Lords of Infinity

When Wars of Infinity?? Paul Wang is a great writer but at this point I'll die of old age before the series is complete.

DRAGOONS DRAGOONS THE QUEEN'S DRAGOONS!

Reviewing (mostly) every game (or DLC) in my library, part 450: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (10/10) Woof. If I wasn’t a mega fan of Paul Wang’s work before, now I am.[i] Lords of Infinity[/i] is a monster of ambition, an epic, sprawling saga that blends deep political intrigue, moral complexity, and the relentless weight of legacy into one of the most ambitious text-based experiences I’ve played. Actually, one of the most ambitious games, period. This is the third book in the [i]Infinity[/i] series, and it is a step up from the two previous books in so many ways. You were once a soldier, once an officer, and now you’re a lord! A lord of a rather small barony, sure, but a lord nonetheless. Of course, you can’t spend your time happily cultivating your land; a bitter political battle between two factions is spoken about every day. Your prize for surviving two wars is, essentially, responsibility. And the moment you think you’ll get to quietly fix your roof and plant potatoes, the political powder keg in the capital drags you straight into the heart of history. Not to mention there’s a rather large empire with their eyes on your little nation. You have the power to change history. What will you do? [b][h2]Pros:[/h2][/b] ✅ Writing. Again, Wang’s writing is terrific. In Sabres and Guns of Infinity, the prose often felt clipped, almost militaristic—short, precise sentences that mirrored the mindset of a soldier or officer under constant pressure. There was a steady, sullen tone, perfectly suited to the battlefield and rigid hierarchies. I did like it! In Lords of Infinity, that changes dramatically. The prose becomes elegant, almost literary, without losing the sharpness and clarity that defined the earlier games. Not only does he manage to track your idealism or ruthlessness, but both flavor traits have just beautiful monologues or lines on power, or honor, or duty. ✅ Choices that actually matter. Gosh. Your choices will literally make or break a nation. You can side with an upstart Duke trying to reform the kingdom or the young Queen, the first female ruler. And if you side with one side, you can also act as a spy and betray them. The text always reacts to your choices, big or small. You can even decide which club to join in your free time, or what skills to improve, which leads to great replay value. ✅ Moral complexity. It’s hard to make two sides equally viable, but here, I agonized over my choices. Of course, it’s easy to put a modern persona and side with the Duke and his reforms. He’s a charming, charismatic figure, more so than the Queen (though I love her too). But you are allowed to have an opinion about each side. Just because you side with the Duke or Queen doesn’t mean you have to agree with them. Each side has its pros and cons. You can fight for justice and still commit atrocities, or uphold the system only to realize how rotten it is. Even a “good choice” forces you to live with the fallout of your ambition, compassion, or cowardice. You just have to do the best you can. ✅ Worldbuilding. There’s a timeline history, maps, and character indexes in the Stats Sheet. And in-game, there’s more on society’s view on baneless and women, a lot of political and economic talk, etc. You actually feel like a lord living in this universe, trying to survive. One of my favorite scenes is where you’re dining with royalty, an ambassador, some fancy generals, and two fantastic female romance options. You get a chance to express your feelings about women being soldiers—and my answers had the table of men howling and pounding the table. Excellent stuff! ✅ Length. Plenty of bang for your buck! ✅ More romance! There’s more romance scenes, including a path to agree (or not!) to an arranged marriage, if you’re on the Estate path. You can even choose to have a romance with a man (though it’s not very long). It’s still a slow burn for Katerina and Welles, but for Welles, you can confess, at least. Katerina pls I love you… ✅ New gameplay mechanic: house debt/estate management. This builds off the debt mechanic from the last book. If you choose the Estate path, you’ll have to balance your expenses, estate upgrades, tenant loyalty, tenant contentment, and tenant rent. Every choice about what to repair, improve, or maintain on your estate affects your finances. Overspending can leave you vulnerable to crises, while underspending risks tenant discontent or reduced productivity. If you ignore your tenants, their dissatisfaction can snowball into political or economic problems. Conversely, attentive management can earn their loyalty, creating a foundation of stability and power. It’s super cool. [b][h2]Mixed:[/h2][/b] 🟨 Quite heavy, in tone and in content. I swear, [i]Sabres[/i] and [i]Guns[/i] weren’t this dark, were they? I found the two previous entries to be brisk, gripping readers. While Infinity is also as gripping, there’s a lot to unpack in this bad boy. There’s a lot of worldbuilding, a lot of grey area, and a lot of “well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of my actions.” On my first readthrough, I struggled to understand exactly wtf was going on politically, so this is probably not the best entry for someone just reading for fun. [b][h2]Cons:[/h2][/b] 🟥 Too much branching? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I feel like there’s too much branching. My biggest quibble is choosing between managing your estate or going to the city. To me, it was pretty much a given you should go to the city: all the political threads are there, all the important characters are there, you can get wealthy there, etc. But you’ll be missing out on quite a lot of the estate management content, and vice versa. I don’t see why we couldn’t spend summers at the estate or something. I’m a person who only plays through games once, maybe twice, so my reaction to all the estate content I missed was “bummer, wish I could’ve seen it all in one go.” 🟥 While the ideals of either the Royalist or Wulframite path were solid, I feel like the narrative leans slightly toward being a Royalist. I say this because both the main romance options are staunch Royalists, the Queen is more interesting than the Duke, and a vast majority of the cast, I believe, are Royalists as well. The Duke’s side doesn’t really get any cool characters to prop him up. 🟥 I feel like stat checks were much tougher than in past entries. 🟥 Super slow burn romance. I’m going to be so real, half the reason I’m so invested is because I’m waiting for my marriage and children to Katarina. Even though romance is not a main part of the story, there’s just a lot of longingly gazing into each other’s eyes. I NEED a domestic happy ending ASAP. 🟥 I’ve been waiting for [i]The Winds of Winter[/i] for years. I don’t want to wait for the Infinity series to be finished for years either :( [hr] If you enjoyed this review, please check out my curator page to find more: [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45814768-Verdict-Play-or-Pass/]Verdict: Play or Pass. [/url] Also, please leave a like and visit [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Indie_Gems]IndieGems[/url] and our YouTube channel for more reviews like this one. [/hr]

Simply the best interactive novel series I have ever read. From Sabres to Lords the writing was brilliant. If you enjoyed it, please consider supporting the author on patreon - cataphrak/Paul Wang

its a perfect series. start with sabres for sure but each entry is better than the next and lords is a triumph. i understand that a text based game (borderline choose your own adventure book) is different than AAA monstrosities, but everything bioware does wrong in their writing, world building and choice tracking, the infinite sea does right. if you think you can't deal with the text based aspect, thats fair, but id still give it a try. the writing is good enough that it stands alone.

The lack of the next book saddens me ):

This series has been a lot of fun so much so that I am devastated by the time frame I will have to wait for a sequel.

all cavalrymen are bastards

It is a wonderful day in a crumbling monarchy and you are a horrible cavalry officer.

I would like to say that I enjoyed my attempt to get through to the end of this highly anticipated instalment, but as other non-recommenders have highlighted, it doesn't seem to be worth the hassle - which is sad for both wanting to get this far and for my wallet. What I originally liked about the first game is that, although had the constraints of building both characters and its world, it felt a lot less punishing and restrictive in what its story had in mind. Although I didn't enjoy the somewhat anti-climatic ending, it at least lent itself well to carry on the second game (or so I thought). Somehow, even though we can choose two differing paths in this one (and slide over to the other if we prefer - but not be allowed to go back to the other place from what I've seen), this story is more tedious than I would have expected. Unfortunately, the majority of decisions don't feel respected at all in both the time it takes to read the outcomes of them and what I envisaged when I selected/reacted to a choice/situation. I think I'm just got a little impatient, but even if I used more time on this game I don't think I would've said I enjoyed it anymore. It's one thing to say, look, you'll have a better time having made certain stat choices in the first game and specific choices thereafter in that and the second game to fully enjoy the third game. But, even with having chosen 'sub-optimal' 'choices' in the past, it is really dreary to have the same negging text of "you choose something and it worked... until it didn't because of this next situation... and actually you chose poorly because he's another bad consequence/event." I don't know if that's actually every single path in the game that is written this way (in which case the writing's presentation is not for me) or because actually there's only one optimal path and personality that can feel like they're 'winning' or enjoying themselves in the story. Either way, it wasn't good I was asking myself repeatedly throughout playing "am I really enjoying this?" and "can I be bothered continuing the story further?" when it seemed like almost every decision since the last game felt like there were no good choices to be picked. It sucks that almost everybody written in at this stage expects the world of the main character not to stuff up and yet, themselves, have no real agency to not be a jerk or so ungraceful in their interactions with their environment and the reader. Maybe that's part of world-building and having a more politically-charged story, but I think we are asked too much for too little in return with the way the options are presented. I felt the concept of managing a fiefdom fell flat as it seems no matter how generous you are, the renters are always leaving more than they come or stay (never-mind the bandit problem didn't actually end well, but somehow we moved past that?). Switching to the city... well, kind of made me wish I knew what I was getting into from the beginning of the series if I knew how things were going to turn out going down that path. From a technical standpoint, although I enjoyed not encountering a game-killer chapter that I couldn't force myself past (as all the options led to death during the first battle of the last game, so I had to restart from the beginning), I did find it frustrating that there's no indication based on stats whether a choice will succeed or not. It might be a departure from the series and a lot of these games from this publisher, but maybe it would add to the enjoyment of having more information before blindly selecting an option that you don't actually want. OR, if that's too hard for future instalments, put more options in that either clarify/explain/double check because I do not enjoy accidentally committing to something that I otherwise did not want to select. Haphazardly selecting feifdom upgrades without meaning to was very off-putting, and I'm not replaying the chapter because I made that minor of a mistake in selecting something accidentally because, frankly, I'm not convinced the options would lead anywhere that great anyway the way things were going. I know this is also a text novel with limited pictures, but it would have been nice to have fleshed out the world with some more pictures. This volume tried to do so more than the other two, but it got tiring trying to keep up with how everything looked in my head while recalling characters, places, etc.. At some point it just got old trying to keep the story straight in my mind. I originally wrote something about language standisation, but the developer can make that choice for word spelling however they like. Unfortunately, I will probably not be revisiting this game to finish it or future installments because, again, it just felt more like a ungrateful chore to get through, despite whatever eventual payout there may be from further playthroughs. Feels bad I didn't catch that feeling from the first game and I'm pretty certain that I'm done with this style of game, probably forever. Whoever made or makes comparisons to Suzerain with this series needs to make a donation to a charity... or get their head checked because I felt there was [i]extremely, EXTREMELY[/i] little crossover enjoyment to be had - coming from a huge fan of Suzerain. If you enjoy it, more power to you. But it's not my cup of tea.