Dustborn

The protagonist can hurt people with her voice. That's the whole premise of this game in one sentence, and for the first several hours it works. You're a con artist with a gunshot wound, a stolen package, and a crew of misfits you're smuggling across a fractured, alternate history America where JFK's assassination went differently and a federal police force slowly turned the country authoritarian. Conversations feel like the real game here. You choose calm, or cutting, or you lean on your ability to weaponize language, and every choice quietly reshapes how your crew sees you by the end of the trip. The problem is everything stacked on top of that. Dustborn wants to be an adventure game, a rhythm game, and a beat em up all at once, and the beat em up part in particular just doesn't hold up. Combat is loose and unsatisfying, health regenerates fast enough that failure barely registers, and the game seems to know it, since it asks you upfront whether you'd like less of it. I wish I'd said yes. It's also a game that wears its politics loudly, and whether that lands for you will probably depend a lot on what you walked in expecting. When it's specific, showing you a person radicalized by disinformation rather than just naming the concept, it's genuinely moving. When it isn't, the dialogue can feel like it's explaining its own themes to you instead of trusting you to notice them. I liked the people in this story more than I liked playing as them. 19 hours is a lot to ask when a third of that time is spent in systems that don't pull their weight.

This game is a mess. It's a genre mashup and it doesn't really do anything well. I can't really get behind any of the characters as they are all pretty unlikeable.

A conspiracy between EU and Norway helped funding this game which was a drop filling the barrel to the brim same as the denied Peace Nobel. We must credit the peace loving stable genius for his superhuman restraint in not insta-nuking Norway at least for the time being. It didn't stop so-called critics who obviously haven't played the game from review bombing though. It's no masterpiece and a bit rushed near the end but I enjoyed my time with the game as I wasn't triggered by controversial content. A steal for the low price it's constantly on offer.

So, where do I even start? If we manage to put aside the forced inclusivity - constant lines like ‘you’re free to be whoever you are,’ ‘choose your pronouns,’ ‘your appearance doesn’t define you,’ and similar messages that flood you from the prologue onward - the game is actually very enjoyable from a narrative standpoint, at least until Chapter 7. There’s a HUGE mystery, unanswered questions that genuinely pull you in, the identity of the missing girl, the origin of the Vox, the heist plan, the betrayal… all the ingredients for a great story are there. Then, suddenly, the abyss. Everything collapses into a messy pile of random ideas, and the game turns into nothing but combat - repetitive, poorly designed combat - which ramps up dramatically toward the end instead of easing off. You’re hit with a barrage of explanations that make no sense, decisions made simply because the script says so, weak and predictable twists. Honestly, despite what people call ‘woke,’ I would have recommended it up to well past the halfway point. But I really can’t. The last three chapters were extremely stressful to play through, and watching what unfolded without suffering was impossible (And not in the sense that it’s hard to digest or emotionally overwhelming, no, nothing like that!!! The explanations are practically nonexistent, the story couldn’t be more predictable, and instead of building up any emotional weight toward the finale, it somehow manages to completely shut you down. Disappointment everywhere). Not recommended. You can decide for yourselves why.

I really loved this game. I don't know how to describe it but it just felt important to me to experience a game that was beautiful to look at and entertaining. The combat was nothing to give a million awards to, but it didn't need to be. The game is all about words, communication, conversation. And you get that with every second of the game. Whether you're reflecting with your own thoughts or you're bantering with the teammates mid-combat. The characters were all extremely interesting and had me hooked from the start. The voice actors did a fantastic job, and everyone had such a distinct and recognizable look. The writing of each character was great, and I found the system of how they develop a bit confusing but still engrossing. I get that a lot of people hate on this game for any number of reasons ranging from it not being a triple A title to it being too diverse and progressive, but it felt important to me and my life. Seeing a character be subtly shown as Muslim just by catching them praying, to finding a character with a prosthetic limb, it felt like there was something that represented the people I know in my life. Sure, we aren't one-for-one comparisons, but just to have that level of familiarity helped me care so much more.

Coming fresh off of a first playthrough: WOW! What a tragically underrated gem of an adventure game! Although I can see how the game's own promotional material works against attracting the kind of players who would appreciate it the most. The impression I got from the trailers, and even from the demo that I played a long time ago, was that of a somewhat zany rhythm-game+brawler+zeitgeisty (to avoid the dreaded w-word) political allegory, with a bit of Road 96-style choose-your-own-adventure thrown in. What it actually is however, is a huge, lavish adventure game in the vein of Life is Strange 2, structured, like Life is Strange 2, by a big road trip across a fictional (post-)U.S.A., and a cast of characters both with and without powers (of the genre comicbook kind), with SO much great voice acting, and one of the best written and least predictable video game stories I have ever come across. Anyone who [b]enjoys[/b]: * Life is Strange 2 * A road-trip / road-movie style plot and structure * Dystopic alternate-history SciFi * People-with-powers (but not outright superheroes) and a comicbook aesthetic to match * Dialogue that is quippy one moment and serious the next * Collectible-hunting * Choice-driven character development (both for the protagonist and the other main characters of story) as the main objective of the game * A big, meaty adventure you can easily spend 20 hours on AND get meaningful repeat playthroughs out of and who can [b]tolerate[/b]: * Non-optional not-that-great rhythm game bits * (Entirely skipable) realtime third person brawling combat that tries to do interesting things, but ends up being pretty janky * occasionally reloading a save game after soft-locking the game by pushing buttons too quickly should not sleep on this. A new all-time favorite of mine. [b]9/10[/b]

Had this one in my library for some time and decided Pride Month was the perfect time to play. It's...not the greatest game in the world, but it's a solid 6/10 in my opinion. [h2]Characters[/h2] Okay, so the game feels like a kind of "who's who" of representation, which makes it feel less authentic. I'm all for positive representation in games, and it's part of the reason I picked the game up, but it feels a little forced here where they try and cram as much representation in as possible, but only in members of your crew and not in any of the antagonists. I get what they're going for, but I'd prefer things were more authentic. That said, all the characters are well done. Pax starts out as a problematic character but you can see her grow through the game. The rest of the characters are more immediately lovable, which makes it feel a little bad when you have to give them bad answers with Pax, but they absolutely carry the game. [h2]Story / Worldbuilding[/h2] Another mixed-bag. I feel like there was way more of the story that could/should have been told, like all the interesting stuff will have either happened before or after the road trip our characters are on. But the part we do get to experience with them was still interesting and kept me going. Again a large part of it being good was the interactions between the characters which kept me wanting more. I do think the world they set up could have been explored a bit more, and there's a lot of concepts/history that feel quite unexplained. We're expected to just accept the Puritans or Justice are bad guys without us really knowing why or what they've done. I do think the concepts of the powers are interesting, and seeing them ostracised and feared like the X-Men makes sense in-universe. Overall very interesting world and story, but felt quite under utilised and like I really wanted to learn more. [h2]Gameplay / Bugs[/h2] So the game plays like a Quantic Dream or Telltale game where you're mostly just walking around chatting, picking dialogue options, with the occasional QTE. That gameplay style isn't for everyone, but if you enjoy those style of games it's what you expect. There is combat on the game, which is kind of...floaty and not the best, but it can be skipped if you get frustrated with the poor controls, which is nice (I generally enjoy combat in games, but didn't like the feel of the combat here and skipped it). I did come across the same bug a number of times where if you do things too fast, you get stuck and can't move, or even open the menu to quit and have to fully close the game and go back in. It didn't happen often, but it was annoying. [h2]Steam Deck[/h2] Game played perfectly and looked good on the Deck. The only issue was the hanging above, but otherwise it was a nice game to flop down on the sofa and play/read.

The story is very good, the art very pretty, the pace of the game is good. The mechanics are unusual but very satisfying.

I don't get the hate. The game takes some time to get started. Maybe the dialog is a bit on the nose, but the gameplay is nice, the story is unique. They could've dropped a gameplay element to streamline the whole experience.

很可惜，明明是一款非常優秀的作品， 甚至可以說把選擇導向遊戲推向了一個新的高度。 (絕對沒有加油添醋，能夠做到這麼細緻的遊戲還真的不多) 但在如今的輿論環境下，只要被貼上 DEI 的標籤，就很容易遭到大量批評， 連遊戲本身的優點也因此被忽略。 令人感到非常惋惜。