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[h1]Overall Rating - Seriously Flawed ★★☆☆☆[/h1]
[h1]First Impressions[/h1]
I downloaded City of Chains (CC) to my laptop a few years ago because I thought it'd be a good game to play through while I was offline, visiting family. When I connected back to the internet, unlike other games where I'd done this before, it didn't recognize my game progress and give me all the achievements I would have earned if I'd been online. That put me off CC for a while, and having realized that was already four years ago now, I figured it was well past time to return and give it another try.
[h1]Gameplay[/h1]
CC might be a turn-based RPG, but the way its overworld is designed, it's the type where it allows players to resolve matters in more than one way. For instance, you can attack a handful of guards in front of you and fight them head-on, or you could use one of your grenades from your inventory and knock them all out. Depending on what skills you develop for your characters, you can also unlock other options, such as disarming a trip mine to sneak behind guards and avoid them altogether. Its features like this that people tend to appreciate in RPGs because it taps into player choice and how they would want to play out the characters. Are they more gung-ho or cautious, ruthless or compassionate, etc.
[h1]Controls[/h1]
The layout of the controls were slightly unusual, which I never quite got used to, but I was able to play the game with my controller. There was the option to play with keyboard controls, and is how CC was designed initially, because the control prompts are shown with those inputs. However, it functioned well enough, though I wouldn't choose to set things up the way they did.
[h1]Story[/h1]
This game takes place in a dystopian, authoritarian setting. Think of any sci-fi, shady government hell hole, and you more or less know what this place is like. In spite of all the amazing technology in place, most people are impoverished and barely able to survive, while strict police forces maintain the status quo through brutal punishments. Between forgetting what took place years ago and not getting very far this time, I can't comment on how the story plays out in the long run. However, I was already seeing obvious stereotypes and possible outcomes. I can't fairly say how the story would have turned out, but I'd be very surprised if it was anything special.
[h1]Visuals[/h1]
Although it might not be so obvious as others, CC was made with RPG Maker. When I realize that, I can see similarities between this and other Steam games I've played. The different graphics style and setting, compared to the several medieval fantasy ones out there, probably helps it not seem as cookie cutter. I think the settings and visuals are sufficient to get the job done, but I wasn't always positive about what background objects could and couldn't be interacted with. It only requires some trial and error to find out, but there's a lack of polish compared to games made independently.
[h1]Sound Design[/h1]
Keeping in mind the somber tone of the setting, the music is well-suited for this atmosphere, though I don't know how strongly they feel like sci-fi tunes. Despite having a pessimistic nature to them, overall the songs sound too simplistic to be that enjoyable. For example, I found the combat music really basic, and it wasn't that pleasant to listen to for very long. Something else that doesn't help combat is the somewhat annoying and unfitting noises from attacks. It just doesn't have the right tone or sound when you strike enemies, and it's a bit grating too. Not a great feature for something you're going to hear quite often.
[h1]Pros[/h1]
🌟 I'd think you would want the resources from completing the side quests, but in theory they're entirely optional.
🌟 The ability to make choices when proceeding was nice. For example, whether to kill a guard or not.
🌟 Being able to save at any time is useful and convenient.
[h1]Cons[/h1]
❌ The developers knew that Steam would use F12 to capture screenshots, but still used that same button input for a function in their game. I don't know why they didn't make an adaptation so it wouldn't disrupt people trying to take pictures of the game.
❌ I can only imagine how careful you'd have to be when playing on the hardest difficulty level. That doesn't seem like something I'd want to mess with.
❌ It's rather generic, and the fights were getting boring, when they weren't hating on a single character.
[h1]Tips[/h1]
🔍 No matter what difficulty you're on, there's no consequence to saving frequently, so you might as well take advantage of it. In case you make a mistake, you'll probably want to alternate save files.
🔍 Even though you might want to unlock passive skills to open up different routes, it's probably best to use some early skill points to increase their stats. They're so weak otherwise.
[h1]Final Thoughts[/h1]
My biggest annoyance with CC was that in spite of playing on the casual difficulty, the amount of damage dealt by enemies could still rapidly deplete the HP of my characters. When each only has 200, with enemy attacks doing as much as 60 damage, they can survive only about 4 attacks each. Adding in how common it is for the same character to suffer multiple attacks and be knocked out because of it, you create situations that aren't fun or challenging, just cheap. Hopefully you saved recently so you can reload, try again, and hope for better dispersal of their attacks.
In the past, I might have had more patience for slogging through this, but if I'm already getting annoyed this early, I'm not going to waste more time forcing myself onward. From what I remember of the game beforehand, it was pretty stereotypical and wasn't blowing me away with anything. If so I wouldn't have waited this many years to come back to it.
[table]
[tr]
[th]PC Specs[/th]
[th]Performance[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Ryzen 2700
RTX 2070
16GB RAM
ADATA SSD
1920x1080
[/td]
[td]The game ran without incident on default settings.
💖 - CC is healthy
[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
