I have played and mostly enjoyed the two previous visual novels in this series, Coteries and Shadows. So when I saw this one I immediately bought it and started playing it expecting more of the same. Why not? Decent writing, an atmospheric and moody presentation, the always amazing World of Darkness. More of the same would be good. Yet halfway through, I abandoned this game for weeks before forcing myself to come back and finish it. Most certainly not a good sign. What happened? How does a 10 hour long visual novel start feeling too long? It's not really the two protagonists the Ravnos girl and "Caitiff" guy. If anything it was mildly intriguing to see a Ravnos, devil-may-care rogue take the spotlight for a change. There is some decent exposition present here and there and the game nails the atmosphere sound wise. So far so good, but it's still not enough.

The first thing I noticed playing this sequel was the shift in artstyle. It's not for the better. While Coteries and Shadows had interesting, stylized character art, Reckoning looks like something that came out of an AI image generator. This damages the otherwise good groove the series has going and even makes some returning characters barely recognisable, but fine, it's a visual novel, if the story is good then much can be forgiven. Well, it's not. There are various plots and counterplots present, including some seemingly interesting character arcs to be explored. On the surface it sounds rather promising, but the game's narrative fails to deliver. The various plot points are resolved too easily or not resolved at all, there is virtually no impactful choices to be made, the main mystery involving the second protagonist feels too much like a pretentious shaggy dog story and the whole experience comes across as vapid. That's ultimately the game's downfall.

It is a shame. It's not that the previous games were masterpieces, far from it, but they were good for what they were. Inessential, but fun excuses to go back and enjoy some more World of Darkness. Somehow, despite being set in that incredibly rich and compelling world, this one manages to be just bland and boring. I can't really recommend this. Not unless someone is a superfan and even then I'd say wait for a steep sale. Hope the developers can do better next time.

A visual novel shouldn't force a gaming PC into a full on crash to reboot.

But even if it didn't, the writing in this one is jarringly bad compared to the previous two. Coteries was fine, Shadows was great, and this is a nightmare.