izigame.me

Update (2024-02-02):
I tried really hard, but the game refuses to be completed for me. After patch 3 solved the issue with a side quest in chapter 13, I continued playing the game and slowly got back into the story after not having played for two weeks. I admittedly skipped some minor side quests because it no longer seemed possible to complete them for lack of money or ideas on how to continue.
Then, in chapter 17, the game starts a very long dialogue with main plot advancements, revelations and a number of skill checks. Unfortunately, my character (Miss Reed) was skilled towards intelligence and speech, leading to fairly abysmal odds on some of those skill checks (< 30%). At some point, many, many, many sentences into the dialogue, an unavoidable skill check appears that, if failed, means game over. Not "character is dead" over, but "retry" game over screen. I literally cannot continue. So I clicked "retry" as I actually preferred to have the character alive anyhow. However, due to the way the skill check system works (by eliminating cards from the deck unless a 0 or a 20 is drawn), the available cards for me to pass the check must have been eliminated quite a lot, so the <30% success rate lowered close to about 3% (for the "critical success" 20 roll).
So I literally tried for the last 20 minutes to pass that one check. Continuously pressing "1" for a minute or so to get through the dialogue as fast as possible, only to fail again and getting my bloody skull caved in.
At this point I lost interest. I will check out YT for the ending, as I feel my time is wasted trying to bash my head against this wall any longer.
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Quick update (2024-01-28):
The recently released patch 3 addressed and fixed the softlock that I mentioned in my review below. I have not yet really continued playing the game, so I will not change my review yet.
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Original review (2024-01-23):
This is a tentative non-recommendation. Tentative because I did not fully complete the game (for reasons I will explain below) and because I think that there is a rough gem here that could appeal to the right minds.
First of all, I played around 10 hours and 13 of 18 chapters. I did run into a number of minor bugs that were overall not at all concerning, a couple of somewhat strange design decisions (more on that later) and a softlock situation with one of the side quests -- which was discussed in the forums with the very nice and responsive development team, but ultimately hampered my enjoyment of the game to the point I will put it on hold for now, as I do not enjoy being softlocked nor would enjoy having to replay at least a few hours of the game (starting from my last save game before the softlock) to progress back to the same point.
The major positive for the game is its rather interesting setting and atmosphere. Clearly inspired by Disco Elysium, the devs opted for a quasi-19th-century London setting with an obvious fantasy touch. It's not bad. In fact, I think it works. The characters are fine and I get to experience (and somewhat steer) the story through overall well-written and interesting dialogue. It is not at the level of Disco Elysium, no, but it is still good, still motivating. The artwork is fitting and the music is often great, setting the mood perfectly for a world that is riddled with dystopian darkness and just few enough slivers of light to not completely lose hope. In fact, the way you play your characters can decide on whether you are ready to jump off a bridge or try to build new ones. It's perfectly acceptable for a point & click adventure visual novel (which is a more apt description than CRPG, but I knew that going in and I didn't mind).
On the other side, the game is very opaque about how it wants or needs to be played. To the point where once you get it you say to yourself: "Well, that's certainly a bold choice for a 2024 game".
- Forcing a character switch every chapter is the least troubling, although I cannot say that I was a fan at first. It has the feeling of a book or TV series that has to end on a cliffhanger with every chapter/episode before leaving the audience hanging while the next one focusses on a completely different character. It's a choice.
- Then having all characters wander the same game world with not many changes other than more or less slightly different dialogue with NPCs, while being incredibly slow even when "running", is another choice.
- However, the game does not tell you or prepare you for the fact that the collectible items through which the characters obtain money (i.e. the cogs) not only exist only once in the world, but if you pick them up with one character it will not be available for another, is getting into the "who thought this was a good idea?" department.
- Ultimately, it is very likely that many first-time players loot all the available cogs in chapter 2 only to realize that the character you play in chapter 3 needs the cogs in order to progress their personal companion storyline. Cogs are no longer just for getting money, there is actual content locked behind being able to obtain the cogs. Sure, you find ways to get enough, but it's still a curious design choice akin to giving the player a slap in the face while saying "why didn't you see the slap coming?" at the same time.
My stowstopper was the aforementioned softlock. If you are interested, look up the discussion in the forums, it's not hard to find with my username. For anyone playing themselves, it might be good idea to postpone a second visit to Sacred Heart until you actually have a questline reason to do so -- and if you do, be sure to save beforehand.
Aside from the showstopper, there were however already some other issues that prevent me from "going back two hours" and replaying the part where I softlocked myself. The issue is that the game becomes very, very linear and the city suddenly feels very small. Chapters sometimes end after leaving one or two rooms, which means switching characters again and forcing you to remember how you roleplayed that other character. If there are new quests, they are fetch quests or go-there-and-talk-to-X but reusing the same exact locations that you explored ad nauseum in the first couple of chapters (because you wandered all of them at least three times, once per main character). So you are already getting bored of the same locations and watching your character "run" for what feels like minutes to get from A to B does not help. Yes, you can talk to every NPC again and again (and sometimes dialogue changes), but it gets to be a chore because the world does not change visibly.
At circa the eighth or ninth chapter, the story is finally picking up and you start to cross off some of the side quests (unless you played yourself into a corner like I did or the game let you willing dive off a cliff, only to dangle unresolvable plotlines in your journal in front of you to mock you, a matter of perspective I guess). There is probably an interesting section ahead, which also finally changes locations and puts all characters somewhere else than the same 6 main locations in London. Alas, I (currently) do not feel like continuing. A shame. Shame on me, perhaps, and I accept that. Still, my choice, right?
Overall, there is huge potential here. Especially for future games. Maybe future patches, if the developer decides to make some available. I don't need voiceover, the written text is just fine -- I played Disco Elysium before its definitive edition as well, where most of the text was not voiced either.
Sovereign Syndicate is no Disco Elysium. But it does not have to be. I think it would be perfectly fine as its own thing, if and when the design choices catch up with the year 2024. I have played the Sierra adventure games in the 80s and had my attempt at Dark Seed. I do not enjoy story-telling games that willing allow the player to miss the story not by choice, but by chance.