It is!
Great game! What I liked the most, that is the characters are… adults. Not only in words. I mean, they’re certainly dumb and mean sometimes, but even relatively ‘bad’ characters get together and behave appropriately to solve a big problem. Well, and in general everyone act very realistic, I think I’ve met similar characters in my everyday life.
Also I think Darcy is the best character I’ve ever met in cog-games. I was hostile to them throughout the game but at the same time I started to feel sorry for them and in the end I even started to like them. Too many different feelings at once haha.
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Good characters, good story, some wasted potential. You can build a world-class ubermensch practitioner that aces all your responsibilities and possibly found a mutiversal-first in defending against the Vastness, and all you get is a stiff nod from Blankenship, when his head should be rolling from his shoulders. Can’t even get department chair. Ellison is a hack. And as much as Darcy is to blame for her betrayal, Whipple was more to blame for her callousness. I can somewhat respect Darcy’s hustle, betrayal notwithstanding, but for a professor to understand the situation and then just make an excuse “this is how it works in our world” to a promising student sends a very strong chilling effect. Was really hoping they all would get more of a comeuppance.
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Yeah, I’m glad to see some more talk about Whipple’s complicity in this. Like, practitioners, is this really the world you want to build for yourselves? Is this how you want your world to work?
But then, from my knowledge of academia, it really do be like this. Seems thoroughly rotten to me.
My preferred choice would be to get in good with Taylor to get a job offer, support Gabriel and do the 50/50 research split with him, try not to fail at everything else, save the universe, then blow off WP at the end and flip to work at Repro, let Darcy be king shit of fuck mountain, as the saying goes. I hope they enjoy their vast power over, er, Eze (checked out to the point of harm), Wilcox (the whiniest dickhead to have ever walked the earth), and Blankenship (absolutely corrupted and possibly criminally insane). What a glorious tenure that would be!
Seriously, I can’t imagine how much you’d have to pay me to put up with “colleagues” like these. Far more than the thrift-store furniture salary WP is giving, I’m sure. I’d rather work in fast food, magical studies or not. Manish had the right idea.
All this underlines how vivid the characters are, by the way, for them to still make me mad and thinking up zinger comebacks weeks later. Total kudos for the characterization! So many different reasons for wanting to throttle a coworker, lavishly illustrated!
11 Likes
Yea, it may be the case that that is how it works in the world of (magical) academia - but by the end, depending on your actions, you’d think maybe you’d get some leeway…
And you’re right, all throughout I kept asking myself, “Tenure tenure tenure…why is this worth it again?” I suppose it’s the potential to focus on research? But working with Repro is one avenue, and you can somewhat obscurely learn from Manish that he’s also still practicing magic and is making some headway on magical brewing. And that’s right, I suppose it’s to Granade’s credit that I have visceral feelings towards, dare I say it, all of these characters.
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I used to think my future lay in the world of academia, so my feelings about this game were half “this was supposed to be my life, strolling between ivy-covered buildings talking with people with Ph.D.s about the latest important article in some prestigious journal” and half “nah, this life would have chewed me up and spit me out, I probably would have welcomed an invasion of brain-mulching aliens as a nice change of pace.”
That probably doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement, but it is. 
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I’m partway through and have been juggling all my responsibilities with difficulty, and that’s pretty much how I’ve been feeling when playing! even if I fail miserably I am determined to Protect Gabriel.
Yeah I just finished my first playthrough and my responsibilities were… er, not good.
I’m looking for tips on:
- how many skills can you reasonably focus on? I choose three, practical, research and I think reasoning. I think there was a lot of overlap between research and practical so maybe something else? Rhetoric or politics?
- are there interpersonal focuses that can also boost responsibilities? Gabriel did amazing so probably but others? Like will my service go up if I spend more time with Taylor?
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will you always get sever pattern damage if you close the thingy yourself or does it depend on how much damage you’ve accrued over the game?
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can you avoid being branded by Blankenship? Also, how do you get proof he’s a baddy? ALSO. I split most of the responsibilities with him (research space, co-taught classes etc) considering he’s an asshat are there repercussions for just trying to do it all yourself?
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is there a happy ending for the lodger if you save the world? And can you be in a poly with them and Manish and Darcy or am I being too greedy?
Just finished, and I loved it! Some of the interpersonal workplace drama at the start hit a little closer to home so although I liked Gabriel and my students, I was immensely pleased to have the opportunity to say goodbye to it all and work for Repro instead - and took Gabriel with me! Woohoo! I ended up being very practical magic and politics based, befriended Taylor and Hayden, and romanced Manish and the Lodger 
I absolutely loved the Lodger, what a great alien character!
I could tell when playing that there was so much that I didn’t see, from the different relationship focuses to pursuing different goals. It very much felt like I couldn’t do everything perfectly, which felt in tune with the theme of the game, but I was able to do many things very well which was lovely! All in all it was a very substantial, immersive game with a ton of replayability. Something I loved-to-hate was Darcy dragging me into things that I didn’t want to do, whether in the past or present; I thought that was a really good way of foreshadowing them being an antagonist. I think they were a really, really good example of a rival character. In this playthrough they never progressed past that but I’d enjoy playing someone who wanted to let bygones be bygones and try to reconnect.
4 Likes
It’s well worth playing many, many times. I was sad when the beta ended without me getting to try all the routes I wanted to try.
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Sorry it took me a while to answer this!
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I’d suggest focusing on two, one magic, one interpersonal. You might could get to three.
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Spending time with Taylor will give you some chances to improve your service, and time with Hayley makes it easier to bump the town and gown relationship.
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If your practical skill is high enough, you’ll take little to no damage. But also it’s cumulative, so if you take less damage before the end, you won’t have permanent damage.
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You can’t keep from being branded. If you’re good enough at arguing your case, you can keep from splitting everything with him and not suffer any repercussions.
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There are ways of keeping the Lodger safe in the end. There isn’t a way to date all three of them at the same time, though.
2 Likes
Just want to say this is one of my favorite games from CoG in quite a while. I can’t say exactly what it is about the relationship with Taylor/Lodger but all the conversations with each of them are very sweet. I liked both quite a lot.
I have played through several times and what I still can’t figure out how to do is ensure that Darcy gets the department chair job. Every time, Wilcox gets it and that is super upsetting. I actually was really disturbed at how casually his assault during the department meeting was just brushed off. I have worked in education and in university academic departments; that kind of an attack - physically restraining a colleague - would be grounds for immediate dismissal and possible criminal charges. What I immediately thought in that moment was, “If he will do this to a colleague, what does he do to students? What vile things has he done to the young people in our care?” The man is a predator and almost as detestable as Blankenship, and the fact that he faces no consequences whatsoever, and that my MC has no ways to agitate for consequences is really upsetting.
Also, is it at all possible to check up on the students that Blankenship was recruiting? When you find out about it there’s an option that does roughly say “I should check into their well being” or similar, but there didn’t seem to be a way to follow-up (outside of entering the fold and doing the pattern heist stuff).
Along the same lines, is it possible to get the Practicum to convict Blankenship? I didn’t like the ending where Lodger controlled and then blackmailed him, so I have gone through a few times trying to find a way that I can reach the ending with evidence against him (as a lack of evidence is indicated as the reason he was acquitted by the Practicum). I was hoping maybe cooperation and testimony from Jordan or something would do it, but he got acquitted again so I am suspecting it’s just not possible to see justice done.
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A key to promoting Darcy is to be careful what checks you suceed in. If you volunteer to help the practicum, and then sucessfully defend yourself, for example, it makes them look bad. Generally, you want to promote Darcy when you can, and avoid winning arguments with them. I think you need their progress to be around 70% to get it (i missed it at 62 in my last playthrough).
One big note is that, if Darcy promises to be a better person during the pattern heist, they will reject the position if offered, because they think going for it made them a worse person. In that case the only way to avoid Wilcox is Eze
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I agree with the fear and loathing of Wilcox. That man is a villain. It makes me long for at least one other good faculty member other than Ellison. Because a multi-decade future with only Darcy, Wilcox, Eze, and Blankenship as colleagues is BLEAK.
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I really like the game, but I have to say that it made the job you were fighting for look super unappealing. It’s good you can move to ReproThe fact that Darcy is your best co-worker outside of Ellison is grim. Eze is arguably less bad, but, even before his breakdown at the end, he has no problem with the hazing stuff. Only Darcy even says anything.
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Yes, I ended up on that route and felt very pleased with myself at the end because I was so disillusioned with academia. Which, uh, isn’t uncommon from talking to the ex-academics in my life 
Though I’d like to replay and try to become an academic bigwig at the end!
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Is there a way to get Blankenship on your side near the end? Does Gabriel always interrupt?
Just finished my first playthrough and that was one hell of a awesome journey.And can you close the book,close ur eyes when the vastness arrives at Dr Cohen’s office
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@emelsi, for the students, you can’t check up on them, though they do okay in the end. For Blankenship, you can’t get them to convict Blankenship unless he succeeds in escaping.
For both you and @Khipsky, one of the themes I was going for was that, if magic is this dangerous, what kind of organization lets kids throw themselves into it without serious guardrails? That, combined with my concerns about how academia treats people, led to the Practicum and the department being straight-up terrible. Ellison is good, but she’s one person trying to reform a system that’s bigger than her, and in the end, that system wins. You the player have to decide if you’re willing to stay in that system and keep trying to make it better.
@whallen, you can’t get Blankenship on your side, because he’s the wooooorst.
@Ashten, you can’t.
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I think you punctured romantic images of university life really well (I didn’t go as far into academia as the MC but did a degree and worked in education for a while, and have a lot of friends in that world - it was very recognisable down to the conference sandwiches!), while keeping the characters human. I could see why making the system into something that chewed people up less was important to Ellison, and why academic status was important to Darcy (and I liked how passionate Kayla was about mundane academia, though I didn’t end up interacting with her much on my first playthrough). And I wanted to protect Gabriel with my life 
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