There is something ironic about a game as limited as this revolving around ideas of personal freedom all the while limiting the player to power gaming strategies in order to be effective. Don't be mislead by the panoply of skills offered at character creation, you will soon discover most are mutually exclusive for inexplicable reasons Once you decide upon diplomacy or destruction, you will be punished and eventually have all progress halted if you attempt any deviation. All checks are pass/fail. Without the required stat or skill, you are doomed. Don't be mislead by the colors of the options, yellow does not indicate you have a chance as I had initially surmised. After failing enough to be suspicious I tried save scumming and after 25 loads I realized the colors of text options mean nothing. I would have given this game three stars for being at least average if it weren't for the lack of auto saves and the inability to save during combat. After losing several hours progress because a conversation went south resulting in immediate hostilities with no opportunity to salvage any of it I felt absolute no desire to slog through any of it again. Also, be aware that the quest log eschews any useful information other than the bare minimum, locations are not marked and you are given only vague descriptions (look for the salvage container with green trim!), and you you are quizzed constantly on how well you pay attention to the mundane and uninspired dialogue with NPCs and admonished severely for any lapse. Its neither thoughtful nor entertaining enough for the investment required of the player. If tedium and blind failure are your thing, have at, otherwise I would recommend a hard pass. I supported the previous game by this studio despite how clunky, unattractive and cumbersome it was, however, while this was a drastic improvement in a few notable ways this will be the last time I support Iron Tower.
Another game where RNG is all that matters and choice is an illusion. Prologue introduction to meaningful choices and their consequences. You can either use a companion's ability to read the mind of the person you want to negotiate with in order to ascertain what leverage is necessary to gain their cooperation by assisting them in a problem they have. . .Attempt a moderate challenge -and arrive at the exact same response and results. Or attempt a very difficult challenge -to also arrive at the exact same response and result. 85% chance to hit is never better than 50-50, I have yet to hit anything in combat two turns consecutively, let alone 4 out of 5. And this game won't get 4 out of 5 stars. 2 for effort.
🔎The issues have been resolved with the newest updates. GOG Staff I have read more than a few reviews lauding this as an improvement upon the first. . .I can only wonder what that title must have been like. The art is good, the gameplay is adequate, but it is the design of the game itself that is highly questionable. Dialogue shows up in a box, to move from one block of text to the next you have to click within that same box to continue, responses show up in the same box and if your mouse is anything like mine its sensitive enough that the occasional click is doubled which not only skips the next line of relevant text but also selects your response. Why. Its the same for the combat menu, right click will reverse you out of an attack sub menu, but it will also skip your turn if you are on the main attack menu. Your party members are taken out of your group by the game, but you have to manually re-add them. Don't know how? There is a solution to that. Just click around the menu 'til you figure it out. You get a notification pop up asking if you are sure you want to venture out alone, why not simply have that give you the option to form a party? I get rogue like games are styled so that you push through failure until you reach parity and start making progress, but usually they are enjoyable with challenges you can find strategic solutions to. I don't personally like failing forward, but I am willing to grind my way through shit when necessary. . .But like Darkest Dungeon, the game is pretty much run by an unfriendly RNG which reduce player agency to meaningless exercises with arbitrary outcomes. An RPG wherein you have no control and your choices don't matter. Rarely have I felt so punished by a game I made an effort to enjoy. Well Silent Dreams, you win. I am not interested in playing anymore. You can keep my money though, maybe your next game will be better than this one. There is some real promise here, just not enough of it.
The game is mostly combat and the combat is not good. You can put all your points into gunnery and the skill that improves aim. . .And you will still miss entirely too often. You will always be out-numbered and the enemies always have hidden buffs -like that is it, that is the difficulty. Being out-numbered by superior adversaries. It's never anything else.. And the combat is slow. And all of the systems in the game penalize the player -injuries don't matter for enemies that aren't going to survive. Repairs don't matter for enemies that aren't going to survive. Its all just bad. Which is too bad because there is some serious promise in some of this, but it just is not enjoyable.
There is little in the way of meaningful interactions between the different species in the universe. Even the addition of a galactic council does little to add additional depth or intrigue. They either happily ignore one another or engage in genocidal campaigns based upon little provocation and nebulous ideals -galactical council be damned. This alone makes the game feel simply mechanical. Exploration is curtailed by the stupidly close proximity of spawns and limited in variety of encounters. A pity, since this was the bit I was naturally drawn to. The last game I will probably ever play was on the largest map possible with only ten AI -and every single one of them was within the same third of the map with my position dead center. I made contact with all of them within the first twenty years. and reached what would be the borders of my fledgling empire within fifty years without expanding through more aggressive tactics. Speaking of combat and tactics, there is no avoiding the one and nothing to the latter. There is some advantage to deploying strategies and a little usefulness in weapon variety varying against ship types and defensive loadouts. . .But one can effectively ignore all of that and simply pursue a high-numbers-always-win mien and find success without much effort. Nor is the AI able, insightful, or effective enough to make for compelling hostilities or memorable battles. In short, combat just isn't good; Good enough, yes, but that isn't the same thing. The music is pleasant, but derivative and offered in a sort of whimsically mindless manner with motiffs lifted almost directly from other, better, efforts such as Interstellar, Mass Effect, and Deus Ex. Whether the notes are exciting or sorrowful, there is no correlation and therefore all of it simply fades into the background much like the humming of an imbecile. A little thoughtfulness here might have gone a long way because the musical accompaniment really is the best thing about the game.
Coteries of New York had its faults but was still obviously crafted with some care and affection for both its material and the role playing culture which was responsible for White Wolf's early success. Its biggest problem was, like many Tell Tale games, in order to retain control over narrative and continuity the developers restricted the player to flavoring what they were served rather than preparing their own fare. Meaningful arcs in the story are predetermined while the player merely elects the path which leads to their eventual revelation. An understandable, if not entirely satisfying, compromise between the time and talent of those working on such projects and what those who will buy it desire. The sequel dispenses with the pretext of player participation in the story. Every five to ten minutes one may be asked for some minor input (like as to how an editor should be told to to fuck off and somewhat later making the vital the choice between "Uh huh." and "Mmmm hmmm."), or taken to the city map with no options other than resting in order to progress the story line between beats, but really the only responsibility asked of the player is to click the continue icon after every line of dialogue. I won't comment as to the characters or story since those are more a matter of taste and preference than execution and polish, but very little in this appealed to me. I was rather hopeful for this release having seen some potential in the first installment, however, forty five minutes of play (of a five hour game) has convinced me I was not their intended audience. For the very young or the very dedicated this may we a worthwhile purchase but I am afraid I cannot recommend it to anyone else. Its simply too mindless and passive an experience to be enjoyable.
I am, admittedly, pretty hard to please when it comes to RPGs in general. It is my favorite genre and I feel most games fail to meet the balance of a. ) choice and consequence; b.) quality narrative; and, c.) meaningful interactivity that I defined earlier RPGs. Playing such games, ideally, should be like experiencing a compelling saga from the perspective of an involved character with the freedom to express yourself and realize your own ambitions within the context of that story. To put it another way, they should be virtual novels with interactivity and player agency. This is none of those things, nor does it attempt any of those things. That, it and of itself, would be fine and would hardly warrant a review. Most RPGs exist bereft of lineage. Personalizing a character with stats and tactical flexibility seem to be sufficient for most people and who am I to argue with the indiscriminating consumer base keeping the genre alive? This, however, goes beyond misguided into essentially flawed through poor design choice and a complete lack of appreciation for the mechanics and game play of the core game upon which this module is predicated. Highly restrictive with poor prose and sparse content, it was not even interesting enough to be frustrating. I was almost relieved when, maybe ten minutes into the game, I breached the second zone of the game and found myself trapped in an area with one building which I could not enter and zone exit I could not use. . . And yes, the game literally gives you notifications invalidating your choices so one cannot even fail without the game's express permission.
