I was excited for this game leading up to its release. Owlcat has a lot of goodwill currency with me, and even if they were only publishing and not developing, that alone was enough. The game and players all invite Disco Elysium comparisons and on a superficial level you can see the similarities. But it doesn't take long for the cracks to start to show. *SPOILERS AHEAD* The game is shockingly linear. When you begin with this seemingly open world sandbox of locations, people and infinite time loops to explore, it feels as though you can go anywhere and do anything. But the guardrails and forced narrative take effect pretty quickly. You're hurried through a series of increasingly repetitive tasks that never really quite seem to payoff. "Ask NPC A about X. Wait for the next timeloop. Ask NPC B about the information gained from NPC A. Wait for the next timeloop. Rinse and repeat." The tasks you're given never really seem to be relevant to the questions you have. Why are you in a timeloop? Why are you the only one who knows? Who are you in relation to this plot? Is the world ending at the end of every timeloop? Instead, you're treated to answering riddles of "Is the big hat lady selling her motel?" "Does the nerdy reception girl have a good relationship with her father?" and so on. This filler is dragged out for hours after hours after hours. Most of the time you don't feel like you're pursuing anything important, but just filling time. And then you discover that all the checks and stats are largely meaningless too. Whether you pass or fail them, the story continues on because it needs to and it's very linear. You'll find you quick paying attention to whether they pass or fail pretty much immediately because of how inconsequential they are. And then the ending. There really are no answers given. No big payoff. You're just a side character in someone else's story that you don't even see until the last few minutes. The how and the why, never answered. Your relation to the plot and what makes you so special, never answered. I don't know if that was supposed to be subversive or what, but imagine watching Groundhog Day through Ned Ryerson's perspective. Who would want to? This game was terrible. The premise and art, along with some of the soundtrack were quite good, so 2/5, but I'd strongly recommend avoiding this one. Also, if this is the quality of what Owlcat is publishing, I'll think twice about Shadow of the Road when it releases.
It's a good game on its own merit, but I'd hardly call it much of a sequel to Frostpunk 2 even though it tries to be in story. The gameplay is much more macro than micro. While it carries the same tension as the first with always leaving you wondering if everything is going to collapse at any minute and everything you've done is all wrong, it focuses more on a political landscape trying to balance out factions. Protests were the bane of my existence. Overall, it was a good as a stand-alone game. It was beautiful, tense, and well crafted. As a sequel to Frostpunk, I think it left something to be desired as it lost a little bit of the personal touch that the first had and introduced mechanics that I doubt anyone really wanted.
