izigame.me

EDIT: I feel really bad that my negative review now has >100 votes and is prominently displayed on the store page for an Indie-game by a small studio. If you are looking at this game and thinking of buying it, I want to be really clear that it's not a *bad* game or unfinished or anything like that. It is however, a game for specific tastes and is limited by being an Indie game. It didn't work for me for reasons I set out below. It may work for you, and if you think it will, then give it a shot and support a small studio!
In a sentence, Sovereign Syndicate is very heavily inspired by Disco Elysium, but lacking the quality of writing necessary to pull it off.
The story at the start feels aimless in that it pulls in too many different directions - you play a down and out minotaur who has tried to drink himself to death (the Disco Elysium start...), with a potential love interest, and somebody is out to kill him, and he's a drug addict, and it's not clear why... oh here's a ham-fisted dream/flashback sequence to tell you it's due to his being orphaned and bullied at the orphanage, but wait, one of the nuns who ran it was good, but not that good, and his mum is still alive, maybe? Anyway, forget all that, now you're a high-class escort on a zeppelin.
And that's the first 45 minutes.
That might sound like I'm selling it, but the pacing doesn't work – it moves too slowly, then too quickly, then very slowly. The first scene is aimless plodding, a sort of badly directed tutorial, then this gives way to an on rails section culminating in the dream sequence which dumps a lot of character backstory very quickly. Apart from the poor delivery (I.e. a massive infodump), the main issue is just as I’d started to feel that ok, this character is potentially interesting, the game whisked me away to play a completely different character in a so far unconnected situation.
And here’s where the pacing drops off a cliff – the second character you play doesn’t seem to start with much in the way of motivation - She has a desire to leave London (why? Not clear and no info-dump is given). For some reason she needs to do so clandestinely (why? Not clear). And the people smuggler has just increased his prices due to increased police vigilance (despite already possessing her forged papers, which seems a bit of a poor business move on his part, leaning on ‘double or nothing’). Why she can’t wait until things quiet down is also not clear.
The game is clearly aiming to be a mystery game, but I feel the characters need at least one clear motivation for us as players to get going with and having been given motivations for one character, it was awkward to say the least to then be forced into playing another character with no apparent connection to the first and very different and unclear motives.
You’re then dumped out into a somewhat awkward to navigate open world unsure what to make of what’s just happened and unsure of what you’re supposed to do next. I pottered around a bit, met a few NPCs, followed a few quest markers but just didn’t feel grabbed by anything that was going on. The next day I booted up a different game and haven't felt the desire to go back.
I did like the Tarrot card rolling system thematically, and the concept of stacking the deck in your favour. I think it is also brave to follow the Disco Elysium inner voices dialog, and while it wasn't as effectively employed here, I can see what the developers were going for.
Despite not recommending it, it's not a bad game. If you have a bit more patience for uneven storytelling, and you really dig the vibes, you'll probably get a lot of enjoyment from it. It just didn't grab me enough for me to continue playing.