Lunar Ascendant

The plot feels nonsensical and there's almost no feedback from your decisions. The game uses many immature concepts like vague bad guy factions. This is NOT like Suzerain. There's no actual feeling of how the political structure works, either. You're a mayor, yet there's no assembly or council or any kind of legislature. ??? Even a "governor" would have more political systems to work with. I can't even make myself a dictator because there's no politics.

Buy this game if, and only if, you fulfill all of these requirements: [list] [*] You have already played Suzerain. [*] You are a fan of Suzerain aching for more Suzerain-like content. [*] You can stand some typos. [*] You are OK playing a game that feels unfinished, especially in the late game. Sometimes the responses you get don't seem to match the dialogue you chose, and some news reports pop up that seem to totally contradict your earlier decisions. [/list] I checked all these boxes and the game was a moderately enjoyable experience. Lunar Ascendant had potential, but ultimately fell short of my expectations. I look forward to trying the next game the developers bring us. If you have not played Suzerain, play that first instead.

I am genuinely dissapointed by this game. I had great hopes it would be at least somewhat close to Suzeraine, but it fails on so many levels. I've played already the game almost 3 times, trying to just make sense of how the system and choice based consequences work. If for the very first few rounds you can still kinda make sense of it and the balance of resources vs choices is good - you still need to make sacrifices and need to be strategic repending on which route you want to take - by round 4-5 it just goes entirely bonkers. Resources are nowhere near what you'd need to make even the most basic choices, because the cost is extraordinarily inflated. There is no strategy here that can help youregardless of how you might try to gander to one side or the other, even when you go all in. Not to mention there's no way for a middle ground whatsoever. This game has some real potential but unles the dev goes back to the drawing board and makes some pretty hefty patches, this is unforunately a sellout.

There have been seven hotfixes at the time of writing, and the overall quality of the game has greatly improved. No crashes or gamebreaking bugs in my most recent playthrough, but the last four turns need some additional polishing and content; they are noticeably weaker compared to the first few turns and become increasingly linear in presentation. The writing is quite good with several rough spots, especially in the later turns. Not as good as Suzerain, but there is room for improvement. After the devs polish off the game, I would recommend that they add more content to the later turns. More decisions, more conversations and interactions, more of everything, really.

If you were a fan of Suzerain, this one may be for you. While there was a rough release, there have been some consistent fixes over the week. The developers are actively fixing what they can, and are making the experience a better one for the people that have spent money on the game. This may be a turn off for some, but for me, this shows me that they are not letting the game die. I give them a LOT of credit for that.

I wish it were better... even after the hotfixes, bugs are still evident; typos, grammatical errors and dialogue scenes abruptly ending. Quite a far cry from 'Suzerain', a noble attempt in imitation. I applaud the developers for their efforts, and hope the best in future endeavours. I can't help but feel rather frustrated and disappointed that a wonderful idea has fallen quite far from its mark, due to poor execution... Perhaps down the line, Lunar Ascendant will become better... it just doesn't seem believable that you're a 'Mayor', it just seems like a random selection of an individual... nevertheless fingers crossed there's always room for improvement.

Wasted potential. I was very hooked with the game for the first few rounds. The setting of a lunar colony and the premise were very interesting. However, after 4-5 rounds suddenly nothing matters anymore (I'm left with a lot of resources and nothing essential to spend it on) and the game changes from a political sim to some visual novel where all choices are bad and no decision I can take satisfies me, also the choices I made in the beginning don't seem to matter at all. Very frustrating, I quit before the end.

first run took me ~12 hours to complete. overall this game is fun futuristic political simulator with some unexpected twists. Honestly, i did not get the point of 3d map (some sort of hologram on the table?), it simply could be some cool looking 2d sprites with actual buildings (painted, nice looking stuff) and for flying cars it also could be some flying sprites, instead it loads computer with this strange 3d graphics while whole gameplay is basically reading and doing choices. As for negative part, i do not understand stuff like "you and % of other players made this choice" type of thing.. i am not fan of social experiments. So developer, be ready for my 2-3-4-5 playthrough to ruin statistics for your social experiment! in the end, this game is highly recommended for those who want to go through some interesting story with cup of tea doing some choices that matter and affect the final outcome. p.s. Kudos for developer being super responsive, recent addition of FPS limit is highly appreciated!

It's like Suzerain, but boring and badly written. Cheap cash grab.

This games starts promising, with you building up the city spending resources and politicing. Then after turn 5 that game stops making nearly as much sense. Getting completely contradictary reports, not only from conversation to conversation with different people, but within the same conversation. A big dicotomy within the game is relying on Earth or being self sufficient. Which is an interesting concept, but just like every major political back and forth between factions, it is executed poorly. [spoiler] By turn 7, I think, you are able to resolve the riots that are rocking Artimis, and while I will admit I haven't done all three choices to resolve the riots. I chose to side with Ms. Chen and the LIM. I knew the consiquences of the actions, but it didn't just remove my ability to make income from Earth Credits as I thought it would, it just removed all of them. Since I had decided to build a reserve of Earth Credits for something like that to happen, loosing all of them made my run feel entirely ineffective. [/spoiler] I know the Dev is also trying to fix bugs, but they are still everywhere. Text not displaying who is talking correctly(This has only happened twice to me so far.). Pop-up events telling me something that I did or didn't do that just isn't true(Happened at least a dozen times.) As well as the previously mentioned conflicting information. Another issue with the writing is often I don't really understand the motives of some characters. Either I am just missing it, which is entirely possible, or it is poorly presented to the player. Some characters might be purposly obfuscating their believes to manipulate, but specifically [spoiler] Petrov, the Union Leader. I genuinely don't know what he is on about half the time. He gives me warnings of doom and union rising, but it doesn't happen when it seemingly makes sense, like during the riots, or when I do something aginast the interests of the workers, and instead starts on Turn 8 after I get cut off from earth. He is obviously some sort of Earth puppet, but I wish that was explained better in game. [/spoiler] Another story issue I have is the terrorist plots, I just wish they as an entity were better explained earlier in the game. You get hints, but I am not really invested in that story line and then [spoiler] you suddenly get kidnapped and meet their leader, who does basically nothing and then puts you back. I just have no care for that plot as you don't know anything about the terrorists motives before the very end of the game. [/spoiler] I am glad that people are making these political CYOA style games, and I am happy to support people doing it. Yet this game just doesn't do it for me, this isn't Suzerain in quality, but I do believe that it has the potential to be if the Dev keeps pumping out updates like he does. So even if you aren't interested, I wouldn't return the game if I could. I want this guy to keep working on his craft and make this game what I can see it has the potential to be.