The other day, I went to the COG app and discovered that this game has the lowest ratings of any choice game. As someone who helped beta test this and was looking forward to a successful release, what happened? There’s not a lot of criticism to go off of in this thread.
As a tester for Sins of the Sires, which is only a little higher in the ratings, I feel your pain.
Do you mind if I ask what your experience as a beta tester was like? How many playthroughs did you do? Did you make any suggestions for things you thought should be improved?
I had something like 30-40 play throughs, though I didn’t give feedback for every single one. My feedback and suggestions mainly rested on fixing bugs and making the game make as much narrative sense as possible (e.g. there was one ending where the POV character ends up as an Austrian POW and then the narrative oddly switches to events in France and to their relationship with the RO).
The game felt relatively scattershot to begin with, but I felt like it had tightened up a lot during beta testing, and I thought that the end product could have been something in the same structural vein as Tally Ho: a lot of various paths that all weave together and make sense. Evidently, the people who played the game didn’t view it as such.
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It’s such a complex game under the hood that it’s not surprising some narrative errors slipped through - I had the same issue at one point, leaving the country but still getting involved in local French affairs, and you can see that’s something they worked on in the May 9 patch.
How did you feel about the romances? Which ROs were your favorites? What were your favorite scenes with them?
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I feel like the romances were definitely a weak point of the game. They were by no means the worst romances I’ve ever played, and the characters themselves were fairly interesting and romanceable, but there was a definite feeling of “there’s more important things to do right now.” Case in point, I don’t know that there’s a romance scene that immediately jumps out to me other than some of your interactions with the commanding officer RO in the military path.
It’s been addressed earlier in this thread, but making some of the ROs virtually impossible to meet and making their gender variable was not a good move.
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Did you have any favorite ROs? I assume you were a fan of the commanding officer (Dacier?), what about the others?
Dacier left the greatest impression on me by a long shot. I did like Yvon and Gaudry, though I wasn’t a fan of Thibauld or any of the political ROs (though that was more due to mechanics making it difficult to actually be romantic with them).
What were your favorite story routes?
Yeah, the main high-level overview of the feedback and criticism I’ve gotten seems to boil down to “it’s too broad and not deep enough on any given path through the story.” Especially the romances.
I am working on a big content update expansion right now to address that, focusing mainly on the romances, including the randomized genders.
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The military story route where you’re just a ranking soldier was done very well.
The trial story route is a highlight of the game.
Any route that leads to you summoning one of the big 3 demons is good; I enjoyed the challenge of trying to rope them in.
I liked being able to lead conquering armies as well, although the end felt a little abrupt.
Again, I really do like what this game shoots for overall, which is why I was actually surprised to see its ratings so low.
The first time I played it, my takeaway was that it was the skeleton of a great game, but needed a lot in the way of fleshing out.
I’ve enjoyed the military routes I’ve played, but found the trial pretty lackluster.
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One of the biggest problems is the one I was bouncing around with Chris upthread. A lot of players are going to be going the politics route, because this is a game about the French Revolution. They’re going to be scheming bastards like myself because that’s what you do in a politics game. And the politics section - especially the constitution - is absolute corner case chaos. It’s amazing what Chris has done, but it’s still buggier than an anthill if you try to do something creative with it.
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I’m looking forward to that promised update - I believe with some tightening and fleshing out in the right places, there’s an amazing game here.
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I’m honestly impressed you’re able to read those subroutines and assemble any kind of coherent understanding of what they’re supposed to be doing. I sometimes have to reacquaint myself with my own code, and that whole set is particularly hairy.
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Well, that’s because you obfuscated the code with your standardized thresholds. 
Joking aside, the main trick is to remember which direction each variable is going in for each agenda item. It’s worse for the four factions because they’re dynamic, of course (leading to hairball situations like the Catholic Anarchists).
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If the author made a huge update on that game, what changes do you want to see? I mostly want expanded story and mechanics
More dialogue and better-defined characters. A more coherent story, even if that means a little more inherent structure and direction, particularly in the political faction routes. More narrative flow; less episodic jerkiness. Text that reflects and responds to my character’s stance on the issues, including how their opinions may evolve over time. Make history story-relevant and invest it with high stakes and emotional impact, rather than info-dumping.
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I just finished my review for Revolution Diabolique. Thanks for reading!
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Thanks! This upcoming patch absolutely will address some of the issues you noted, especially the randomized ROs.
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This is a review for “Revolution Diabolique”, I really appreciated the game, the way you have liberty to choose from different backgrounds and influence directly the way the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror that occurred thereafter is just amazing. But while playing, I noticed many times that not always is clear what is happening on the world abroad. For example, during this time period, a lot of important personalities who influenced the western politics, sciences and philosophy lived and died in the claws of the Revolution as it become more and more vicious. Alexander Robespierre gone from a anti capital punishment lawyer to the most bloody tyrant in the Reign of Terror! Mary Antoinette was abused and accused without proof of pedophilia with her own baby child. And was executed by a mob while one of her sons, Gagné was killed leading a suicide charge with his friends at the National guard, while her other child Jean Almicar was abandoned to starve in the streets of paris.
Imagine being able to influence their fates! Or interact with people like Marat, Desmolins, Lavoisier, Dalton, Lafayette, or even Napoleon himself! Just think about that! (Also there are the ones who probably have a crush on Charlotte Corday or Alexander Robespierre.)
But I am really enjoyed this game as an interactive experience! Even if not always the characters’ fates are clear. I got my own head canon thanks for the vague way the time seems to flow in-game. Sometimes is almost as if we are playing a memento.
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