I bought this on Steam way back when, and I reviewed it there and on GameFAQs, giving it perfect marks. Because I truly, genuinely, sincerely love this game. Not ironically, not in spite of its odd design choices, but BECAUSE of them. So many games advertise player choice, and ultimately it amounts to nothing at the game's end. From Mass Effect to the later Prey, so many games claim your choices matter, only for you to end up with a short, generic and identical ending to everyone else. In Brigand you'll receive a vignette of mini endings, showcasing how your actions changed things. Actually playing the game also offers a variety of choices. Sneaking into a city I could either buy my way in, steal a uniform and sneak in (thus upsetting the faction balance), or read an in-game book on the lore and bluff my way in. There may have been other choices too. Yes, it's difficult. But if you know how to manipulate the system it's manageable (remote hacking and infra-red vision plus a sniper rifle help a lot in the end game - also your repair skill can fix objectives requiring protecting). Yes, you can make the game unwinnable by building a poor character build. That's on you. True freedom is the freedom to fail. It angers me when weak players complain that a game gave them the freedom to softlock themselves into an unwinnable position. Don't make those mistakes then. Morrowind allowed you to kill vital NPCs, giving a warning the game couldn't be finished. The sequels made key NPCs immortal because players kept ruining their games. The stupidity of weak players has ruined gaming for everyone else. We are treated like babies and imbeciles now, and no longer have true freedom. If you create a useless character build, blame only yourself. Brigand gives you absolute freedom. The freedom to succeed with ease, and the freedom to destroy your progress irreversibly. And I love it for that. It is an absolute gem of game design.
This is a long review describing the many, many aspects of The Long Journey Home which render it a complete garbage fire of a game. It is so bad as to be an exquisite example of incompetent and ludicrous design. Mostly though it's just hot garbage and I am super angry at having wasted £33. I want my damned money back! The tl;dr version: A combination of elements which in isolation would and should be amazing, but are so ham-fistedly mashed together by an incompetent and amateur team as to conflict with each other and provide zero enjoyment. It's like someone took an infinite number of monkeys and had them typing C++ for an infinite length of time hoping for a great game to be made, and when the monkeys came up with TLJH the publisher was like: **** it, good enough. The long version: I had insanely high hopes for this game. It seemed to channel Starflight and Star Control 2 with its space exploration, space combat, and ability to kit out your ship while also landing on planets for resources. The roguelike nature of it also called to mind FTL (Faster Than Light), while the random starmaps and alien races, of which only a select few are randomly allocated with each "randomisation seed", reminded me of Masters of Orion 1 & 2. Plus of course the hardcore survival aspect seemed somewhat reminiscent of NeoScavenger and Day R Survival. I wanted to love this game so badly, that even despite the bad reviews which popped up immediately, I still put down my £30. Most negative reviews complained of the difficulty, to the point the developers actually patched in an easier "story mode" option. "Ha!" said I, laughing. Having completed a lot of very hardcore tough games (such as Pathologic) and loving them, I assumed the complaints where from younger gamers who simply didn't know what a decent challenge was. How wrong I was. The problem with The Long Journey Home is not really the difficulty, but rather the fact the game itself is not fun, does not motivate you, provides no joy within the struggle, and provides almost no choices in order to adapt to the difficult. It wastes your time, demands you play it in one very specific fashion, and punishes you simply for following its own imposed rules. The best review I've read of TLJH was titled "Of Cargo Cults and Child Baking" and GOG. Cargo cults being people who know that something's wonderful and want to replicate it, but can only produce a sad and ineffectual mockery of what inspired them. While "child baking" is a child who will add every ingredient to a cake they thinks is tasty, each in excess, and the outcome is inedible. I should have listened to this review, since it succinctly highlights the core problem of TLJH. The ship combat is clunky - and why can I only fire sideways? The lander minigame is repetitive and boring. The resource management is so simplistic as to be just crap. The alien interactions are neutered by a 3-question limit - they might as well not even exist! The randomisation is illogical and obtuse. The "special events" are extremely boring - whether it's a space brothel or ancient monastery, the reward will be some generic "item" you can get at a dozen interchangeable places. Why bother? Nothing about this game is redeemable. It's badly programmed, badly designed, grossly overpriced, and an utter waste of time. It fails to comprehend what makes a decent, it fails in absolutely every regard. And the worst thing is I paid £33 to suffer this. The Hi-Def remake of Star Control 2 is available online for FREE under the name Ur-Quan Masters. While FTL, NeoScavenger, Starflight 1 & 2, plus Masters of Orion 1 & 2 can ALL be bought for less than this single piece of slop. About £27 by my reckoning, which leaves £5 in your pocket for other games. Do not waste your money on The Long Journey Home. The sheer awfulness of this game is so immaculate as to border on brilliance. I cannot believe any group of people could create something so buttock-clenchingly terrible and then have the audacity to charge SO MUCH for it! Like shovelling hot, rancid trashbags into the mouth of my unborn child. This game makes me weep with anger and regret.
I like these kinds of ASCII RPGs. I played quite a few made in things like QBasic, or for DOS. So I was looking forward to this. However, it is awful, and one of the worst I've played. Most games with a simple or ASCII interface try to make things intuitive due to the limitations of the format. Meaning they streamline for efficiency and work with the strengths of the system, rather than fighting against the limits. Sanctuary RPG goes in the complete opposite direction, offering a degree of complexity which necessitates a detailed graphics interface to properly understand. There was walls and walls of text in a poorly laid out fashion - it felt like the designer was a big Morrowind fan and just wanted to make an ASCII game. Furthermore, and this REALLY annoyed me, your progress does not make any sense. I was wandering the fields, and suddenly it brought me to some gate and a Terminal boss. I didn't want to fight him, I wanted to continue exploring the fields, but the game railroads you so that you cannot go back, or explore, or backtrack. I was stuck at this stupid gate unable to see anything else. Waste of money. I'd rather go play Blood of the Chameleon. It's also an ASCII RPG, but it's free, it looks better, and it's a lot more fun. This is garbage. Total waste of money. :(
System Shock 2 is only $10. I want to buy this, but $20 is way, WAY too much. Maybe for $7.99. If you want a decent, classic FPS, get System Shock 2. It's cheaper and the better game. I'll stick with the N64 original of this, fog and all, until the price comes down.
