September '21 Play Log

I quite enjoyed the first 3 episodes of this game, but it was downhill from there. Unfortunately the last 2 episodes put me off the game too much to recommend it.

Pros:

• Well voice acted
• I really liked the concept - actually playing ‘myself’ and looking through cameras to see what was happening worked better than expected
• When you’re in ‘look for electronics’ view, time is paused so you can take time and look around
• Getting caught isn’t that big of a problem as holding cells are common enough that there’s never an overly frustrating amount of progress lost, but you do lose most of your items so it’s not inconsequential either
• The alternative clothes make running through the game a second time for achievements much easier (though IMO they should have been unlocked after beating the game the first time)
• You get the VR version free too, though I opted not to play it as I don’t think this game would really benefit from VR.

Cons:

• Achievements for looking through every camera are pointless and frustrating given that you have to be in ‘normal’ vision in order for it to register
• The episode 1 achievement for looking through every camera can’t be completed until episode 2
• Episode 4 presented some relevant story information but largely felt like filler, and the ending was frustrating
• Who thought it was a good idea having pin pads where the order you enter numbers in is random, the numbers shown change every half second such that the number you need may not even be an option, AND there’s a timeout? Thankfully these are episode 4 only.
• Episode 5 had a significant spike in difficulty with some changes to enemies only discovered the hard way
• The ending was very disappointing

Verdict: 5/10

I was looking forward to playing this game since the themes sounded interesting, but honestly it wasn’t really worth it. It’s not bad per se, and I’m sure many people would like it, but for me there were too many faults to enjoy it. The story took quite a while to get me interested in it. The premise is that the main character is looking for his missing wife and son. Presumably you’re supposed to empathize with him. This is made much more difficult due to the fact that he’s… not very likeable. This doesn’t even seem to serve a story purpose as far as I can tell.

Pros:

• The story isn’t bad once you finally get into it
• Well voice acted

Cons:

• I didn’t find either of the endings particularly satisfying
• I wasn’t impressed with the graphics. They didn’t feel like they were done in a unique style so much as badly dated (at least when it game to people & robots).
• The movement controls were really bad. This was the biggest issue for me. If it wasn’t for this I probably would have given the game a hesitant thumbs up. Maybe it’s better with mouse and keyboard but with a controller it’s a nightmare.
• No manual saves, and the autosaves aren’t frequent enough. I found myself losing some progress when I resumed playing a few times.
• Unskippable cutscenes. I don’t have any issue with this on the first playthrough - for an interactive movie game like this it’s a good thing - but they remain unskippable on subsequent playthroughts, which are necessary to get all achievements.
• There are only a few things you can change in the last section of the game, making replay value up until the end pretty non-existent, despite needing to replay it to get all achievements.
• The auto saves appear to remain usable and thus useful for collecting missed achievements, but it seems that under certain circumstances (presumably if you change something significant) future ones get wiped. So if you’re planning to use them to get missed achievements, work from the last achievements backwards or you may find yourself needing to replay everything.

Verdict: 5/10

Definitely worth playing if you enjoy RPGs. The story is decent for the most part, though the last half of the game does get to be a bit of a slog at times as the main story is just ‘find the guy’ and doesn’t really go much of anywhere. There are plenty of sidequests to do though which have stories of their own and tell you more about the world.

Pros:

• What parts are voice acted are done well
• The random chatter between party members can be quite entertaining
• Party members will often give their thoughts during dialogue. This could keep things interesting during replays since you may hear something different if you have a different party
• Autosaves in new areas are very helpful
• There’s a hard autosave right before the point of no return
• The ending was pretty good and unexpected
• The leveling system is good - it lets you go in different directions so even with the same party members, replays can still be quite different
• You can always rebuild you character (stats and all levels) for a price, which is great if you realize you made a mistake
• The various auto-pause options can really help out

Cons:

• Not everything is voice acted
• You can decrease difficulty during gameplay, but it only takes effect in unexplored maps. Since the primary reason to decrease difficulty is because of a specific battle, it’s often too late to do so by the time you realize you want to. Unless of course you have an early enough save and are willing to lose some progress.
• Saves are not ordered by type, not time, which is inconvenient
• You can’t remove or change enchantments
• The auto-pause on ineffective weapon option also pauses if the secondary damage type is ineffective, which makes it too frustrating to use later in the game when all of your weapons have secondary damage type enchantments on them
• The ‘master below’ questline is a major side-quest to add an extra challenge. I’m not a fan of the ending. There’s basically the ‘bad but easy’ solution and the ‘impossibly difficult but good’ solution. The latter is way too difficult. I like a challenge, but it’s excessive.

Verdict: 7/10