The game is about choices, I got that when I bought it, but I expected a resource management element to it, not a "choose your preferred type of suffering" kind of deal. Basically, the game enforces hard choices on you by taking away your resources. No, I didn't say by making you choose who to give them, but literally taking it away with red herring quests/ petitioners, upkeep mechanics, and upgrades you straight up need to have a CHANCE at getting a semi-good end. This will result in you needing to straight up send away petitoners because you didn't pay that specific agent's upkeep so you can't use them, or because you got asked to provide resources you literally spent to get the game going. And this would not be a problem, as long as the red herring petitioners WOULDN'T REDUCE HAPPINESS IF TOLD TO BUZZ OFF. Because there is a lot of those, yet somehow a lovers quarell being ignored amidst war reduces the entire populace's happiness the same amount as crop fields getting flooded and ignored by the king... The concept was good, the story is alright, but like with many other games, the execution was faulty. Instead of getting enjoyment from playing king and making choices for my domain, I often got frustrated because an agent wasn't ready or a resource missed 1-3 units to allow for a choice besides sending the petitioner away. Overall, I left with closure to the story, but no interest for it's continuation. I bought this game at a big sale, and I recommend you do the same
The previous game from this studio, Coteries of New York wasn't free of current day ideology, but this one just couldn't put a lid on it! I guess this whole series is an aphabet+ preacher dwelling into the World of Darkness, and making a cheap VN about it on the side. It's quite frankly, disgusting. I think I'm not alone to say that the World of Darkness should be about monsters, the dark side of the human condition, the irony of engaging atrocities not as the hero, but as a fellow villain. This series, and most definitely this game has nothing to do with that. This game is written with the skill of an edgy teen with modern day vocabulary and virtue signalling. The choices are vain, whatever you do you will either "win" it or "lose" it. There is also the death option, but that's too early to count. The art is REUSED FROM THE PREVIOUS GAME. There are SOME new art in there, but most setpieces and a lot of characters have the same art as in Coteries of New York. A'la an asset flip. The story is shallow, the characters not just two dimensional, but also inconsistent, the overall vibe of the game is that the MC is "single white femaling" the audience (game's own words btw... ugh). There is nothing to praise about this game, nor anything they did average, or just alright. It's a complete mess I expect from NO BUDGET 4chan visual novels, not a commercially available game. Would I not be naive and notice all the red flags, I would've stopped at Coteries. I recommend you to learn from my mistakes and DO NOT BUY THIS SLOP! Even if you are ideologically aligned with the creators, still, DO NOT BUY! It's still a shit game with absolutely zero effort put into it.
And this game is why music producers shouldn't try making video games! The Atmosphere - Nice up to 15 minutes, then it's undermined by the one dimensional characters, the comedy coming from nowhere, and the monotonity that you have to go back and forth from locations ENDLESSLY. The Story - Cookie cutter "muh privacy" and "technology bad" message that has been delivered poorly. The text looks like it was written by a 14 year old that's not even native english, characters act nonsensical at MOST times, and the story progression goes from 1 to 11 in the last 3-4 hours (or 45-120 mins in story mode). The Gameplay - Is utter TRASH!!! You either play story mode and miss out parts of the STORY, and play a crap visual novel with minimal extra player action OR you plunge into retardness with "hardcore" mode, that promises to be a point & click adventure game, but instead becomes "let's try everything out with everything and do a lot of saves"-the game. The game does stupid little hints, like "the monster likes to eath this 3 thing", however it's barely useful because you need to combine the needed items in an EXACT ORDER. And not to mention the utter stupidity of some puzzles, like the one with the antennas for example, or basically the whole jungle level. TLDR; This game is trash! Don't buy it, don't waste time being frustrated by stupid puzzles (or the walkthrough occasionally being wrong or missing keypoints -like the acquision of the robot arm-), and most importantly DON'T BE FOOLED BY THE LOW STANDARD REVIEWERS BELOW (or above, idk where will gog put this)!!! This game only looks good from the distance.
Namely when somebody mentions this in any way, shape, or form. Cult classic vampire RPG game that will make paradox sweat balls to über with their upcoming sequel. The most prominent features are the huge story, and the life-like character interactions/ dialogue. Whilst the game has a main story, and countless side-quests they can be finished in many ways, both from the choices you are given and your very own playstyle. Not going to say that this is the best RPG ever since I don't adhere to such notions but this one is pretty strong, so much so that it makes you forget/ forgive all the 2000's jank that comes with it. The gog version has the unofficial patch, but currently it's 10.2, whilst at the writing of this review the available version is 11.1. Go upgrade it.
