The Pale Beyond Review (jamma203)
I really do want to like this game but, its rough. Very rough around the edges.
I lost ALL Crew on week 8 like many did, restarted from day one like an additional 3 times but I figured out:- its actually real easy to just cheese past it every, single time.
STOCKPILE people. Put 3 men on the food pantry and 3 on the coal fire every single day up until new options open up. And that's it, that's the game loop side. You manage to see yourself to the end of this very short story.
I start with the positives. Kudos to the Irish devs for releasing their first game. The art style is fantastic, some of the music is orgasmic to the ears and, believe it or not, I had a few chuckles as well. The characters for the most part are likeable and memorable.
Now onto more middling ground territory: it does have a taboo moment I think it deserves and it handles maturely. I never had dogs but I can see why folk were in uproar and refuse to play further.
I believe as of patch 1.5 - when I picked it up they just added much requested epilogues. These seems somewhat ... rushed and tacked on? mines had a play, a cafe, a meeting with father and a prisoner...
Finally, the bad and I do hope some member of the team sees this and opts to improve it.
Bugs, bugs and bugs. I don't think I went a single hour without facing game breaking bugs.
UI was clunky, the crew or resources disappeared but counted. I was locked out for the whole week. Maybe even two, and the re-wind. Crew would teleport around, available one second and despatched the next.
If I clicked too face some events wouldn't trigger. For an english speaking team mostly, I have never seen so many grammar errors and spelling typos.
And that just about wraps up my thoughts on this 5/10 game. Buy it on sale. It might pique your interest.
Hopefully like to see coming back to this in a year and its got expansions and fixes and implement fan requests and if possible, even fix some of the story logic, chronology, pacing and plot holes.
But most of all, fix the bugs please!
On a very personal niche note before I sign off - I know it cannot be changed - it is what it is - but I feel I need to warn other viewers before buying - I really did not appreciate this 4th wall breaking b-s story they try and pull on you at the end. I feel a better more realistic approach would be better. But hey, artistic freedom and what not.
TL:DR. Okay game; with story, value for money and time spent. (11 hours) But needs more work. Some adjustments and bug fixing mostly. Clunky UI, unfair difficulty curve and logic defying decisions hold it back from a solid 8/10 must buy game.