I've enjoyed work from Argent Games before, yet despite this seemingly having a far greater budget, it's far, far worse. If you intend to get this despite my review, buy it on itchio, as there is a better value for money there, where you will get both an itchio & steam download, along with both PG and 18+ versions.
In this review I will give a general Overview, Trigger Warnings, Pros, Cons, Bugs, Accessibility, Suggestions and a Conclusion.
[h1]Overview[/h1]
The romantic interests aren't generally very appealing, and the main character is abhorrent.
The setting is a bit confusing, I'm assuming it's in a fantasy land, but seems to be based on multiple past eras in Britain. They mention women wearing corsets and laugh about how they couldn't wear them, despite corsets being something men did regularly wear in the past too. Also misunderstanding that not all corsets were waist training Victorian style corsets.
The writing is a bit dodgy, and it makes them say redundant things like 'Extravagant extravaganza' or 'they're so giant', 'his face was inimitably amusing' and that time both 'felt like hours' but also 'passed in the blink of an eye', which doesn't sound like they make any sense to me.
Having the MC proudly declare they're xenophobic, but not nationalistic because they like the goods from abroad, wasn't a good look and implies the Devs don't know what impact that kind of statement makes. The fact they're not fearful of all things foreign implies their 'xenophobia' is specific to the PEOPLE, which is much more in line with racism. I'm not sure what they mean by nationalist but it's not a defining factor that makes it less racist at all. The messy usage of these words is even worse when combined with the general way of handling foreigners in the game.
The racist MC is surrounded by 'suspicious foreign delegates', who you pretty much never get to see. The only possible POC I've seen are the Tarot reader and the [i]medium white[/i] character described as tanned and eXoTiC. Yikes. Not to mention this [i]egg washed white[/i] man is the most predatory character, not taking no for an answer. You know, that harmful stereotype that's often attributed to darker skin...
So not only does the MC seem racist but the entire story is steeped in not so subtle racist concepts without ever addressing them.
This game is questionable and has been my most conflicted game of the lot I've played by Argent Games, and I'm seriously questioning the fact they have a string of customers suggesting diversity in their future games and them repeatedly ignoring it. Then making a game about a xenophobe looking for the suspicious foreigners to exotify. While I doubted the route of the [i]egg washed man[/i] would combat racist ideologies, I really had hoped it would, and the lack of effort in this regard is discouraging.
[h1]Trigger Warnings[/h1]
*Kidnapping,
*Death/Murder,
*Predatory behaviour implied to be romantic,
*Unaddressed racism/sexism/ableism within characters and general story,
[h1]Pros:[/h1]
+Pretty art and characters,
+Voice Acted,
+Self Voicing for narration - Press V (Explained below in Accessibility),
+Log,
+Achievements,
+18+ and PG version. Purchasing on Itchio will give you the Itchio PG and 18+ copies, + a Steam PG key and a 18+ patch (although it's tricky to apply).
[h1]Cons:[/h1]
-As usual, no diversity in the cast. No brown people, fatter people, or disabled people.
-Racism: 1) [strike]Racist[/strike] [i]xenophobic[/i] main character.
2) The only established foreign character is described as 'tanned' and 'exotic', but is an extremely predatory man who looks the colour of a piece of white bread that spent 2 seconds in an unplugged toaster.
-Ableism: The only character with a condition, is basically disliked FOR having it. Every time his stutter is mentioned, it's to say someone is getting fed up of it, and how it makes them less cute or sympathetic. Stutters are NOT a plague for listeners to suffer and judge. That's gross, and making every character hate their condition seems like a statement of the writers views.
-Sexist: There's only 3 women (+1 girl & 1 disembodied stalkers voice) in this game. The aunt who is called a witch/hag, a servant mother who has no personality, the mischievous delegate. We see the sexism most in the last mentioned, where the MC patronises her, calls her an air headed, assumes she's dating or having sex with every man she's seen with, and who disregards her help because she must only know about fashion... We're here for gay romance not misogyny, shockingly they don't need to go together.
-Most love interests aren't appealing.
-Main Character is obnoxious, rude, and not very bright. It's a strange choice having such a character solve mysteries before everyone else, because he's extremely incapable and the 'hints' hit you over the head and literally spell stuff out and your character is like 'wow thanks for that useful hint. Now I need to go consider how and why water is wet'. It's kinda insulting to the reader to indicate we need this much hand holding and time to figure out the most obvious things being spelt out letter by letter.
*Bad writing. I don't really understand why the writing in this expensive game is so bad, but half the time things written just don't make sense, or they use words they don't seem to actually understand. Everyone has the same quirk of saying 'you know' for no reason, it makes sense for one or two characters but not every single one.
*Accents were really shaky and distracting, eg; a posh accent with T-glottalization. Most of them sounded like an unusual blend of accents; Irish/Cockney, Indian/Scottish for example.
-Self-Voicing option isn't in the Main Menu at all, and the sound was too loud compared to the voice acting and music.
[h1]Bugs:[/h1]
* Voice acting sometimes cuts out part way or weren't read out at all, and there tends to be a delay in speaking sometimes.
[h1]Accessibility:[/h1]
+Self-Voicing option; this is basically a built in screen reader enabled for the menus, choices and narrative text. This seems to be an accessibility feature associated with Ren'Py games.
+Good contrast colour for text and the background, text is a decent size and stable.
+Adaptable sound for each individual main character, and adaption for grouped side characters.
-Epilepsy safe but migraine triggering flashes during fights & panning.
[h1]Suggestion:[/h1]
*More diversity, again, many customers have requested this. Please increase the racial diversity, use different body types, introduce different disabilities/conditions. Normalise the reality of the world; we're not all thin white gay waifs of people, and it's beautiful to have diversity!
*Don't have a characters impairment ONLY mentioned when people are hating them for it.
*Include information in the Menu on the Self-Voicing feature, as I found it on accident!
*Add a sound option for Self-Voicing, as it was too loud compared to the music and characters.
[h1]Conclusion:[/h1]
Argent Games have raw story telling talent and passion, yet despite this being one of their most pricey games, it remains one of their weakest. It introduces interesting heavy subjects and handles them badly, have somewhat varied characters that fail to be developed into anything beyond stereotypes. Blade of Chess ultimately fails to build on previous successes or implement suggestions fans have long been asking for.
The characters seem to represent acceptance of horrible viewpoints and harmful interpersonal behaviours.
It'd be advisable to employ a more diverse pool of proof readers and beta testers, to ensure these kinds of colossal issues are caught early and addressed before release.
Where there is consistent failure to diversify and handle sensitive subjects, it'd be reasonable for readers to believe the harmful viewpoints presented but not addressed, may reflect the Devs actual beliefs.
