A Crown of Sorcery and Steel

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, there's clearly a ton of work that's been put into this game. But on the other hand there's too much dumb stuff that happens for me to recommend it. SPOILERS BELOW I played as a spy for the queen, so maybe other playthroughs will not have the same issues, but the game makes you essentially play a schizophrenic who is sabotaging for the queen but then turns around and works against her randomly and without any way to avoid it. I tried to steal the ancient scrolls so I could give them to the queen and was forced with no way to avoid it of giving it to the resistance. Then, during the battle, after totally sabotaging the war efforts in every way, they needed someone to be the channel to destroy the colossus, so I obviously volunteered so that their last ditch efforts would fail as I would simply go over to the queen's side. Instead, your character goes through with it and destroys the queen's army. Some of the sabotage you do is also absurdly overt. During the battle I walked up to the soldiers and displayed my allegiance to the queen and told them where to find a weakness in the ranks. They bow to me, in front of everyone, and the leave my unit alone. Yet somehow none of the soldiers understand what happened, and when I get confronted about it by a party member you seriously say "yeah I waved something in their face and they got confused and left me alone" and they actually buy it lol Other parts of the story just make no sense. For example, at one point you're helping another character retake their throne, and two of your party members literally dip and try to steal a relic instead of helping him. Like... huh? I thought the whole point was to put him on the throne so that he would use his army to save the realm? And instead they're just going to ditch their friend and try to steal from his palace?? Oh, and the whole romance with the queen was shallow. She's not given any personality at all when she talks to you. You flirt with her a total of one time and she starts acting completely infatuated. It came across as tacked on.

I've been waiting for this one ever since it's been announced, I love fantasy, I love casts of various characters, I love choices. What I don't love is most of this game. For my first playthrough, I was so disappointed I almost set out to write my most bitter review. But I pushed myself to replay it as to see the replayability value. My second and third playthrough were actually more enjoyable than the first, but only because I didn't have to reread all of the previous text. I have a lot of things to talk about. [b]Writing and story :[/b] • Some repetitions, not a very elaborate writing style, big blocks of sentences. It's not a hard read, not a very good one either. • Railroading, one of the bane of choiced based rpgs and stories. You can't decide what you want or don't want to do, you can only choose how you want to react to it (and the choices are a bit bland and simple). • A story with three main choices when having to act : black, white or nothing. Very binary choices, uninteresting most of the time. • The events are throwing themselves at you without any regard to logic, timing and meaning. They're irrelevant to the story, as well as quite ridiculous and forced. You don't have to always be in a setting of action and urgency to keep a reader hooked. Times out are good, calm is good. • Replayabililty. Eh, I guess it's ok. [b]Characters and interactions :[/b] • At first, I quite disliked the companions of our party. They irked me, some were just so annoying I would have liked to have them gone. I enjoyed them more during my following playthroughs but they're nothing amazing. Kinda cliché, bit boring. • Now the real issue, the interactions with the characters, especially our party. They argue ALL THE TIME and you are forced to take part in their squabbles. You side with one, the other is angry with you and vice versa. Even if you choose not to meddle, they are unhappy. It's truly infuriating to have someone get mad at you everytime you make a choice in this game (most of the events are about one of the main characters, so you'll always have someone dissatisfied). • Don't get me started with the queen, the villain of the story. Bad, personality so cliché and empty it doesn't even make me want to side with her. It's a bore. [b]Other :[/b] • The writer included portraits of some NPCs, with a wildly different artstyle from the thumbnail. My opinion on that doesn't really matter for this review but I just don't like it. It's a very caricatural style and not my cup of tea. • Very minor spoiler : one of the character belongs to an order with restrictive rules. One of them is that jewelry is prohibited, yet on her portrait, she wears a pair of gold earrings. I find that to be a clumsy little mistake, nothing impactful. In the end, I was almost ready to give a neutral-positive review, but as I thought of my first read, I couldn't go with it. So this is a neutral-negative review. Yes, I liked it in the end, but it's still a bad work to me.

This is just a no, for me anyways. There is no story here, its just a railroaded action adventure, and not a terribly interesting one at that. If you like "games" maybe this might interest you. If you want a story, with interesting characters and a reason to care about the MC your playing as, look else where.

Was really excited for this game as i played the demo, and had high hopes. But I just keep getting errors. I hoped the first one was just a fluke... but as it happened again and the game is just "stuck", it just seems it needs to be polished more. Keep getting "chapter2 line 158: Not a number: True" as soon as i restart the game, and can't click anything other than the cross to shut down the game. Think it needs more time to work out its kinks, so for now I cannot recommend.

I've only done one playthrough and I have to agree that there were a lot of frustrating aspects about the game. It kind of plays itself as a DND campaign and that's what I was expecting anyway. But the party is a mess and the conflicts are annoying. If this was a DND campaign it'd probably be pretty fun but that's because the player characters would be able to deal with things in their own way and solve their own conflicts between each other or at least make it more interesting than a "me or them" situation. Everything feels really chunky and segmented in a bad way. Each character has their own plot going on. Again, which would play out better in an actual campaign, but it's hard to get through in an interactive fiction format. In a story where you end up being the main hero/villain it sure doesn't feel like it when the NPCs have their own main character moments happening constantly. [spoiler] I HATED the elf. Having her nag you around every corner was infuriating and I'm kind of mad I couldn't just swing at her. I know it's to each their own and I try to give the character's a chance but she grated every single one of my nerves with her holier than thou attitude and valuing knowledge over the lives of the living. And she's super bitter to everyone in the party. Even the human who I assume is there the poly triangle happens with? It's just a rocky road all around. Also the way that everyone is unpleasant from the start aside from the leader is also annoying since with all the conflict that happens makes it seem unrealistic that we'd eventually be a cohesive adventuring party. [/spoiler] I also agree that the portraits in game being different to the art in the thumbnail is extremely jarring. I wish there was a toggle button for that.

Think Dragon Age Origin, but in IF format and without the DarkSpawn drooling at every encounter. I loved this game! You get to play as 4 races (Human, elve, Dwarf, Orc), and choose your path as well as choose your allegiance and who to side with. Should the past be fixed? you get to decide. Should some rules be broken? Fine, go ahead. Should something be respected? Only you can decide and assume the consequences. It's beautifully done, it's long and the companions and characters are endearing. Loved it. Would recommand, especially at that price! It's truly a work of Love and dedication!

I'm not good at writing reviews. So i'll just list what i liked. The story is nice. Seems to have quite a bit of reactivity to decisions. From screwing people over to help the villain to actually helping the party. Entertaining cast of characters that are well written and react to choices. The ending i got was satisfying enough. Ties up loose end rather well. Most importantly the villain calls main character "my pet" and that just adorable. Only gripe i have is with the portraits, i would have preferred if they were in the same style as the background picture. I reckon my playthrough was around 7-8h long.

I enjoyed this game after I tried a few paths and realized something. One, although the game SEEMS to pressure you into solving all the factions problems each game, you are rewarded by concentrating on completing your faction story first. Each "Faction" equals the various races in the game: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc. Those are the groups rebelling against Nidana. I noticed that the "thumbs down" votes that I saw chose to be a "double agent" for Nidana. That would be a complex situation to say the least. Anyway I chose the Elf faction as I am a straight guy and those options are limited in this game in the need to be "inclusive" of other types of romance. You CAN SKIP romance if you choose which would make all factions playable to me imo. Anyway, I played using the "tabletop RPG" mechanic turned on which tells you how your decisions will be viewed by others in the game, which makes it much easier to stick to your chosen Path or romance. While not "adult content" the romance scenes are better than most standard games on Steam imo.

I support women's wrongs

I completed this just a month ago and literally don't remember a single event, character, or detail, so... that probably says something.