Posted on: June 7, 2021
Sharpshell
Games: 55 Reviews: 4
Smoke and Mirrors
Ironically, these games that emphasize how "choices matter" often make me feel even more railroaded. Let me translate what "choices matter" really means for this game: Sometimes in the game a dialogue choice you make will lock your character into a certain path, and block off others. Don't worry, you can play through a second time to make a different key choice! Cool, I guess. What would be really cool is if how you actually conducted yourself in the game really gave you different options throughout the game. Like, OK you made one alliance based on a past choice but you could maybe convince some other faction to work with you through dialogue or proving yourself to them? Nope, not in this game, that area is greyed out and you can't go there or you just have to kill them all (even though you didn't even know anything about them when you made that fateful choice, btw). It's hard to explain without spoilers but at the end of the day, there are basically 4 paths. So it's really a very linear game you have to play 4 times. But that's fine because the story is... OK. It's OK. It's not a masterpiece but it's interesting and I was having fun learning more about the world but it was frustrating how little autonomy I actually had in that story and being forced to be the bad guy got kind of old. I played for like 25 hours but I think I'm basically done because the gameplay loop is just not interesting. The combat is kind of samey after a while and the tactics are limited. At first, making spells is fun but that gets old too. The loot system is... a mess. You collect an endless amount of straight garbage (and it all seems to be heavy armor that you will never use because the companions are, also a mess...). So I had a decent 25 hours, which isn't bad for the 8 bucks or whatever I paid (GOG sent me a steep discount) but in the end, I am pretty disappointed. New Vegas this is not.
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