Just played the opening section. Good so far - lovely Ben Chandler art as always (though it has portraits, which I'm against on principle no matter how gorgeous the art!), the acting is mostly good if a little stagey, and the post-apocalyptic setting is cool with lots of little details already. The opening puzzle was pretty fun, pulling crossbolts out of corpses and stuff. I'm now on a little quest to take a letter to someone at the market, classic 'give you a cool opening then ease you into the bigger world with something simple' stuff.
A little further through this now. It's nice enough, but the story is very RPGish - I've got two factions thinking I'm loyal to them and spying on the other one, and I'm doing little quests to keep them happy - just 'go and see if the butcher needs help with anything', that sort of thing. It's not a great fit for an adventure game, really, as there aren't a dozen other systems that you're learning and ranking up in via these quests that are, ideally, fun in and of themselves, so it just feels a little underwhelming and directionless. The puzzles have been mostly fine, though I've had to check a walkthrough a couple of times. First time was for a puzzle where you need to get a news announcer to read a certain story out then eavesdrop on some snooty ladies who spot you and stop talking every time you get too close so you can hear their reaction and get some info. I thought I'd have to get the announcer's microphone and put it in the bin next to the ladies. Turns out, talking to the nearby old man about feeding the birds had unbeknownst to me opened up a dialogue option with the food stall at the market on the other side of the map and the solution is to go there, get some sprouts, give them to the old man, point out to him that the crow near the ladies should get some food, so he throws a sprout over there which makes all the crows fly over there and knock the bin over so you can go and pick up the bin so the ladies assume you're a street cleaner and thus not eavesdropping on them so they keep talking. Gabriel Knight levels of nonsense.
Second time was because I got given a five-step plan for infiltrating a hospital and finding a secret, I got as far as pilfering someone's appointment card and then simply couldn't remember what the next thing I was supposed to do was. You can't go back and ask the quest-giver, there's no to do list, and trying to just give the card to the hospital guard doesn't get you any pointers either. However, I'm not sure it would have helped even if I'd written the plan down verbatim, because it seems that what I'm supposed to do is give the card to my forger friend, but I have no idea why that's helpful. I assume he'll put the signature of the patient on there, but I don't know what that will achieve, especially as there was specifically a bit of dialogue where the patient was told they couldn't send someone else in their stead. I'm getting flashbacks to struggling through Deus Ex quests, this really is RPGish!
Anyway, I've left it there for the moment, with that step ready to complete at the start of my next play session. I'm going to keep going with the game, it's fairly enjoyable and nicely presented, but I just hope it picks up a bit soon.
Okay, finished Shardlight. It turned out to be weirdly short and linear, given how RPGy it felt not only in the quest-based structure but also the world-building with different factions etc. Felt very much like a Dishonored or Fallout or something. It really needed to broaden out in the middle a bit in order to give the ending more heft, and some more twists and turns to the story (the only one it had was the 'rebel leader turns out to also be bad' trope - especially not great to do it with a Black woman three years after Bioshock Infinite). Overall, very much a typical Wadjet Eye production - lovely presentation (art, VO etc), but quite a dour tone with some clunky writing and mostly simple mundane puzzles.
Rating: pretty but shallow
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