Ulasan terkini oleh Wulibo

This is an adventure game adaptation of a period drama novel. It has very compelling characters, themes, and narrative.

Naturally, as an adaptation of the 33rd most popular book in the UK, this has a superb story by adventure game standards. As an adaptation of a novel, some people have maligned it, but, speaking as somebody who has not read the novel, I notice some thoughtful moves on the part of Daedalic to adapt for the medium well.

Before waxing poetic, some practical points: This game starts SLOW. I had to sit down to play it twice before I was sure I wanted to continue. The opening chapter is a suitable hook, but it takes too long to get to the point. The second chapter appears entirely disconnected at first, which slows things down even more. The thing that keeps you going in this game is the compelling characters and narrative. The fact that the game plays poorly before you're hooked into these things is potentially fatal for a lot of players - it almost was for me. So if you're considering this game, be sure that you're willing to push through a rough start, and that a medieval period drama will be enough to keep you going with very thin gameplay. I also have to complain that the time between stopping points is often far too long. I have a life, you know. The number of times I've had to say "just let me finish this dialogue" to someone before doing something has been absurd; I play much more involved games all the time, it's wild that a visual novel is making me have to ignore real life noticeably more. This game desperately needs the ability to pause cutscenes in case you need to step away for a moment, and to save during untimed dialogue (or at least far more break between dialogue/cutscenes).

Adaptations are an interesting art form. Some work already exists, and someone decides it would work well in another format. Medium is a very important part of a work, and a lot of choices in a work have to be guided by fitting its medium. So there's a real sense in which something new is nonetheless created. "Should I play this game?" Well, Pillars of the Earth is a marvellous story, so if you were never going to read the novel, but you're considering this game, yes, you're probably the target audience of this adaptation. The themes of how religion interacts with both oppression and freedom, and the impacts human lives can have on each other, are very well communicated, and the characters are all incredibly compelling. The art is appealing (though you need to learn to look away from the lip syncing fast), and makes for an experience that personally I found more palatable than trying to read a book, speaking as someone who reads a lot as well.

What makes it a good adaptation in my mind is the attention to what elements of adventure games contribute to communicating the themes they chose to emphasize, and which do not. If you spent a lot of time in this game combining items to solve intricate puzzles, it would create the impression that this is a story about a small number of great people shaping history through ingenuity. In fact, it's a story about ordinary people behaving in ordinary ways, and therefore shaping history all the same. The characters are flawed and sometimes incompetent, and this humanizes them and the story. The thin puzzles and sparing use of the timing mechanic therefore contribute to the game's overall thematic success, even if experienced adventure game players may find the mechanics dull. That said, the adventure game format was still a good choice, as it creates a thematic emphasis on choice and consequence, furthering the idea that seemingly inconsequential actions can have a massive rippling effect. Now, the game has been criticized for staying close enough to the novel that choices don't really "matter," but I think this is a silly criticism. What the choice-and-consequence system does is add tension to the story for the player; you don't know whether a choice you are making is just going to influence a small piece of dialogue further on or decide whether an important character lives or dies (and there are characters who can die early but who have a large presence later if not). As characters puzzle over whether the things they are saying or doing are mistakes or not, you are doing the same. To stray far from Follett's story in some possible outcomes would have been to risk too much thematically, and I feel that Daedalic found a good balance of creating tension without that unnecessary risk.

Excellent tool for learning/experimenting with PF2E. The characters are set up with clear easy-to-execute roles, which lets the system speak for itself, and leads to engaging strategic gameplay. Strategy/TTRPG vets will not find themselves pushed to the limits of their tactical abilities, but this is not the point of the game. Instead, it is a fun, short romp through an excellent combat system that showcases what it can do and helps teach it.

It's worth a play, but there's a lot of missed potential.

What it does really well is the art, the characters, and an engaging second act.

In terms of gameplay, it's more of a visual novel than a really intense "choices mater" game. It doesn't *say* it's a really intense "choices matter" game, so I guess it's successful.

However, the warning at the start of the game heavily implies that it is trying to be difficult, which it is not. You are able to invest in everything that pays off long-term the second it becomes available without them being mutually exclusive, and no investment options are traps except ones specifically warned about by a couple lords. Given the warning, I expected there to be trap investments, or ones that force you to neglect the here and now to invest in. As it is, investments don't require you to invest anything you can't easily spare, making them dead easy decisions. Play this way, and you *will* succeed. This is not a vice necessarily, but the game should not have pretended never running out of resources was a real achievement.

The game pulls a really unsatisfying move about halfway that never pays off well. Most confusingly, I can see no narrative or gameplay reason it needed to. It leaves a very bad mark on the game in my opinion, and seriously mars the game feel for the last stretch, coming off of a much more engaging but apparently less important section. That said, it does need to be said that the second act *is* very engaging, and I was sweating worrying about being able to cover myself. I just wish I had been right to sweat.

If you go in aware that it's a visual novel that you can play your way without worrying much, it's a good play. It's thematically pretty weak, but does a good job of using gameplay elements to pull you into the narrative, which, again, has great characters. I just wish it had much else going for it.

Not a souls-like.
It's a From game, you do have checkpoints that you rest at that cause enemies to respawn, and difficult bosses, but everything else is different.

Sekiro slices away any character building, so that your primary tool is always going to be your sword with a set moveset. This leanness allows it to push the limits of what the fights can be, as only one type of character needs to be accounted for. This limit-pushing is what leads many people to call this the hardest From game, and the leanness is why it isn't actually much harder than any other. You always know you're doing what you're supposed to within a certain limit, it's just a matter of getting each boss's moveset down.

The bosses also feel amazing. The focus on deflection creates this back-and-forth feeling where it's less like I'm trying desperately to take down a monster and more like I'm engaged in an evenly matched intense sword fight. Bosses are expertly crafted to be incredibly difficult while creating this feeling that you are matching their incredible skill.

I also really like this take on a fantastical feudal Japan. The influence of the supernatural seems very restricted at first, and the game paces its introduction of supernatural elements very well so that each step up creates the same feeling of awe as the last. It's easy to just create a wild fantastical world, and hard to make your world feel real and supplement that reality with a sudden shock of fantasy that doesn't break immersion.

I played in Japanese, every time I looked up a video (we all know we all do it) it was in English and the English VAs just seem so much worse and have weird takes on the characters... I recommend using the recommended language settings.

Easily the better of the two dota soccer games

This is closer to an interactive virtual play than a game.

The voice acting combined with the excellent choice of stylised block-actors instead of an attempt at doing facial rigging makes this really feel like an interactive theatre experience, if you have ever tried that. The primary mechanic of watching the recordings unfold while choosing which characters to follow is such a great non-linear storytelling device! I hope to see more in this genre in the future, as it really represents new ground in digital media.

Okay, so as a virtual play, absent any innovation, how does this rate? Still really really high! The voice acting was excellent throughout, with VAs doing a lot of work to develop their characters through delivery. The writing was brilliant, telling a character-focused story that focused on some interesting characters, while also having plenty to say. I wouldn't say it's a rug-pull "go in knowing nothing" type game, but knowing it's a 140-minute focused and personal scifi story should be enough to tell you if it's your kind of thing. I'd frankly recommend it to the vast majority of audiences comfortable working a controller.

There are vestigial gamey elements, but they are thankfully minimal. This wants you to still think of it as a game, so there are small puzzles to find lock codes in the environment, but the ones I found were all quite easy. I don't think this took away from the experience, but it did, to me, represent a hesitance to totally trust the concept and just not really be a game in the conventional sense. I hope future media in this direction doesn't do this, but more as an ideological thing - interactive digital media doesn't need to have gameplay elements!

TURN OFF CARD CONFIRMATION IN SETTINGS AND THE GAME STOPS FEELING JANKY

It took me 13 hours to finish my first run. I'm still hammering away at trying to beat the (IMO) hardest challenge run, They Have Tanks.

Most of the criticism of this game is fair. It's really hard to clear a run right away, but as your account levels it suddenly becomes really easy. For me, I felt ahead of the difficulty curve for the vast majority of the metaprogression. It's really this one challenge mode that I'm struggling with, and while it's punishing (and a run is so long that it's almost impossible not to make a fatal mistake at some point), I'm also finding it very rewarding.

If you're not going to go hardcore and try to beat the hardest challenge, there's still a lot for you in this game. For my money this game blows Slay the Spire out of the water. The character races feel very distinct, but they're not totally different games like Slay the Spire classes sometimes feel like. There are various different ways to build your deck, but synergy isn't so ridiculous that I feel blackholed into certain concepts. I can feel the difference between, say, a Band of Brothers achievement run where I'm just trying to keep everyone alive and get to 6 characters, vs a run where I'm only playing a single rabbit to see how far dodging attacks gets me (spoiler alert: that was one of my easier runs, Shortbow and a small deck can carry a run if you're patient). Just trying out the different races until you get a feel for your favourites and trying to get one of the final endings should be an engaging 20 hours, if not the most challenging. Most of all, the party management side of things is just really well-executed. It's a hard choice whether you want to hire on party members as they bloat your deck, but also give your side stamina and passives. Sometimes their cards are better than yours and it's a no-brainer, but much more often it's an interesting trade-off. AOE attacks and the incredible Bastion passive also complicate things. That said, I've found getting a lot of stamina on the field and then just having high-willpower Weasels in the back generating cards when you run out is pretty dominant, aside from the cheesy one-rabbit-army strat. Don't get me wrong though, I'd be able to make a case that any given race is the strongest, balance is great.

This game's aesthetics are really on point as well. The way the races are characterized artistically and mechanically work really well together, the whole game is really beautiful to look at, and of course everything is clear. I dig the music, though I am inching towards that point where I'm going to mute it and play my own because it's been 40 hours.

I think this beats out previous card battlers and becomes my favourite. I'll be ready to move on soon, but it did grow on me steadily the whole time I played it.

Best money you'll ever spend if you have a playgroup or you're down to join a discord for your favourite games

Really wanted to like it, and honestly enjoyed chewing on the obtuse character creation, but the balance is just too off. Combat is extremely swingy and tedious, and while running between bits of cover in a changing battlefield is fun, it can really feel like it doesn't matter and if you were surprised by a fight and haven't saved since the last one you're going to feel so terrible.

The writing is... fine? I didn't get that far, and my impression is that while I like the characters, the story is just kind of an excuse to have a game happen. There are people who hate the only good guys in the world. You're one of them. Maybe some people have good reasons to hate you? Well, each one you investigate turns out to be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, so no, it turns out everyone hates the good guys just to create conflict. Again, maybe there's some third act twist, but I just didn't want to stick with this game after 23 hours.

I don't really consider the below to be spoilers, but I do speak on story elements in the abstract.

Some very weird structural choices as it takes some game-as-service gameplay elements into a game that's billed as a one-and-done single-player experience. The gameplay is not unique enough to warrant an endless mode, and the story suffers greatly from the need to shoehorn that and post-credits DLCs in.

The story itself is also quite structurally weak. The move from act 1 to act 2 is so strange, suddenly everyone who's been trying to help you stop the big bad shrugs and goes "alright well all the concrete steps we know to take have been taken, I guess have fun exploring the oldest house and uncovering what we did to your family." From an out-of-game standpoint I don't understand why you just *stop* interacting with Emily Pope, one of my favourite characters. She made an excellent ally early on, and then the game just stops using her entirely as soon as other allies show up.

That's the writing in a nutshell - the story sets up something really good, then doesn't do anything with it. I was writing a better game as I played it, trying to anticipate what happens next. Will You, Polaris, and Emily being women and Darling, Trench, and Dylan being men turn into some kind of subtle theme of gendered stances to the unknown? No, I guess that's just a coincidence. Will you help Emily slowly uncover unethical work by Darling and find a way to overturn it? No, Darling is kind of just a dorky scientist. How about Trench, will we see a concrete way in which his need for control led to this crisis? Nope again. The overall thrust of the narrative could survive these themes being explored, so it's SO strange they never were.

This is most evident in the uses of the term "Control." They are the Bureau of Control, the men are said to be obsessed with Control, there's a sense in which you're a Control subject... that looks clever on the surface, but none of these themes are explored, it's more of a superficial way to gesture at the idea that this game might have them as themes. The bureau being problematic isn't really explored, nobody outside of it ever suffers. The control supposedly craved by the men in the story isn't considered much, it's generally a good thing when they're in control aside from Dylan, whose motivation is very cartoon villain. And while the other meaning of Control is clever, the only thing the game does with it is say "gee, I guess it's better when you let someone live their life normally than to put them in a cage and force them to do painful experiments all day long... which it doesn't even do well because Darling has so much compassion for Dylan as the game is afraid to make the Bureau problematic at all, so one REALLY ends up scratching their head about why Dylan got THAT upset despite numerous hints that he was well taken care of.

Overall, there's some fun ideas here and reading the background world building was enjoyable, plus the simple gameplay is very fun in places (the Ashtray Maze stands out), but the game fails to either bring it together into a cohesive whole or be fun enough to not need to. It's about a 6.5/10, worth the play, but not worth evangelising.