Short version: The game is a mixed bag and not really worth buying imho, also there seem to be some serious bugs, though personally I did not encounter any.
Long version for other fans of the Choice of... Games (CYOA games, more precisely):
I bought this on steam regularly & while I do not regret doing that I also can't full-heartedly commend anyone to do the same.
The game isn't bad, the writing, on a technical level, is top notch. And yes, it kinda does make sense that Fae in this world have weird pronouns. The problem is that first of all the chosen pronouns Yse/ys are ruining the reading experience. It doesn't matter if it makes some sense in-universe for those to exist (that is the absolute MINIMUM, for god's sake, when including that sort of nonsense) when it still destroys the immersion by making it nigh impossible to just go about reading the story because every other moment there is some character who has to have made-up pronouns.
Secondly the game has a weird pacing & there have been bugs reported that actually make it so that entire parts of the story are skipped and that choices do not lead to the results that they should be tied to, making it especially frustrating towards the end of the game, when plots do not get wrapped up and the ending goes in a different direction than what was picked over the course of the game.
Thirdly, and I am not sure which of these 3 is the worst, the author seemingly thinks that, just because they feel like an NPC is oh-so-cool the reader will feel the same for sure. That isn't the case, though, and it just gets really frustrating and annoying to be pestered by people all the time when there is little to no reason why the player character should even deal with them in the first place.
Finally the player character is trash. And by that I mean, despite customization options etc. etc. they are borderline useless, weak and pathetic and there is no reason for that whatsoever. It's as if the author arbitrarily decides from scene to scene what is needed for his plot (in a supposed CYOA game) and it just makes no real sense. You are a thousands of years old Fae? Well you are trash. You are a human that basically doesn't really fit into the "Untermarkt"? Well you get treated the exact same way. It's sadly a well written, but not really well executed author fanfiction trying to be a CYOA game, which it doesn't really achieve, in my opinion.
Thank you for the great review. Some of these games - The War For The West being my #1 example - get paired up with worse ones just because it is so easy to make lame text-based games despite there being some great gems out there.
War of the West is pretty good indeed, though for my tastes it is too short, due to how things evolve especially towards the end. It really could use a 2nd part but afaik the authors were not sure if they even want to make it a literal continuation of the story or just another story that takes place in the world after whatever impact your character in book 1 had on it.
It is a bit short, particularly because you do not have the time to fully explore all paths desired before you have the [spoiler moment goes here], and the story ends. However, I found that the cheat menu gives you plenty of more time to act if you so desire - you can delay for as long as you wish. Save-editing the dates is also an option (had to pull this trick with The Vampire Regent, also co-written by the same author, but this one is shorter and less variable).
The author fully intends to develop a trilogy, with the second game 'Wake of the Wyrm' well on it's way, a demo is coming out sometime in the future: https://www.patreon.com/lucaszaper (I cannot link to the post directly because it is Patrons-only, but you can read the title).
Thank you, I will definitely check that, if the next game is actually the 2nd part and the player character remains the same it's a buy for me. I reached 2 vastly different endings in my playthroughs that made the game one of the most likely top 5 Choice of... games/series to me and getting to journey on from these 2 endings would be really cool.
I've been curious about games like these for a while due to seeing them here so often and having played and enjoyed Knight & Princess which I saw being described as CYOA with some graphics but never got around to trying anything else is there anything you'd recommend trying instead of this one?
"Tin Star" is amazing if you enjoy Wild-West stories, "A study in Steampunk" is awesome as well, especially if you read Sherlock Holmes stories before. My personal favorite and probably the best CYOA game in many ways is "Wayhaven Chronicles", but it's heavily focusing on the romance part intertwining with the story, which you do not have to go through with while playing, but it's kinda the best part cause a lot of work and care went into it. The author also is very regularly updating her progress on Book 3 (of 7) and so far it seems likely the game will actually get finished in a few years (which isn't something to say about all of these games).
Other noteworthy entries are:
Mysteries of Baroque Fog knows your Name Sabres of Infinity / Guns of Infinity (Book 3 "Lords of Infinity" hasn't been released yet, I am unsure if I should say it might not come, but it has been years since book 2 was released) Werewolves: Haven Rising / Pack Mentality (another entry that seems likely to get finished at some point) Psy High (I must say though that while Book 2 is in many ways better than book 1 and does not totally throw away all you did in the first part still does not make for a good sequel in my eyes. Book 3 is at the horizon, though, so I will not make a final call on that. Just going by what you do in Book 2 vs Book 1 it makes sense to be a little disjointed, I do not agree with the decision to make the content of book 2 it's own game instead of making it a part of the actual 2nd part. Likely it was the length, it already is like 400K words i think) Breach: The Archangel Job is a bit like a "secret" favorite of mine, it has some weaknesses like a rather railroaded story, but the writing is extremely entertaining, mostly strikes a decent balance between humor and gore, it's insanely long (easily 12+ hours on a single playthrough) and IF it's second part actually is finished (which it might not get, dunno, the end of book 1 felt a little odd, as if the author went out of ideas a little, but that might very well have been a "newbies failure" trying to not end on a bad cliffhanger, while also still making the players curious for the next events) which I would not hold against him at any point.
Games I advise to avoid:
Heroes Rise - it starts of amazing and then falls apart in book 3 (which is really trash) and then the author made the terrible mistake of creating a bunch of other games in the same universe, with 3 games directly trying to be a sequel to Heroes Rise, only without all the stuff that made book 1 and 2 kinda great, while making all the stuff no one liked to begin with gets magnified, and then 3 more games that read like an acid trip, but not fun, just really, really weird. Heroes Rise is one of the biggest disappointments when it comes to CYOA games.
Samurai of Hyuga - this one starts of great as well, then suddenly the entire premise of the game changes into a really sick disfunctional "romance" story.
Run out of space, sorry, Samurai of Hyuga devolves into what only people can enjoy who for whatever reason are really into reading about being abused (and it goes to the fullest extent, if you get my meaning) which I do not judge but it has no place in a series of books that start out (and still advertise themselves) as something completely different than an unsettling trip into "how BDSM should never be".
Long version for other fans of the Choice of... Games (CYOA games, more precisely):
I bought this on steam regularly & while I do not regret doing that I also can't full-heartedly commend anyone to do the same.
The game isn't bad, the writing, on a technical level, is top notch. And yes, it kinda does make sense that Fae in this world have weird pronouns. The problem is that first of all the chosen pronouns Yse/ys are ruining the reading experience. It doesn't matter if it makes some sense in-universe for those to exist (that is the absolute MINIMUM, for god's sake, when including that sort of nonsense) when it still destroys the immersion by making it nigh impossible to just go about reading the story because every other moment there is some character who has to have made-up pronouns.
Secondly the game has a weird pacing & there have been bugs reported that actually make it so that entire parts of the story are skipped and that choices do not lead to the results that they should be tied to, making it especially frustrating towards the end of the game, when plots do not get wrapped up and the ending goes in a different direction than what was picked over the course of the game.
Thirdly, and I am not sure which of these 3 is the worst, the author seemingly thinks that, just because they feel like an NPC is oh-so-cool the reader will feel the same for sure. That isn't the case, though, and it just gets really frustrating and annoying to be pestered by people all the time when there is little to no reason why the player character should even deal with them in the first place.
Finally the player character is trash. And by that I mean, despite customization options etc. etc. they are borderline useless, weak and pathetic and there is no reason for that whatsoever. It's as if the author arbitrarily decides from scene to scene what is needed for his plot (in a supposed CYOA game) and it just makes no real sense. You are a thousands of years old Fae? Well you are trash. You are a human that basically doesn't really fit into the "Untermarkt"? Well you get treated the exact same way.
It's sadly a well written, but not really well executed author fanfiction trying to be a CYOA game, which it doesn't really achieve, in my opinion.
The author fully intends to develop a trilogy, with the second game 'Wake of the Wyrm' well on it's way, a demo is coming out sometime in the future: https://www.patreon.com/lucaszaper (I cannot link to the post directly because it is Patrons-only, but you can read the title).
Other noteworthy entries are:
Mysteries of Baroque
Fog knows your Name
Sabres of Infinity / Guns of Infinity (Book 3 "Lords of Infinity" hasn't been released yet, I am unsure if I should say it might not come, but it has been years since book 2 was released)
Werewolves: Haven Rising / Pack Mentality (another entry that seems likely to get finished at some point)
Psy High (I must say though that while Book 2 is in many ways better than book 1 and does not totally throw away all you did in the first part still does not make for a good sequel in my eyes. Book 3 is at the horizon, though, so I will not make a final call on that. Just going by what you do in Book 2 vs Book 1 it makes sense to be a little disjointed, I do not agree with the decision to make the content of book 2 it's own game instead of making it a part of the actual 2nd part. Likely it was the length, it already is like 400K words i think)
Breach: The Archangel Job is a bit like a "secret" favorite of mine, it has some weaknesses like a rather railroaded story, but the writing is extremely entertaining, mostly strikes a decent balance between humor and gore, it's insanely long (easily 12+ hours on a single playthrough) and IF it's second part actually is finished (which it might not get, dunno, the end of book 1 felt a little odd, as if the author went out of ideas a little, but that might very well have been a "newbies failure" trying to not end on a bad cliffhanger, while also still making the players curious for the next events) which I would not hold against him at any point.
Games I advise to avoid:
Heroes Rise - it starts of amazing and then falls apart in book 3 (which is really trash) and then the author made the terrible mistake of creating a bunch of other games in the same universe, with 3 games directly trying to be a sequel to Heroes Rise, only without all the stuff that made book 1 and 2 kinda great, while making all the stuff no one liked to begin with gets magnified, and then 3 more games that read like an acid trip, but not fun, just really, really weird. Heroes Rise is one of the biggest disappointments when it comes to CYOA games.
Samurai of Hyuga - this one starts of great as well, then suddenly the entire premise of the game changes into a really sick disfunctional "romance" story.
fuc.k alliances, punching and releasing the bogus on these bitc.hes its better