Crisis: The Third Way

Crisis: The Third Way is a political visual novel set in a world that has already gone through World War III. I play as Yevgeny Krylov, a junior sergeant in the Special Order Control Service in the Ural Republic, and a lot of the story is about deciding what kind of future I want for the country. The setting takes place in 2034, with the European Economic Cooperation and Communist China competing for influence while the Ural Republic gets caught between them. I like that the story puts me in the position of an ordinary person instead of making me some all powerful leader. The choices are the main reason I kept going. I have to decide whether to support Europe, move closer to China or try to find another path, and the game has 10 different endings. That makes my decisions feel more important than in a visual novel where I am mostly picking dialogue just to see a slightly different conversation. I can actually push the story in different directions and see how the situation changes. The idea of having to deal with huge political problems while only being a small part of the system is something I think the game handles well. I also like how much effort has gone into the presentation. There are around 1,000 different backgrounds, and they give the story a lot of different places and situations to work with. The artwork has a strange mix of realistic and hand drawn elements that fits the alternate history setting really well. It does not look like a standard polished visual novel, and I think that actually helps because it gives the game a slightly rough and uncomfortable atmosphere that suits a world recovering from a massive war. The original music adds to that feeling without being too distracting. The biggest issue for me is the language barrier. The game currently supports Russian, while English and Chinese localisation are still being developed. That is a huge problem for me because this is almost entirely about reading and understanding the story. I can appreciate the ideas and setting, but having to rely on a language I may not fully understand makes it much harder to get the most out of the choices. I also think some parts of the political writing can feel very direct, and the game does not always leave much room for subtlety when it is making its point. There is also not a huge amount of traditional gameplay outside the story. I can make decisions, follow events and deal with some point and click style interactions, but most of my time is spent reading and choosing what Yevgeny does next. That is fine for me when the writing is keeping me interested, but it means the game lives or dies on its story. The 10 endings do give me a reason to replay it, although going through some of the same scenes again can feel slow when I am mainly interested in seeing what changes later. I do think the free price helps a lot. I am getting the full story without having to pay for it, and there are no complicated systems getting in the way of the main idea. What I like most is that the game is willing to take a fairly serious political setting and put it into a small personal story. Yevgeny is not deciding the fate of the entire world by himself. He is just one person caught in something much bigger, and that makes some of the choices feel more believable. Overall, Crisis: The Third Way is an interesting visual novel with a setting that I think is much more ambitious than its simple presentation suggests. I like the political choices, alternate history setting, large number of backgrounds and 10 different endings, and I especially like that I am seeing the conflict through an ordinary character. The lack of English support is the biggest thing holding it back for me right now, and the limited gameplay means I need to be genuinely interested in the story to get much from it. Still, there is enough here for me to appreciate what it is trying to do, and the branching story gives it more replay value than I expected from such a straightforward visual novel. Rating: 7.5/10