Though lifetime-spanning games aren’t usually my favourites, I really enjoyed this. I was all ‘I’m gonna be a robot because they’re awesome!’ and the story was like ‘unfortunately, most people do NOT agree that robots are awesome’. But I didn’t listen, made a really fun Synth and spent most of their life making heart eyes at Kyle. Who reminded me of the alien robot in Lost In Space, which I stopped watching because I got mad at how badly it was being treated, and I imagined my own ending where the Robinsons all died and the robot went back to being a cool murder machine. Which is sort of apt, since my first playthrough led to Cog in the Machine. It’s not a good ending, but my one satisfaction is that Kyle finally got payback on Rachel. And everyone else who was looking down on Synths. And, uh, on the whole rest of the universe as well, oops. Honestly, the fanatical destruction part bothered me less than forgetting they were a couple.
In my defence, while unlocking Kyle’s memories sounded risky, my very intelligent MC had consistently made less intelligent choices where Kyle was concerned (trying to shank bullies with a cybernetic spike, ditching captain’s orders in favour of barging into a courtroom yelling about love, refusing to leave when they got stuck on the hostile planet). But it always worked out for the best? So at that point they were just like ‘oh if this causes problems then I’m sure the power of love will get us through!’ And then…it didn’t, haha.
He’s still my favourite RO, though. Aside from the Solarians, all the other ROs were fun and likeable, it felt like a proper group of misfit friends (though it would have been nice to have more social parts later in the game, while they were doing non-urgent things like waiting around for information brokers). The skill checks were balanced, and there were seldom instances where my character had zero applicable skills to solve a problem – and when I did fail, it felt fair rather than excessively punishing. I’ve played a couple of other Lucidverse games, and would say this is by far the best.
I absolutely hated Alex and Rachel, though. Quickly dropped her relationship to 0, where it stayed for the rest of the game. I gleefully beat her in the academy election, nominated her to join the other ship just so I wouldn’t have to put up with her tantrums any more, voted for her ship to be the sacrificial one after the time-jump, but every time I tried to get rid of her she just kept buzzing back like a plot-armoured fly. It’s a pity there isn’t an option to have both Orrok kids survive, and let both Solarians get blown up. I don’t care if there’s an option to ‘earn their respect’ or whatever later, I want to see them respecting my friends that they tormented, acknowledging how awful they were and pleading for forgiveness. I haven’t code-dived enough to see if that possibility exists somewhere, but if it doesn’t, then the Solarians don’t get the time of day from me.
One thing I did notice, not sure if it’s worth putting in the bugs thread, is that occasionally the game doesn’t mark what type of relationships people have, at points when it would sound better to specify. Rachel was called ‘your old friend’ in the text at one point, and she and Alex are listed amongst the MC’s first friends in the epilogue, which felt slightly jarring. After Kyle went off the rails, someone mentioned her to the MC as ‘your friend’, which felt invalidating when they were married for years.
Anyway, now I’m going to play through again, try a bunch of different stuff, and uh, maybe choose a different method to beat the Suverians this time.