I’ve really enjoyed the game up to the point that i’ve played so far (Act 3ish?)! I like that high trust isn’t an immediate disadvantage and I would die for Zheng. The characters in general are great, I only wish I had more time to talk to them, but that’s what the future playthroughs are for
Encountered a bug right after the second attack on PC, in which Fleur-de-Lys got killed, with her speaking up in scenes right after her death (but it did make me feel a lot better that it wasn’t a pre-scripted death, she was my favorite and I will so replay the game to keep her alive).
I do agree with people saying that the PC feels a tad too locked in, with all of my character’s talk about being kicked out by his family, I really hoped that there would be a way to distinguish the reason for that a little bit, or at the very least relate to Fleur instead of appearing somewhat clueless. It took embarrassingly long for my character to pick up on Fleur’s deal while I, being trans myself, could immediately tell what’s up. I do get not wanting to do too much branching, but it could’ve been at least more ambiguous than what PC feels in-game.
On that note, is Wil supposed to be straight? The game description did mention being able to play as gay or bi, but even at “Wil trusts you with his life” relationship status, the option to kiss him is greyed out. I dunno if it was me picking out wrong origin or options for my character, or if he’s unavailable for male PCs at all.
Finished Interlude One and all I gotta say is Old Man Zheng is the absolute best. I’m really enjoying the characterization in this game, it’s cool to see dialogue in “modern register” from Paul.
Also I just know Fleur is going to be downloading a car
The fighting scenes are pretty cool, I think it gives you a sense of what it’s like to be fighting a supernatural murder machine.
Lol yeah every fight scene so far has been “and somehow, I lived”.
I saw a steam review saying you could go ‘punch for punch’ with the Thinnies and I want to know what game they were playing lol. All the combat scenes feel like pretty bare wins, even on a Physical build.
This is age discrimination, smh you can ro a vamp that will always be magnitudes older than anyone, but you can’t get in good with Honored Elder Zheng, I’m sure he got good martial moves in him yet
tbf I get the impression that Rod is still well within a human lifespan, and that Lydia isn’t that much older. I would be surprised to hear she was older than a hundred.
I’m still playing (and early in the playthrough at that), but I’d imagine you make use of it if you reject Mr. Bojangles offer and he doesn’t let you stay at the theatre or something.
I wonder if I ended up on an unintended path in my playthrough (spoilers for endgame)
Preparing for the final act I visited Lydia, got dominated and forced to drink her blood then the next act was forced to side with her (all options lead to siding with her because PC has no control anymore) - but failing to convince any of the hunters to leave the domination was undone and I could do the battle with them as normal and defeat all the vampires.
I naturally tried the willpower checks but they did work - the first time I did that interlude I convinced Mandy to leave and act 5 started on Lydia’s side - then I repeated the interlude (reloaded save) and did the same choices except didn’t make the social check on Mandy to make her leave and then the game was fine with me being back to the Hunters
Honesty that choice is really unbalanced, though perhaps that’s on purpose. IDK why you’d ever take anything but ID and Money given you can get a free knife from Zheng and the sleeping bag is useless if you rent a place/hang with Jangles.
@Cataphrak Is it intended that you can so easily ignore food? Even going along without grabbing any Desperation never really becomes an issue because the other stuff you do along the way keeps it in check.
Surely taking money is always optimal then, because it only then takes the slightest bit of elbow grease for an SRO, and you’re set for the rest of the game. I guess if your really want early access to some of the tools you could rough it to save money, but that feels unintuitive.
So this happened in Interlude 4, before you moved on to Act 5?
The sleeping bag is a lot more useful if you refuse to work with Jangles and go at it alone, since it means it’s safer to sleep rough or shelter-hop if you can’t make the money to rent an SRO.
Not really, but I needed to balance it in a way that didn’t make starving to death a “quit moment” for people who weren’t laser focused on it.
I’ll be honest with ya, which maybe I shouldn’t considering the “you trust easily” achievement I just got, but bestest boi Zheng made me have faith despite my intentions to be a desperate paranoid, I was more talking in general about vamps, cause I, really, haven’t reached that part yet with the two vamp ros (sorry Cata, I’ll whip myself later for this, but Where Winds Meet has released and I cannot not play a Jianghu game).
I’ve completed a No Stats Playthrough of the game where Physical/Mental/Social were all set to -100. The guide features the “best” Unmaking ending – all Hunters are alive, Zheng reconciled with his son, and the Taishanhui are considering changing their ways.
I’ve tried to make most of the endings subjective in a lot of cases. What the “best” ending is will probably be a subject of debate except for certain people who really feel the need to have a copyright lawyer step on them.
In a certain sense, the ‘bad’ Bloodhound ending is in fact the one where the MC is personally happiest. They live an extremely comfortable life where they don’t really have to think about anything and get to feel amazing every time they see their Mistress. Better gig than getting ridden into the ground by the Feds. Honestly might even be better than the ‘good’ Bloodhound ending on a pure ‘personal happiness and fulfillment’ front.
I do think AToM drives home that one man’s “ok pay” is life changing money for another, which is nice to see. For someone who very recently was living out of a single room (or worse), Lydia’s gig is probably the most luxuriously they’ve ever lived.
Speaking of the Bloodhound ending actually, is there a reason Lydia doesn’t fully bond you on the Embrace route? It’s very common for vamps to ghoul their potential embraces for a while (especially Ventrue), just so they don’t like, die, and can be introduced to the World of Darkness while permissions and such work their way through the system. Lydia would need at the very least sign off from her Prince and Primogen, and that could potentially take years where you might run off or get sick or something.
