This is a COG I really wanted to like and enjoy, but where that is really hard in actual practice. I did find the characters and the world building interesting.And that it’s hard to succeed without choosing a side in the conflict is something that I can at least live with, though it’s not what I’d preferred. But that it’s so hard getting a good or even neutral ending, takes away most of the fun for me.
Also, partly connected, some of the stats are quite confusing and there are too many scenes where it’s unclear which(if any) stats are tested in the various options for action. I’ve never figured out exactly what the savvy stat is used for and if you don’t pay close enough attention to the stat screen and otherwise, you may very well, like me on my first playthrough, think that confidence measures how the self confidence of the MC instead of(if I understood correctly) the trust of your teacher and his family. There were quite a few instances where it was unclear to me wThis text will be blurredhether an option tested the MC’s diplomacy or leadership stat or even one of their relationship stats. It would have made things much less confusing and stressful if this COG, like many other COGs included an explanation of the different stats in the stat menu.
This was particularly bad in the endgame, where I both when trying to escape with the teacher and his family and when staying behind in the city and making sabotage on behalf of the revolutionaries I ran into options that mainly were options that I wasn’t sure which stat they were supposed to test and have failed miserably in all of them so far. For instance, I don’t know whether trying to use the power of the spaceship to protect yourself, your teacher and his family from being captured tests the astralchemical stat of the MC, an “invisible” stat that keeps track of the state of the spaceship or a combination of the two/some other stat and I don’t know what stat is required to get the people trying to capture you to turn on their leader either and it’s just as hard figuring out which stat that goes with which option in the other path I’ve tried in the endgame. I have a strong suspicion that the stat requirements to succeed in the relevant tests in that chapter are quite high, which makes things complicated enough as it is, but when you don’t even know which stats are being tested, this makes things doubly difficult and makes it really hard to get a satisfying ending for the MC unless you’re really lucky and that’s really not how I like COGs or HGs to be.
It does also seem that this COG is either taking the COG philosophy that the MCs can’t do everything, but have to make some priorities to extremes or just making them particularly difficult to juggle. I can count at least four priorities that were all described as important to your MC and that, by and large clearly are, but the only one I’ve yet been able to make my MCs reach is to get their brother out of jail. For at least couple of those priorities it’s because it’s unclear what is required to reach them, for others it’s because they seem to require raising stats that seem difficult to increase and where it’s often difficult to understand how to increase them high enough(I’v had problems with rasing the academy stat to 30 or more, for instance) and in general it just seems that there are too few opportunities to do what is required to reach them.
So my main complaints are these. Firstly, that it’s too hard to get a satisfying ending for your MC. I don’t mind that some of the possible endings are sad, but I do mind it when getting an ending that isn’t sad is so hard, that you keep getting sad endings with each new playthrough. And secondly, which may very well have played a big part in me getting sad endings over and over for my MCs, that several of the stats aren’t clear enough and that too many of the stat check options aren’t clear about what stats that are being tested. Since there are no stats explanations included, I guess this means that this last point was never brough up by any of the playtesters, which is quite surprising, because I find it hard to believe that I’m the only one who had this problem.
The way things are now, this looks like COG that will be really hard to get through without a proper walkthrough, at least for the endgame, or at least some more hints and advices from the writer on how to get to the end alive and without being thrown in prison. Whatever happens, I hope some action will be taken to make this COG a little bit easier and/or making the game aspects(like stats) a little bit clearer.
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