A worthy sequel to the brilliant Kathy Rain, and followup to one of the finest point and click adventure games ever made: Whispers of a Machine. This engrossing mystery adventure had me at the edge of my seat for the entire 23hr playtime i put into it. Truly a masterpiece of adventure game design and storytelling. Clifftop games have three incredible P&C titles under their belts now. I can't wait to see what they come up with next.
Most adventure games feature good graphics and an interesting setup, but they usually fall short on characters, dialogue and plot/story development. This is not the case here, and Kathy Rain is the first game in YEARS that has kept me glued to the computer. I was completely and totally invested in this story and I cant wait for it's continuation. Kathy is a compelling protagonist and the game is filled with realistic, interesting and well written characters. The dialogue never feels forced or railroady and the twists and turns of the story are both surprising and feel natural. This is honestly one of the best adventure games I've played in the last 20 years. Only surpassed by their next game "Whispers of the machine" which is a bonafide masterpiece. I cant wait for the sequel.
I was expecting this to be an open world RPG, with a living breathing city, full of NPC's that lived their life, went about their day, had agency and motivations, with a crime system that adapted to the player and an intimidating always lurking police force. Megacorporations pulling invisible strings and a pulsing underworld full of runners and revolutionaries. That is not what this game is. Perhaps I was wrong to expect these things, but this was how it was advertised and the non-advertised aspects are due to it's license to the legendary pen & paper RPG cyberpunk. This game is an FPS, with a skilltree and branching storylines. A sort of cross between GTA and Dishonored, but lacking GTA's AI, which is atleast able to drive a car and not spawn law enforcements officers right behind your back. And it lacks Dishonored's focus, polish and tightly designed levels. Yes, Cyberpunk 2077 is riddled with glitches, bugs and crashes, but that is just scratching the surface of the problems with the game. The fact that NPC glitch in and out of a path, walk through each other and get stuck in objects wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that it is ALL they do. You can't talk to them or interact with them in any meaningful way. The fact that shops and buildings are divided into a small number of categories (fast food, clothes, bars mainly) wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that you can't do anything at those locations (outside of a quest), and the fact that the levelingsystem and skilltree are given very little context within the game until a pretty long way in wouldn't be so bad if your choices when leveling up had any meaningful impact outside of combat and hacking. Conversation choices that are unlocked because of your intelligence or cool rarely have an impact on the outcome of a conversation. I have no doubt that what was released is not what was in CDPR's designdocument 5 years ago, but what is here now is a pretty lackluster experience.
This game has all the hallmarks of a Daedalic adventure game. Fantastic artwork and music, interesting and original setting, average puzzle design and absolutely horrendous transtation and voice work. It never seizes to amaze me how terrible the translation of Daedelic games are. It's as if it's just passed through google translate, and the english voice work is just bafflingly bad. Occasionally the voice over is quite nice albeit a bit stale, but as soon as two characters are interacting it's like listening to two robots. I refuse to believe there was any direction involved. This sounds like the actors were just fed one line after the other and just spoke them back. No human interacts like this. The broken english makes it even more difficult to enjoy. It really ruins the whole experience for me. Turning off voices is possible, and I strongly recommend doing so. With voices off it's quite an enjoyable adventure game, if you can get past the terrible translation.
It is truly astonishing how amazing these games are. I've given myself away, so let's take a step back. Dishonored follows in the footsteps of System shock and Bioshock in that is a hugely narrative driven adventure/roleplaying game with truly amazing FPS/action gameplay. It's a genre that it's so difficult to get right that very few even attempt it. The mastery might be said to be in the storytelling. Compelling characters and a narrative structure that keeps you engaged throughout really complements the tale that is being told. Then again, the key to this game-series success might be said to be in it's clever use of adventure/RPG-elements. Light but prevalent. The character progression is brilliantly balanced and the exploration and interactions with NPC's and the environment in which you travel is hugely engaging and in a class of it's own. But still, one could just as easily argue that the magic ingredient is the games action gameplay. It's an extremely tightly designed, fluid and tactile part of the game that is so inviting that it's almost difficult to not just murder everyone! Which brings us to the safron in the rice, the stealth! If all of this wasn't enough these games have a stealth mechanic that is unequaled. Once you realize that there are hidden passages all over and secrets around every corner for you to explore and take advantage of, once you realize that you can get through the entire game without killing everyone the brilliance of Dishonored finally starts sinking it. It's easily my favourite game series of the last 15 years, and probably my favourite game series of all time. It makes no wrong steps. It's simply amazing!