I haven’t played the full-released game yet but I did play the WIP and I have to be honest while I do like the game and did play the WIP a lot I’m shocked to see it released as it didn’t don’t feel that polish and finalized.
Now with that said I am still going to buy it when I can because I did like the WIP and I want to support the game’s author in some way and maybe the full-released game feels different.
Is there any way to prevent the split between your chieftain and his ally in the beginning and any way to save the daughter of the chieftain? I really hope so, because if not, it seems that your MC has got to go along with others’ stupid and/or selfish decisions and be willing to betray people that they care about in order to survive. If there’s any way to do those things I’d like to do, it would also be good to know at least one of the ways to do so, because I’m honestly quite stumped when it comes to finding ways of fixing those things…
As others have said the descriptions given by the writer are of high quality but the general structure of the narrative with fast scene changes and very long paragraphs(that hurt to read) which make following the plot quite difficult.
Man I love myself some historical fiction not long ago had the luck to dive deep into Tim Hodkinson’s “The Spear of Crom” that also explores the ancient idea of who the deity was back on megalitic/ancient Ireland drawing on all the mistery that surrounds it as the black one, when you portray a setting as rich as this one you gotta let it live short novellas rarely allow readers to understand and enjoy the colorful societies portrayed, ancient Ireland by itself and of course with its ties to native-Roman Britain as a whole allows writers to do so much, here the focus was pure clan conflict and that was alright but we barely got to meet the players before shit was hitting the fan like the plot development baffled me making me shout at the screen sometimes “slow down boy”.
The childhood was a breeze, We needed more time since the recruitment into the camp allowing us to cultivate our relationships with the people there(certainly no emotional connection with anyone for me there), not to mention the killing of interesting characters like the Chief’s daughter just because petty drama, we needed more variety of ROS as the ones we got were barely engaging with few scenes as implied before the story was acting like there was no time to present any character just follow the narrative till the end without consideration.
Beyond that the over importance a small time guy like Oscar got was frankly annoying c’mmon he was just a captain that no-one really liked and he could screw you up in narrative again and again(my lad even had a “good rapport” with the bastard for all the good it gave him), specially as he was the one that sent that assasin at the end like the author confirmed, what bothered me the most was the lack of chance to react and put down that cockroach.
Also missed dearly some sort of outline for the cast of characters and perphaps some codex/lore screen? You know that many historical novels have a glossary to educate readers on some terms and sometimes peculiarities of the setting, felt somewhat hollow and was difficult to recognise the names of part of the cast by the middle book so yeah.
In conclusion the premise is impressive and groundbreaking for Hosted games but a fascinating historical setting(we really need more of these) is besmirched by a fast-paced narrative that leaves nearly no time in getting to know the ROS, meaningless or overstated choices on the hands of the reader and in general a narrative that renders your overall participation into stark realism where you feel like a tool for those who truly control the fate of the world.
Writting is good. But stats are useless, relationships are useless. Romance options and many characters are unlikable. Those that you get to like get killed. And what is all about huge amount of railroading for example Oscar. Can’t stand him and how and why do you just die just for telling the truth. And why is his relationship with MC high when he is douche.