Dave Gilbert has made some of my favorite adventure games and his newest work does not disappoint. If you’re familiar with his games (The Blackwell series, Unavowed etc.) then you know what to expect: witty humor, clever but relatively easy puzzles, heavy emphasis on dialogue and New York. And plot twists. Lots and lots of plot twists. The setting is interesting and the story, although it starts slow, kept me captivated from start to finish. Gameplay wise, this is an AGS game, so you know what to expect. The highlights are the rewind system and the in-game archive, welcome additions to an otherwise straightforward point-and-click adventure. There is also a built-in hint system that I suspect veterans of the genre will rarely use. The visuals are not in the usual pixel art style and that might throw some people off but nevertheless fit the tone of the game. The soundtrack by Thomas Regin is good but not as memorable as his previous collaborations with Gilbert. To summarize, this is one of the best adventure games to come out in the 2020s and if you like the genre do yourself a favor and play it. And that would have been the end, if I didn’t have some more personal thoughts. First, I don’t think the good Mr. Gilbert realizes what a dystopian nightmare he created with this setting. We are talking about a world where most peoples personal history changes every five seconds with an unseen corporate/governmental board, referred in game as “The brass,” deciding on what historical events are important or no. I really wished the game leaned more into that aspect of the world but it tells a far more personal story instead. Said personal story, although well told, stretches credulity a bit when it comes to the people Fia, the protagonist, meets. There is a theme about fate in the game and if Gilbert is trying to make a point there, he should have explored it more.
I tried to play the game and encountered a game-breaking bug. Where do you ask? On the tutorial. Yes, the tutorial. After a few movement drills that went smoothly there is a section where you are supposed to fight a small group of enemies, the only problem was, there were no enemies. The game simply did not load them. It’s not like they were invisible or anything, they were not there. That was not the bug I mentioned earlier. That came in the next room. You are supposed to use your gun to create a platform. Pulled out my gun, aimed carefully and took the shot. Nothing. My shots simply did not create the platform and there was no way to progress. I’ve been playing for less than an hour. Then I tried to quit the game and was dumfounded to discover that I could not open the menu! I had to alt-tab out and close the game the hard way. One to avoid.
The new campaign should be renamed to Lost Bugs. The story is interesting, more than Crown of the Magister, but I would say buy only after a month or so. At least the developers are working diligently to fix the bugs but the dlc should not have been released at this state. I don;t remember Crown of the Magister being this buggy. My guess is that the dlc will be mostly bug-free by the end of May 2022.
If the first game was Baldur’s Gate, this one is Baldur’s Gate 2 with all good and bad this brings. The characters are more interesting right of the bat and are more fleshed out from the get go. The main story is simpler than Kingmaker’s was but has some intriguing implications especially for certain mythic paths. Speaking of the mythic paths, they all get to shine and make your character much more unique than they were in Kingmaker. Some of them change how the entire story unfolds and even how the gameplay works out. The main antagonist is good, with an interesting motivation and a very big plan. That being said, Jon Irenicus she is not. The game has possibly the longest campaign out of any rpg and yet it is very well paced. The breathtaking number of choices in builds is still here, as expected from Pathfinder 1st Edition. The visuals are about the same on the technical side but depict much more interesting locations. The soundtrack is a strong candidate for the title of best OST in any rpg. So far so good right? Well… Although WOTR is not the dumpster fire that Kingmaker was at release, the bugs are still present. Thankfully they start to really crop up after dozens of hours and Owlcat are working around the clock to fix the major ones. The Alfred Pennyworth school of monologue is still giving degrees in blabbermouthology so npcs will spout paragraph upon paragraph of uninteresting details almost every time you ask them a simple question. It’s not as bad as Kingmaker but it’s still annoying. The Crusade/Kingdom Management is a prime example of the old saying: One step forward, two steps back. It doesn’t make you waste take supporting your advisors (who you don’t get to pick) but it is also much more detached from the main story. So, is it worth it? Yes it is, but only if are into this sort of experience. The final rating is 4/5 because of the bugs and the writing style. If it was bug free it would probably be a 5/5 with an asterisk.
