izigame.me

I bought the game on launch, despite it not being affordable at all. I'm from Poland, but the regional pricing didn't make the game any cheaper, in fact it's the second most expensive region for some reason? So the price really hurt. But I'm a big Failbetter fan, I've played Fallen London for an ungodly amount of time and spent an ungodly amount of money. I've been waiting for months to get my hands on this. I was refreshing the store page and texting my partner how much I can't wait. In fact, I was ready for this to be my favourite experience in the series.
When you start, there's a message about how you shouldn't get discouraged by failure on your first playthrough and delight in your failures or something. I didn't know what that was supposed to mean - how am I supposed to fail a visual novel that much? Now I see this was a sign of things to come. But sadly, failure is not fun in this game. It's not unforeseen consequences - it's just not enough time.
If you're a person who wants to take their time and do whatever they want, leisurely, this is not a game for you. I actually kind of thought there would not be any time limit? I assumed I could play on a single character forever, until there's nothing more to do. And storycrafting would make sense then I think. But the game's end is where I'd expect the first-and-a-half'th act to end. I had so much more to do, so many plans, and I did not expect a finale so soon. My first playthrough was basically a lot of threads started and only one kind of finished, although not really satisfactorily. I haven't met three of the characters it seems. And I feel like the ending I got was added because they predicted that lots of people (myself included) can't solve the mystery, and it's a substitute, but not an amazing one.
The romance is weird. I was expecting needing to be cautious, to not come on too strong - like in most other romance visual novels. But here, you basically choose what you want to happen and it does. I've been romancing Gritz, and she was in love with me at the point where I would have expected us to maybe go on a first date or something. She's never said anything before, apart from responding to my flirtations, then there was a kind of awkward moment where she was angry at another character, I went to comfort her, the game asked what relationship I want with her again, my character decided internally that they're in love with her, she somehow read my mind, said if I came here expecting romance I've misread the situation. Next time I met her, I was hoping to mend this, but she was basically behaving as if we've been dating for a year. It was really confusing.
I've spoken to Archie a few times, was nice to him, thought maybe I can start building a friendship, but then he starts going on about how he worries our relationship is too serious but he wants to leave the Neath?
It all feels extremely out of the left field and kind of fake - after a few conversations, the characters have way too deep a relationship with you.
Others have pointed this out, but the game asking you what are your intentions for each character all the time is really intrusive and unnatural.
The Storycrafting system is weird too. It sounds cool in theory, and it's probably a matter of taste, but I wish they didn't put it in at all. I suspect this is a me problem, but reviews are for my feelings about the game anyway. I don't really see the value in stories generated by a computer or by me when I'm playing a game. I don't care for having a thousand possible stories - I prefer a few great ones. As a minigame, the system is confusing and I have no idea how the system actually interacts with the game. Like do parts of your story become true when you create it? If so, how many and how is it decided? If not, why should I use the system if it's going to be guesses with a slim chance of being true anyway? Might take me more time to figure it out, or maybe there'll be guides. For now, I have created two stories during the main quest, couldn't figure out what to do with them, and just played the game basically without using them. I'll try it more in the next play-through.
As for the stories generated, well, in my opinion the system isn't robust enough to give you real freedom, but also isn't restricted enough for the stories to always make sense or be interesting. I don't know if there are some cool consequences that profoundly change story in an interesting way and how influential the system is, but during my play-through, it was lacklustre. Not bad necessarily, cause I don't think it detracted from the game, but I wish they'd spent the doubtless massive resources on something else. Anyway, I'll fiddle around with Storycrafting a bit more and update the review later.
Overall, choice is the problematic aspect it seems. Sure, the game lets you do a lot of different stuff. The number of possible playthroughs is absurd. But the game isn't well-designed enough to make them all satisfying. Even the major playstyles aren't accomodated - you can't spread yourself too thin and you have to focus on just a few storylines. You can't go full-in on romance and spend half of every day courting people. You can't try getting a lot of items first so you can use them later. You can't roleplay a lot of ways. I mean, you can do all those things, that's the problem, it's just not going to be that fun. Normally, games would nudge you towards the playstyle that is the most fun, but this game seems not to, probably because they wanted you to have more choice. To use a metaphor, let's say the first Mario game let you go both ways - left and right, and both ways have obstacles enemies and stuff, but only the right way leads to the next level. Sure, you added more gameplay, you added a choice, but some players will just go left and get frustrated. Sometimes less is more.
I'm not a game designer, but maybe some of those problems aren't too hard to fix? Maybe giving players more time and implementing a real save system would help? No idea. There are quite a few reviews already, all saying similar things, so let's hope Failbetter does something. Also, I think the game will be better if someone makes good guides. Lots of games are worse with a guide, but I feel like this one might be better. I'd love to play the game again and experience the content, because a lot of the content is great. It's just that as it stands, getting to the content isn't super enjoyable. If they patch saves in and there are some guides, I'm hoping I'll be able to enjoy the game much more.
And that's a bit sad. I wanted this game to not be like Fallen London - I wanted not to check the wiki all the time. I wanted to experience a story and feel like I'm a part of it. But I don't know how I would be supposed to.
One good thing is that I think it will be a pretty good introduction to the world for my partner. I couldn't make them play the browser game, as it's too intimidating, and a 5h experience is much more manageable. I expect they're not going to be replaying it anyway, so I hope it will make for a nice short experience for them. A kind of cursory tour of the Neath (which is what a play-through of this game is) seems great for this purpose, even if it's not great for me.