First off, a tip: Do not glance at the achievements. A few have spoilers in the title. Pros: well-written believable characters, engaging and immersive interface, a couple of decent privacy invasion style puzzles Cons: kind of light on engaging puzzles, one poorly implemented timed puzzle, weak story Mehs: You are committed to your choices. There's no manual saves. There's no reversing your decisions (although you get some second chances). Overall, the voyeur experience was done pretty well for a first entry. You participate in dialogue with a handful of characters throughout and you get a decent amount of options. Like a VN it feels pretty on rails for the most part and it's pretty clear when you've entered particular path. The puzzles were mostly very simple. A couple were a bit frustrating, only had to find help once. The most annoying thing is there's one timed section (that's all I'll say but it's just bad). Sometimes it's not clear what you need to do and I wound up going down some gossipy path just trying to make progress which I had to try and steer back on track, which I wasn't a fan of. The characters are fairly dramatic but believable. The story was disappointing imho, like really predictable and not satisfying. Still, for the low price I got it for I was pretty entertained for about 5 hours. I'm curious to see what they will do with the concept and will certainly check out the sequels.
Disclosure: Currently about 4.5 hrs in, my character level is in the single digits, I'm new to the series Initially it feels like very familiar ARPG experience (by today's standards). If you've played diablo, torchlight, etc. it feels pretty standard. Initially, there's also a very short loop between plunging into the dungeon and returning to town that makes it feel very light and repetitive compared to other titles. You can also save and exit at any time, so it's low commit, time-wise. I think the only negative I have so far is some things aren't explained very well if at all and the in-game tips are completely random. The story also seems to be barely there, which personally I'm fine with. Here's where it hooked me though. The RNG is pretty nutty and when it works in your favor it's transformative. I got several layers deep into the dungeon, things were starting to get boring, and then I realized I was playing the fishing mini-game wrong (just misunderstood the instructions). I start fishing and pull up several loot items that are way out of my build and level (no idea what they're worth), so I give them to my dog and send him to town. Turns out my dog is a shrewd negotiator and comes back 100k gold (over 10x my average amount on-hand up until now). Very good dog! I take some of that to the gambler merchant (pricey items with random effects) and pick up a necklace with 17% strength bonus. So now I can equip way, way stronger gear, buy more stuff and can slice-and-dice way above my level... because I went fishing for a few minutes. Normally I end up bailing on ARPGs because they feel samey and the balancing gets boring (always comparing slightly different numbers, worrying about build viability, etc.), but this really scratches the loot gathering itch because I have no idea what to expect next.
Enjoyable gameplay, and a goofy story. Comes with the original for some added value. The enemy path finding seems a bit inept which seems to limit the difficulty. The level design is easily the biggest negative. Lots of hidden paths and switches to who-knows-where. If it didn't have a map, determining how to progress would be baffling (which it still often is). Overall, a fun little time-waster.
Pros - Atmospheric, relaxing usually and interesting setting - Good second monitor game for turning your brain off - Variety of scenery - Fishing/dredging is engaging Cons - Highly repetitive and short gameplay loop; fish or salvage for like 3-5 minutes, return before dusk (or don't), sell fish or get upgrades, repeat. - Thin story with few if any memorable characters - It doesn't take long to get the idea of what the rest of the game looks like. Go to the various quadrants, help locals, and grind in-between Not at all a bad time, but you're not missing out on anything.
I'm 4 hours in and consistently encounter: - weapons turning invisible in my hands for 5 minutes at a time - margrave shotgun vanishes out of my inventory when I upgrade it - minute long load times between areas on an SSD, think Half-Life on a slow HDD - inventory items (shotgun on top of ammo) being stacked on top of each other and the only way to unstack them is to drop them. Not a bad exploit but... - some items disappear when dropped TBF, I've had games download in a slightly corrupted state from GOG in the past that I was able to resolve by verifying the game. I've done that for this game and the issues persist. I may have to start over... I would recommend verifying anything you download from GOG as the first thing you do. It's a really cool game otherwise if you like bioshock and deus ex, but my god...
