izigame.me

First of all although I don't know if it was the developers intention or not, but this game was advertised to everyone as the "steampunk disco elysium" and for those who want to buy it just for this, in short, don't. It's not. It is still a good experience just not what you might expect. To summarize a good game for its' price but it leaves many things lacking, although for a 20 euros game you really can not expect more. 6.5/10.
The graphics and the visual direction are generally nice and they have a warm feeling to them, although for a "steampunk" setting I really expected more. Then again, 20 euros. What was really disappointing is that there were no dark or macabre environments in a game where one of the main plot lines is to find a serial killer. The most ominous environment, if it can even be called that, is found in an optional mission in a chapter halfway through the game and it is treated like a big reveal or something... but in the next chapter you casually visit the same place as a different character with cheery music like nothing is wrong. The game suffers from its' budget and consequently from the limited areas/locations. Even though it is a 18 chapters game, it really is like a 7 hour play-through with most of the chapters being less than half an hour long. So, again, I know the resources were limited, but it is still very disappointing for a steampunk game to look this bland and uninteresting. No grim reality of London with rooms full of intrigue or anything of the sort. Just 5 locations for 6 hours and a new final location which is just a house for the final hour.
The music is equally uninteresting which makes it clear that it was not a first thought. This is a shame cause a good soundtrack can really elevate these types of games. I have seen many games that have been visually limited due to budget reasons, but all of them had an interesting soundtrack and good sound design. Here the sound design is good to be fair, but the music is completely missing. I would like to say that there was one track during the entire game (and one song in a singe chapter, which was nice tbh), but I genuinely do not remember anything other than an inoffensive melody playing constantly. I am not sure if it was one track or two but it doesn't really matter. Overall this was a bigger disappointment than the visuals.
As far as the story goes, if you expect a disco elysium type of open world with countless opportunities and interactions, well you might have guessed it by now, but this is not it. They were clearly influenced by it and you can see that in the dialogues and in the interactions with the environment. You have the inner monologues with your thoughts, so a connection is there, but it is very surface level. It does not feel unique, but more like they tried to implement a system, which they have not really understood. Nothing is bad, but like everything else it feels lacking. Firstly the chapters are very linear, so you can't really "explore the world", and even if you could there are 5 areas to explore as I've said before so not much of a sense of discovery. Everything feels rushed and this defeats the purpose of this interaction system. DE puts you on a hotel room and basically says "you are a disgrace to human nature, now go solve a murder" and you are free to do whatever you like. You can approach if from different angles and generally experiment. This game already can not achieve that based on how linear and short it is, but in my opinion it doesn't even have a great replay-ability. Because out of the 7-8 hours you will spend 5 going around, following an linear objective, which really defeats the purpose of open exploration of a "steampunk London". Also this is a personal gripe, but they did this thing where you put some words highlighted to explain what they mean if you hover your mouse over them. You might have seen that in pathfinder, pillars of eternity, tyrrany, etc etc, but here it is so blatantly pointless. It's like they put random nonsense words in, just to have the feature. For example, the characters say "anyroads" and if you hover the mouse over the word it says : an expression used similar to anyway. It is so pointless, like just say anyway. There are tens of examples like this, which server no purpose other than having the feature for the sake of it.
Finally the story suffers from the budget and the chapter-like system as well. There are 18 chapters in which you play through the adventure of 3 people. After every chapter you change character and you swap between them. It takes around 2-3 chapters for each character to get to the main plot, which basically means at total 7-8, after which there are like 4 or 5 chapters which are 10 minutes long and then for the last 6 they have them very forcefully interject, in a way that feels very rushed, again just for the sake of it, and then the game ends. Overally the game would benefit from 10 extra chapters I would say. In more detail with SPOILERS AHEAD: The Minotaur chapters are honestly fine. They don't really move the overall plot, but the work nicely with their time limit. The dwarf plot line could be scrapped completely, cause there is no point to it. Good character, hunts some monsters, takes a bad contract which he regrets and then at the finale, during the final chapters he just blows up a machine or whatever. Like this could easily be done by the Minotaur. You could have the Minotaur take the bad contract to solve his debts and then blow the machine before going to end his quest-line like it ends now. I was left baffled by how the dwarf story ended. Literally unneeded and with his 2-3 hours of story you could make the other 2 characters more likeable. Finally the human story makes no sense. You basically run around doing errands for the start of the game, which are the longer chapters, and then finally they are like "ah aye another murder eh. how about yeh cop a shiv at it and solve it luv. thanks gov'nor. Hoi what, why ? i dont fcking know, just dae it". And then at the end it is like "hoi y did yeh dae it// i think all werewolves r bad or summat so i want to kill em all// but y r yeh fancy killing prostitutes that yeh employ// they r bad because they don't hate em or summat I don't know, my character is obviously not thought out bleedin' well// understandable yeh go to gaol now bye bye// nooooooooo." Very bad writing all round.
In conclusion, I know I seem very negative but all of what I say is understandable problems if you take the budget into account. The game is cheap, but rightly priced for what it offers and honestly I think they bit off more than they could chew. Maybe it is not their fault in the end because of the limited resources, but noone will look back at this game and remember it saying "good for the limited budget". People will just forget it exists. It offers nothing new and although I commend them for trying to make something unique and have a vision, it was clearly not enough. They needed double the budget for what they wanted to achieve and it really shows. 6.5/10 for me