First thing that needs to be called out: the game desperately needs a "start video at beginning" button, and it doesn't have one despite being the number one critique after several years being released. When you search videos, it starts at wherever the keyword you searched is located, even if that means it's at the end of a 7 minute video. The vast majority of your time is spent slowly rewinding clips to the beginning so you can actually understand what you're watching and not miss anything valuable. Half the time, you'll find there WAS nothing valuable and the character is just sitting there doing nothing, listening to the other side of the conversation you're not seeing. I really liked Her Story, and was hoping this would give more of the same. Unfortunately, it doesn't really capture what made Her Story great, it just follows a very similar format in terms of gameplay. Unlike Her Story, I didn't really feel I understood why our character is going through the videos as the end. There also isn't really any surprise twists that recontextualizes the clips you first saw. Such twist was part of what made Her Story interesting, and it's sorely lacking here. There also seems to be a lack of purpose to watching the clips like we had with Her Story. You're literally just uncovering a narrative story out of order, not piecing together a mystery. Perhaps this would be better if the characters were interesting, but I found all of them either unlikable or boring. As another review said, you're literally just listening in on people complaining about their daily. They play up the titillation with some of the sexual scenes, but they really just get in the way of getting to the useful dialogue. I found myself very unsatisfied, and googled around to see if I'd missed something by the end of the game. I'd missed some details of the story along the way, but nothing important. I would suggest playing Her Story instead. Don't buy this game.
So far I've played completed the tutorial, played 2 skirmishes, and about 10-15 games across three different campaigns. The mechanics seem to be well implemented and polished, and the aesthetics are good. I would, however, echo the warning from other reviews: don't buy it on gog.com. I bought this game with the intention that I would play it with my friends. I see now, however, that you are not given that opportunity through the gog version of the game. Instead, you can only play against the AI or get randomly matched against other players. Since it lacks any form of story component, this is a huge flaw with this implementation. I might have given the game 5 stars otherwise, still need to play more before I'd know that for sure, but I'm knocking two stars off for not being able to play with my friends. In fact, there's a good chance that I will request a refund and instead purchase the game on steam.
