else to play.

Seven: The Days Long Gone seemed quite promising at first. Nice graphics. A bunch of different tools. A high-tech quasi-open world. Sneaky sneak action. Sadly, it all falls apart quickly. One of the first problems you notice is the camera. It's stuck in a position that doesn't show all that much - and most notably hides stuff above you. There is a lot of verticality in this game but you can't see if there's something above you that you can climb on. Another problem is the AI. I got caught, killed a guard and simply climbed up twice (i only knew i could because that's how i entered the building). The guard simply left his dead buddy there, didn't sound any alarm, forgot about me and left. I put on the dead guard's uniform and simply walked into the place. At some point i got caught but i simply ran a bit inside the building and they didn't pursue me. Huh? The design of the first mansion is awful. There are glowing lines on the floors and walls, plus other shiny objects. With glittery stuff everywhere they want you to find your way which i only did by accident. Seriously, would you live in a house with light everywhere shining in a flowing pattern constantly? Finally, i made it to the vault - which was practically unguarded. I activated the panel to open the display case and... you guessed it, a hacking mini-game. And it was fucking Frogger. Again. Nope.

I know the devs of this game wanted a stealth experience but literally the game has one camera angle. The "Sense Mode" assists in looking around, but it's still only one camera direction. You can turn the camera but it just feels extremely clunky and detracts a lot from the game. I would have preferred this as a third person over the shoulder stealth game like Styx or Splinter Cell, but the camera just ruins the game for me.

As a fan of stealth games and rpgs i had very high hopes for this game, even more so after i learned that many CDPR veterans veterans were behind it. Sadly, it just does not live up to its potential. The gameplay is a breath of fresh air in a genre that has perhaps become too stagnant (top down isometric rpgs), but a fetchquest with verticality is still a fetch quest. After about 8 hours of play, all i have seen are generic and frankly insipid fetch quests, and judging from other reviews that is all this game has to offer outside of the main quest. Simply an endless parade of Go to X and steal Y with minimal variation. Honestly, i would have thought a company of CDPR veterans would come up with something far more enganging, especially considering how innovative the gameplay itself is, but sadly the quest design is just utterly uninspired and frankly boring. The stealth is also rather unsatisfying as you are never really appear to be in any danger. It is easy to stay out of sight, and if caught you can simply run away for a bit and the guards will all contract collective amnesia and forget all about you. Climbing and jumping are well executed, and combined with the teleport skill allows for some creative solutions, but combat suffers somewhat since the game was clearly designed with a controller in mind. Not a bad game by any measure, but far from living up to its potential.

As an isometric perspective stealth open-world RPG (that's a mouthful!), Seven is a truly unique offering that presents an unlikely blend of styles that works surprisingly well. In it you play as Teriel, a grizzled thief that is transported to a prison colony after botching a job, and to top it off, is possessed by an arrogant Daemon that starts making demands of him. The setting is well realized, a weird post-post-apocalyptic Earth where the familiar and the alien meet. The game plays as an isometric real-time RPG where you control your character as he fluidly "parkours" through the landscape. You can chose a stealthy approach supported with plenty of mechanics, or brute-force your way with a rather varied combat system. While the game is an RPG, it's unique in that you don't gain levels, but instead grow stronger by upgrading your gear and acquiring abilities and the "skill chips" to install them. The system is great as it grants a steady feel of progression, but never makes you so overpowered as to render stealth useless, nor forces combat to progress. The audiovisual department is no less unique. The game uses a cell-shaded look with a weird color palette that has a lot of personality. The sound is competent, the voice acting for the main characters very good, and the soundtrack great. The game is a slow burner and demands a bit of patience to understand its systems, but once you do you'll be rewarded by a truly one-of-a-kind experience. There are faults with the game (e.g. camera on some indoor areas, initially confusing loot system, consumable use not sufficiently encouraged, too-restrictive encumbrance), but they are minor in the grand scheme of things. The most important shortfall for me was that the dialogue system is not particularly deep and that NPCs lack personality and depth. In short, a truly memorable game that leaves you wanting more, both for its setting and unique systems. P.S.: GOG gives too few chars to review such a unique game.