izigame.me

I really wanted to like this game - and I was able to overlook some of the clunkier aspects other reviews have noted (no skip for the intros to new places, scenes being disrupted by constantly being pulled back to the augury, info-dumping exposition/showing not telling) in the first few acts. The beautiful visuals, excellent voice acting, and interesting (if shallow) mythology couldn't make up for ultimately disappointing storytelling.
By the end of act 3, it became apparent that this game is much less "choices matter" than I wanted it to be. The climax of act 3 felt railroaded and the death of Lazlo seemed inevitable, which feels bad in a game that was marketed as "choices matter". Even the parts where it seemed like momentum and tension were building in the fourth act were poorly paid off by the totally inexplicable collapse of the BBEG corporation (not as a result of my beloved characters hard work, but as an unexplained choice on the part of the corp itself???) in Act 5. Whole characters got swallowed by plot holes in the final act ( the two queer relationships that provided the emotional heft of the middle game? half of one pair gets arrested and then forgotten about, the main character's love interest is just straight up ignored save for a mention in the list of characters the main character remembers fondly at the end - this is not the queer romance I was looking for! ). At times it seemed like this game had important and life-affirming things to say about community, about love, and about carrying each other through the hard times, but ultimately the themes rung hollow and the storytelling left me unsatisfied.