Out of all the Alexis Kennedy games (Fallen London, Sunless Sea), I feel this one has best married gameplay to artistic vision. Gameplay is focused on a card table (evoking tarot). You start with one card. You'll end with many. There is no tutorial. Part of the game is to discover the rules, the possibilities, the endings. Approach it as a puzzle, indulge in some roleplay, drink the atmosphere, and you should enjoy it. ================== All that said, I lost and started again (permadeath) 15-20 times before I "won". I probably got 15-25 hours of gameplay. I enjoyed the beginning and middle the most. For my last playthrough, I did end up looking at a forum because I was stuck (I had uncovered the last mechanic but had missed it/glanced over the flavor text). The enjoyment really did come from losing and subsequently discovering new mechanics. Some of the discovery was relevatory. Immerse yourself, carefully read the flavor text, look out for cause/effect. You'll stop enjoying the game once you start relying on forums- it really is designed around the discovery experience. The gameplay doesn't hold up on its own once you've uncovered all the mechanics. It is a finished title from a very small indie team, so the $20 (that's less than what I spent on the booze I drank while playing it- Absinthe anyone?) is reasonable. The game is highly polished. End-game DLC could be mind-blowing (especially if it brought in adversaries from the Mansus).
I was hyped by the other reviews. The game does seem ambititious. I've put 2.5 hours into it and it just hasn't been fun. The controls and camera are atrocious. The dialogue and narrative are entertaining, but the quests themselves seem mechanically tedious. I don't see how you can reliably play this without save-scumming every battle. For some reason the manual is missing on the GOG release, but you can Google it.
The game (and I think this is fair) is close to an EV Nova clone. The ability to take over systems is neat, but the system management mechanics are thin. I played as a space pirate and unfortunately the quests were nondescript and not that fun (fly here, maybe fight this ship). I appreciate that war-time economies in the game drive up the price of goods but otherwise the economy trading system felt flat (didn't really seem to be a distinction between systems with regards to the production of goods like you would find in a game like X3). The 2D sprite-based graphics of the game are fairly good with some rough edges (e.g. default Windows scheme on the save game dialogue). The combat is OK- but many of the upgrades between ships are repetitive. I quickly found a combo that would be all ships in my class (and then some). The combat systems is turn-based with action points and 5 options for clicking. By the end of the game, my ship was insanely overpowered which meant taking over systems was a waiting game (mandatory number of turns during a planetary siege even if you are kicking butt). Man, I just have an itch for a really good open-ended space trader sim, and this didn't scratch it. I'm a bit disappointed that the mechanics weren't as inventive given that everything in this game is static/turn-based.
I enjoyed the game for the first few hours. I appreciate hard games and roguelikes. However, as I kept playing, I realized that the mechanic for learning recipes would require like 50+ playthroughs. So, I caved and checked out an online wiki. After seeing what you could actually craft, the game seems lackluster and shallow. I guess just didn't see the payoff.
