OK, with the bug at the end of part 1 corrected and some runs with different characters made, I have a clearer picture of this Fall of Memphis and its shortcomings.
Yes, because even if there are a couple of nice things here and there, I confirm my first impression of a disappointment. I will try to sketch the main reasons in this post:
- the skeleton of the chapter is stiff and repetitive. This is the worst large-scale thing in my opinion. Apart from a couple of minor scenes, the stay in Memphis reduces to this scheme: intro - caucus/Wilson - the bonds interlude - caucus/Wilson - conclusion of Wilson storyline - conclusion of Memphis.
The majority of the story, thus, is concentrated into two blocks that feel (if not look) the carbon copy of each other. The fact that -no matter what you do- both blocks end with an impasse does not help: one feels like the hamster in the wheel, spinning for nothing.
Besides, if someone is not really that interested into politics or it is not engaged in Wilson (I really don’t know how one can feel engaged in the Wilson storyline, especially if is not his maker), he finds himself with no alternatives to amuse himself with.
I would like to speak a bit more about the bonds interlude because this is something puzzling to me. An inordinate amount of time and script is spent for the issue of the municipal bonds, which goes completely wasted because 1) it is absolutely not engaging (it is a minor amount of the wealth of the character, for those who care about money, it’s something useless for those who do not) and 2) once you run the game once you know what is the end of the story and you always make the same “right” choices.
I really don’t get what the author was thinking in putting this part.
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it is really too linear. This was a criticism from some people to the first part too, which I did not feel because in CoV there are enough internal variations that I did not care that (for example) at the end you surely end in Vicksburg and from there in Memphis.
But in this FoM you really do not have any freedom of movement. No matter what you do, the Senatorial stuff will end always in the same way (the best you can do is to oust one of the three candidates, that anyway has no influence whatsoever in the final result) and the Wilson story also, more or less. It is related to the stiffness I was speaking before.
This is also related to the next point, which is
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there is not enough attention to the details.
This may come to a surprise considering the attention the details get in CoV, but this is really my impression,
First of all, in CoV you get many changes in descriptions and dialogues, even small as a phrase added or omitted here and there, depending on your background or discoveries. This was nice because the script was really feeling personalized and lively.
In this FoM every run I made (with different characters) felt more or less the same. Yes, there are some sparse changes, but they do not affect the narration as it was in the first part.
In few cases, I am sorry to say, the lack of attention to details verges on sloppiness. The most evident example for me is the part where you write letters.
I was very curious when I approached that part, because I thought I could have exchanged comments and ideas with some of the people I had met at the first caucus, but I ended to be very disappointed. First of all, only a part of the people I had met appeared in the list, and not even those I had spoken with more or I was more interested with. It looked like an almost random list.
Then, most of the letters I could write were just to… ask the address to write to other people! The other choices, if any, were relatively minor. And I that I wanted to speak with the Jew about something that came out, or the the Senators in couple about another piece of information. Nothing!
And at the end, my writing options slowly reduce to zero for no real reason (other than accelerate the arrival of the second caucus), in a way that feels completely unnatural.
Another thing that annoyed me was the lack of options for minor but flavour-rich issues when it could have been possible to put some more.
For example, the issue of provide refreshments. If you accept, either you succeed or you fail, depending on only ONE characteristics of your character (charm, to be specific). Why not giving different choices to provide food for the guests, so one could choose according to its inclinations?
The same goes for the party organization… either you have creativity 3 or forget about it! (the option of paying someone else - someone that by the way you cannot choose, unless there is a indirect dependence of the money of your character - counts as failure)
And these are just two examples that come to my mind.
Speaking about details, there is also the next point, the
- lack of shape in the staging and in the characters. This is another point where the comparison between CoV and FoM is unmercifully in favour of the first.
Simply said, Memphis struggles to become alive. Your interactions with the surroundings feel very limited - and this includes the other citizens, considering you have scenes with Apollo and Dido only around the caucus - and at the end I really couldn’t care less for the fate of Memphis. I never had the feeling I lived there for years, as it happened for New Orleans and Vicksburg of the first part.
Perhaps more seriously, also the characters are not fleshed out. In this part you have the chance to meet many different people but, except for one or two, they remain just a list of names to remember and they struggle to become real characters. It does not help that you manage to speak with them basically just during the caucus (and in a limited way too) and not before or after or in between the years.
Also during the caucus scenes, nobody does anything remarkable, everyone (except a couple of exceptions) behaves more or less the same and they seem like machines, or better names speaking with each other, without the quirks that real people have.
Just to conclude because this post is already too long, I hint at the final two issues that bothered me, that is
5) it is too short, it’s worth noticing that CoV included two chapters of the story and FoM only one; and
6) the end! And I’m not speaking about the fall of Memphis or the end of Wilson, but the real end where you wind up to move to St. Louis.
In each of my runs I made friendship with many other different vampires of different cities, I really do not find any reasonable explanation why I would like to accept to go to St. Louis!
OK, I completely understand that the main legs of the story must be in the same city because allowing to choose also the city would mean too many permutations, but at least there should be some better motivation than just “the Quaestor of St. Louis is the first to answer to you”! I’m sure it would not have been that difficult to put in the main story some preparation to lead a character to St. Louis, the fact that it hasn’t been done makes me go back to point 3, and that’s unfortunate.