I bought this yesterday, and played it off and on. It's quite short and u can likely make it to an ending in about...2-4h, depending on reading speed. Only a few of the lines have voice overs so most of the game will be experienced via reading. The game touts it's...'decisions that change your characters' as a pro. I found it more to be a con. I have yet to replay the game, but basically, when a 'change' is made, it can alter things that have happened in the past quite selectively. Like your character remembers events as they happened but the others affected, have no memory of the event. Character after character go thru these 'transformations' meaning that the story changes quite drastically and invalidates earlier decisions. That's why I had trouble playing it all in one go, as...things change so dramatically it's really hard for me to care about what's happening to the characters. One of the first changes, was were the main bad guy becomes....well, good. This person you were supposed to dislike became someone your character now tries to help, even tho they did unkind things to your character. I think, if this was made for a younger audience the sloppy story telling might be forgiven but it talks about killing people too, and as a visual novel...the story is all it has. This might be the worst VN I have ever played, as with the story constantly shifting...you don't get drawn into what's happening.
This is a standalone visual novel, loosely based off Coteries of New York. Many of the picture slides and characters were reused for this game that was in the previous one. Excluding replaying it, there's about ~5h of gameplay from beginning to end. I do find the main character much more relatable than those you could choose in it's predecessor. In Coteries, your choices had very little to no impact on the overall story. Without replaying it, it's difficult for me to say if that's true of this game or not. Aside from the main character sometimes seeing strange shadows, or some story dialog letting you do something that's more than human, you don't really need to be a vampire in this game. That's not to say it isn't portrayed well, just that it doesn't matter much--it's mostly a game of clue w/ some vampire elements. Overall, I think it's a bit sub par for a visual novel. There are definitely some areas I had wished they had improved on from the first game, which they didn't do, and it's rather short. If you enjoyed Coteries, odds are you will enjoy this game as well.
This game is like a blend of Heroes of Might and magic III & civilization. It's turn based and u need to make armies for your hero. You then move it around the map, claiming and improving different spots on the map. There are 3 "factions" you can choose from, altho in the campaign mode u can only start with 1, and the other 2 unlock as you progress. That being said, the campaign mode isn't horribly lengthy with only 4 scenarios per faction. The story is pretty meh. There's a sandbox mode where u can choose your faction and starting map, reminiscent of civ. There is also a "tech tree" that you have to spend points to unlock. However, the tree has no dependencies, and you only need a single line leading to something to obtain it. So, I find myself skipping many things to get deeper, more useful skills. The AI is so-so. it doesn't really use much in the way of strategy and just tends to charge head first into combat. It was programmed with enough intelligence to stay just out of ranged units attack range and then move in next turn, but that's about it. Monsters will get stuck on terrain in the battle map sometimes and u can just kill them from afar while it runs back and fourth. The graphics are definitely dated, which doesn't bother me so much, but it may bother some. The thing about the graphics that DID bug me, is I got a strange graphical glitch (multiple times) similar to the wierd floating spastic blobs in fallout 3, but MUCH bigger and saving and loading the game didn't fix it, u just have to live with the eye strain. Overall, I think it's a decent game, but for it's current price tag of $32, i feel like I'm overpaying for what i"m getting. I've spent less on games I've enjoyed more, but it's not a horrible game, and it's def got the whole vampire vibe to make it stand out from similar games.
TL;DR:I think this game has a lot of potential, and I've put probably over 20h into it, so there's some decent content there, but there's so much more that isn't there. I'd wait to try this until it's had some more work done As others have said, this is more like a visual novel w/ some strategy aspects to it, or vice versa, a strategy game w/ visual novel aspects. It's a good mix and I enjoy playing it One of the issues I have with what's been developed is how imbalanced things can be. As of right now, it's trying to dodge a lot of the more unplayable mechanics to do what content is there. I feel like the game wants to be a sandbox, but at the moment it seems a bit more theme parky due to how it railroads you down certain paths for things. Maybe that will be changed later, but for now you are locked into certain things. Mechanically, many facets of the game still need adjusting. The group battles, taking passengers, food and water mechanic in general, workers vs slaves to name just a few. Many Quality of Life improvements also are needed. It is definitely a game still in development. Story wise, they have crafted a world with lots of lore and amazing depth. I'm sure there's more to come on this, and from what I have completed it seems like there will more interesting threads to follow in the future. This would be the main reason to play this game atm. The world is still sparse, and it has a huge map....of which you can only play in a small section. Most things are marked on the map so there's not a ton of incentive for exploring. It also becomes problematic to explore since you have to manage your supplies. I think this game could be great but at the moment it's more like an admission fee to play an alpha. If you are TOTALLY into what they're doing, then go for it, but for most people, I think you'd be better off waiting for a more polished and ready for consumption product. There's always the risk it never gets finished as well.
So I got this game thinking it would be like Sim Kingdom, but it's more like an interactive visual novel. There's only about 5 places in the castle you can go, the rest of the time, u have to send your people out into the world to do things, like investigate places or solve problems. You also have gold and food resources you have to manage. If they fall below 0, you'll lose the game. I'm pretty sure u can also lose the game at other points as well (fights) but most of the game is managing resources and dealing with problems (the peoples and your own) The main story is rather lackluster. It's not bad, but I can hardly call it good. It is also a little morbid. There's about 50 turns of gameplay not including the 2 battles. The game crashed on me 2x where i had to end task it, and my adviser, due to my choices, died. Yet later on, he miraculously chimed in some text. It would be hard for me to recommend this game over some visual novels I've played. It's not a bad game, but a visual novel will look better and not have cumbersome waiting to walk mechanics. I will probably beat it 1x more to try some other choices and then never touch it again. I paid less money for "Amnesia Memory" which took much longer to beat, and looks and feels more polished. TL;DR If you like visual novels, this game might be a good fit for you. If you want to manage a kingdom, it's not. I do think the price is a bit high for what you get ATM, and there's very little replay value.
I didn't try this game for long, but here are my initial impressions: This game was designed to be played by controller. If you're a controller fan, great, if not, it's a bit more awkward to play. Since it's designed for exploration to be a large part of the game, and I don't use a controller, this kills it for me. You get to name things in game, and you are forced to manually click out the names instead of typing them. The "intro" isn't skippable from what I can tell, nor is there a way to adjust the speed of displayed text so it's a lot of button mashing to make text appear and then force it to the next bit to get thru scenes faster. The flying doesn't have much in the way of a tutorial. Some sky monsters randomly approach you and you have to try to dodge them, which I found pretty impossible w/ a mouse. You don't die if u get hit, or hit things but I"m not sure what does happen. You have a sonar ability that displays hidden things on the map. I like hidden things in games, but it feels more like a button I have to spam while flying, as very little is displayed on the map normally. I got into three fights with monsters. The first one I died instantly, I"m not sure if my HP were low or if the monster just hit me that hard, combat started, I got hit, splat dead. The other 2 times, the fighting was very reminiscent of FF7, however you only start off with one character and usually encounters are multiple monsters so it seemed rather unfair, ESP since the "bonus" on the active turn isn't well explained, so I was guessing to know what the symbols meant and if it was better to wait to take action or not. The game is still under development, so it's possible some of these issues will be fixed at a future date. For now, unless u want to try to puzzle out the systems for yourself and enjoy playing games w/ a controller, I'd wait for a few more updates before trying it.
I bought this game because another reviewer compared it to Civilization, and I thought it'd be a neat spin on building an empire. Nothing could be further from what this game actually is. Upon starting a new game, you get to design the look and feel of the Diety you are wanting to be. That is 90% of the freedom of choice given to you by this game. Your city placements are all done for you, and you have linear movements to adjacent cities you conquer to progress. You can have up to 7 apostles spreading word of yourself. While you can have 7, you can only ask 3 to do things on any given turn. So 4 people are just standing around doing nothing. I thought this # would increase as you go further in, but it's static the entire time. The game starts you off with 3, which you use to do the battles. You add more to your recruitment pool every 20 days. While they can't die, I certainly found myself passing dead turns to be able to recruit more upgraded people because the starting units are quickly power creeped. There are basically 2 kinds of attacks in the game, physical or magical. And there's a defender for each type. There are also 6 "attributes" that are both strong and weak against another. You cannot control any of your people during the fight, so the most control you have over them is at the time of choosing their class, determining if they're physical or magical, and what attribute they'll have. Overall, 80% of the game is watching these little mini battles that you have no control over, hoping your people do well. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. They don't 'die' but they lose faith if their HP reaches 0, which means you can't have them do anything for several turns. Also, they age. As they get older, they lose some power. This encourages you to cycle your apostles (again tied to recruiting every 20 days). You can later train what abilities they have, but not what they use in combat, as it will pick any of them to use any given turn.
