Very nice rpg with an interesting setting, fun systems and challenging, yet never unfair combat. Compared to the developers' previous game Age of decadence this is a longer and more conventional game (no more "choose your own adventure" feeling"). It's also more forgiving since you can play with a party that can cover most skills, so you're not as restricted in your play style as in AoD. Unlike in AoD there are also now genuine "dungeons" that give you a great feeling of exploration. Combat is also great, lots of very hard encounters, but it's almost never frustrating, since there's usually a non-combat alternative and you can choose how much of the combat you want to engage with (and for those who thought AoD was too hard: not only is the game a bit easier in general on the standard setting, there's also an easy difficulty setting now). The graphics, while not the most important part of an rpg, are also quite beautiful and quite the advance on AoD's rather drab look. On the negative side, I think it's less replayable than its predecessor. I just finished my playthrough (which was very enjoyable) and don't feel like I have many mysteries left to uncover, unlike with AoD which was much shorter, but offered many drastically different experiences. I also think Colony ship's characterization is a bit weak, there are few memorable individuals and the entire conflict between the different factions feels a bit under-developed in the end. The general atmosphere is great though. To sum up: not a perfect game or one that will revolutionize the genre, but a very charming title that I would unreservedly recommend to all fans of rpgs, especially those of a somewhat more hardcore kind. Iron Tower studios is a small indy developer, unfortunately their lack of budget shows at times, but even under those constraints those guys have created something amazing. One wonders what they could to with more resources. If you like rpgs, buy their game, so they can create a sequel!
I'm a big fan of the Commandos games (especially the first one and its expansion), so expected to enjoy Desperados, but found it a rather frustrating experience and quit in level 10. The game is punishingly difficult even in early levels and has some level design which I found rather questionable. Behaviour of guards is often hard to predict...e. g. you can throw poker cards on the ground, and most guards will be lured to look at the card. However some guards might also raise the alarm (just because they saw a card lying on the ground, not because they discovered one of your characters or a body!)...this happened to me in a level where triggering the alarm means instant failure. Similarly, some guards will raise an alarm when they notice comrades are missing from their usual place. Now this might be realistic (and even innovative as a feature), but since one has no real way of predicting the reactions of guards, this makes the game much more unpredictable and increases the trial and error factor significantly. Feels rather unfair imo. So be warned: Just because one liked the Commandos games, there's no guarantee one will also enjoy Desperados, despite the superficial similarities of the games.
Some other reviews have already mentioned it in more detail, so I'll just confirm: If you're looking for a traditional adventure with challenging puzzles, you'll be disappointed by this game, because there aren't any. You mostly advance the game by just talking to everybody, and there aren't many meaningful dialogue choices either. The visual novel comparison seems apt. Instead of decent puzzles, there's some really infuriating design where you can lock yourself out of the best solution to a problem because of a small, unrelated action you may have taken considerably earlier. Difficult to understand how anybody could consider such design a good idea in 2018, seems like something those Sierra adventures from 30 years ago were criticized for. Apart from that, the claims about many different paths are exaggerated...usually it comes down to choosing between framing an obviously innocent suspect and catching the real killer. Unless you deliberately want to get the worst possible result or mess up due to the game's frustrating design, this doesn't really make for good replayability in my opinion. Story and setting are interesting, even if some of the attempts at dealing with serious issues like racism might annoy many people. But the gameplay just is so deficient that I couldn't rate this game higher than 3/5. I've played Francisco Gonzalez' previous games A golden wake and Shardlight, and unfortunately Lamplight city is the weakest of those three games imo.
Nice adventure, general design is quite similar to the Blackwell games (which shares the setting with Unavowed, there are at least two characters from the Blackwell games in Unavowed, so fans of the Blackwell games might especially enjoy this). As in those I found the puzzles a bit too easy, but that's just Dave Gilbert's design philosophy which privileges storytelling over puzzles. The rpg-like elements regarding the companions are well done, there really are somewhat different solutions for puzzles depending on who's in your party, so there is some replayability; I also found all of the companions interesting and enjoyed their backstories and banter. I didn't like the choices you had to make at some points in the game; those are supposed to be morally grey, but in the end I got the impression there were "correct" and "wrong" choices...seems like Bioware's binary morality might have infected Unavowed in this regard. I also didn't enjoy the main story that much, but going into any more detail would spoil it. On the whole: Nice game, if not quite as revolutionary as might have been hoped for. If you enjoyed previous Wadjeteye games, especially the Blackwell series, or if you're just generally interested in point and click adventures, you'll probably like this.
I've played through Age of Decadence several times before, so I understand the combat system and thought I could play this one on "muderous psychopath" difficulty (which is the pre-selected difficulty and applies AoD standard rules). Might have been a mistake...I'm currently on the mine's 2nd level and the game's becoming ridiculously difficult. My party of 3 is now facing an unavoidable fight against some guy (Reinard) with a two-handed axe, a spearman (whose spear is poisoned), a bowman sniper - and two other guys coming from behind, an alchemist who has at least three black powder bombs and some thug with a poisoned club. Sorry, but this is overkill, I like a challenge but this is perverse and I hope they'll tone down the difficulty of some fights in future updates. Apart from that gameplay seems fine, just very, very hard (you're constantly low on healing resources) and fairly restricted - this really is a pure combat dungeon crawler, there are no quests whatsoever. If you like that type of game, this might be for you (but you should probably have played Age of Decadence before...if you don't know the combat system, Dungeon rats' learning curve is probably rather steep).
