I have to admit that while I did enjoy it, I was disappointed at the length. I was expecting something like Aswick where my MC would grow old and see the kind of legacy that the MC’s influence has created. A world of order enforced by fear? A Silver Age style era of heroics by Heroes that were of sterling character? Something in between? I loved the earlier part but from the “Justice League” event it went all downhill.
[spoiler]My largest gripe is the old tired story of some sort of registration act for superhumans. Regardless of how much fear there may be in the populace at large, superhumans are the truest representation of human resources. By criminalizing them, this would be firstly extremely unconstitutional in the United States and much of Western Europe and most importantly would simply give most of them impetus to just migrate elsewhere. Walk away from the USA and concentrate more superhuman power in the hands of a potentially hostile nation? Sounds like a winning strategy. Imagine someone like Superman, Firestorm or Dr Manhattan switching allegiances and bringing with them a new technological revolution to somewhere else. Realpolitik is still a thing right?
For one, incarcerating a foreign national? Iffy. One that pretty much takes away a potentially powerful superhuman from that nation? Really? Which nation would stand for it? Why would an MC not just go home in that case? The execution of the evil politician was poor too. As much as his rhetoric that he brings order and prosperity to the city was supposed to create a morally grey intention, he incarcerated my MC who decided to cooperate and we just learned that Barrier was tortured to death under his orders. Am I supposed to feel any sort of sympathy for him and by extension Aurora? What sort of conscience sees free citizens, including foreign nationals, jailed for something they could not help and is perfectly okay with it? Sure German Batman and Brazilian Catwoman are brutal fighters but I rue the missed opportunity to punch Aurora in her self-righteous mug and remind her just what the people who she is serving have done. Her justification that she was working from within sounded really thin to me since someone we both knew was murdered Mengele style less than a week after we decided to turn ourselves in. Her plan is NOT working or not working fast enough,
The New Dawn was supposed to be some sort of anarchist movement but nothing of the sort matters. Dawn is certainly sinister but she comes across as much less culpable than her opponent. She acts more affable and is apparently shot dead in the finale. Was she supposed to be so powerful that she could blow up a bunker but dies from a firearm? Oookaaayy… Still it seems better to support her than not, her organization is guilty of atrocity, yes. The other side was preparing Unit 731 for truly horrific experiments on human beings, something already defined as a crime against humanity by the Nuremburg Convention. No matter what sort of benefits that could be had by examining superhumans, did no one think to just ask for volunteers before going full Nazi?
The scene where the superhumans gathered to form a team was perhaps one of the weakest scenes. Instead of standing and fighting, we run like rats. An unprovoked attack by an unlawful and unidentified force was apparently enough to drive all the superhumans into hiding. Either superhumans are powerful enough to be a threat or they are weak enough to have to run from armed commandos. We have potentially two flying bricks in Aurora and the MC. Nightreaver is standing next to me. How many Blackwatch were there anyone that the characters concluded that they had no hope of victory? My MC took out at least three on his lonesome. Aurora and Nightreaver probably could take out a similar number. A Black Hawk carries about a dozen troops so either they have flying APCs or the superhumans were really spooked.
The tragedy is that we hardly ever work with these characters, we learn so little about them and then we are supposed to choose sides? I have to admit that a large part of me was looking for the rest of the story. As if I had messed up and was locked out of much of the content.[/spoiler]
Overall Lords of Aswick was a full course meal, Best of Us was a small desert. Great while it lasts but there is just not enough of it. The two sides are just not well presented enough to be realistically equally appealing sides, there is too little resolution and the agency of the player is a minor factor to a large part of the plot. A decent diversion but it had the potential to be so much more.
