TRACHI
TRACHI is an interactive fiction game that plays similar to a visual novel. Upon starting the game, I was impressed by the minimalistic style of the opening and menu. Everything is simplistic yet looks very sharp, and you can immediately tell that a lot of effort was put into this game.
The tale starts off with an inquisition of sorts, and as you converse in this opening sequence the plot begins to unfold. The timeline bounces around as you are spoonfed piecemeal bits of information that slowly come together. I thought the use of this enhanced the storytelling and definitely kept me intrigued. Most of the characters have their own sprite art, and both the pixel and portrait art look top notch.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
Kinetic Novel with some interaction.
I enjoyed the writing a lot (and I disliked writing in most VNs I’ve tried so far).
Canny use of sound-effects gives so much atmosphere. They are proof that the devs have a deep understanding of storytelling.
I stopped playing after midgame because of too many crashes and slowdown. Reason is my old pc, I guess. Should work better if you have a bit more than the minimum specs.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
DataJack
A sci-fi dive in the 90s, both for the game design + gameplay and for the dystopic cyberpunk concept style.
Gameplay per se is a bit wonky and you have to get used to the stealth mechanics, which are really retro-style by all means.
Still, the game is pretty enjoyable, the atmosphere is right and the lore is well thought out, which you can extrapolate by the mission briefing/debriefings and from the files you download from the terminals, giving the appropriate feeling and background, much alike to the first Deus Ex game.
– Real player with 7.3 hrs in game
You are a one man go in and solve the problem type of covert or overt operative whom corporations hire to do their dirty laundry. Covert if you move effortlessly like a ninja from shadow to shadow, crouch like a tiger, and jump like a spider waiting for the right moment to feed needles into the skull of your enemies. Or overt if you prefer the cacophony of machine guns and the smoke C4 makes when you are fed up with doors that don’t greet you with open sesame right at your arrival.
You can even hack systems, steal company data and make some side income by grabbing datacubes and other interesting things that come at your way. And since this is a Cyberpunk/Neuromancer inspired game presumably made by transhumanist wonks who enjoy running around with subdermal chips under their butt-cheeks, replacing limbs and adding subdermal armor and other kinds of protections are also available.
– Real player with 6.6 hrs in game
Dishonored 2
Dishonored 2 - is this a game for you?
Right now, the game is undergoing a spell of patching after a very poor PC release. The game worked for some, but not for many, and so your mileage will vary depending on your PC (not necessarily how powerful it is either - but how balanced, how much VRAM you have and such). As most reviews already centre around performance issues, I won’t spend too much time on those because I’d rather review the game itself but please bear them in mind (they are mentioned in the ‘not so good’ section below)….
– Real player with 111.9 hrs in game
My experience with this game can be summed as thus: every update I found myself testing the changes, nodding in satisfaction, then quitting the game to await the next update.
Arkane knows how to make a good game. No question. But if you film an Oscar-worthy movie and the lens is smudged while filming, you can’t judge what’s underneath without acknowledging what’s been marring your experience the entire time.
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PERFORANCE
Everyone is aware of the performance issues, and these still persist to this day. It runs much better than at launch, where it was literally unplayable, but that’s because the game looks worse than before - the most noticeable change being the extremely aggressive LOD scaling. Out of the corner of your eye you notice the shapes of window frames and posters on distant buildings morphing in shape, or the furniture at the opposite end of a long hallway suddenly blinking into existence. FPS dropped to 15 when stabbing a gravehound, so they simply removed the inky visual effect that was causing the problem instead of optimizing it.
– Real player with 111.0 hrs in game