Masquerada: Songs and Shadows

Наткнулась на рекламу "Маскерады" в одном из эпизодов первой кампании "Critical Role". Вот бы узнала про неё раньше, потому что она мне очень понравилась! Классный мир, герои с интересным прошлым, несложная механика, которая не отвлекает от сюжета. Состав актёров озвучки! <3 Жаль, что нет продолжения. Я бы с удовольствием узнала больше о богах мира Маскерады, о других странах, кроме Омбре (не только по Кодексу). А главное, я буду скучать по Цицерону, Калдену, Амадее, Васко и Тициане. Очень прониклась судьбами этой компании. Пойду почитаю фанфики и поищу фанарты. Спасибо за отличную историю, ребята.

i played this game once, years ago, and thought it was solid but nothing to write home about. but now that i'm playing it again, i'm finding the game a lot more enjoyable than i remember the voice acting is great, the characters are charismatic, the music is wonderful, and the pacing feels good so far. be sure to read the lore notes, they add so much to the world and the characters that the game won't feel the same if you skip them. the levels are mostly linear, but i honestly prefer that in a story-centric game rather than ruining the pace of the game by looking for things in every alley i come across (or risk missing out on important stuff). there's also no gearing system to worry about; which also means you don't have to spend time looting enemies after every fight, and no inventory/resource management either - once again, helping the pace of the game. combat is good, imo. there are plenty of cool skills to play around with, but air MC felt very limited compared to the other elements. the companion AI is functional but the setup options are quite limited, and they stand in AOEs if you don't manually move them away; there are also no options to auto-pause during combat, but the difficulty is low enough that you can just leave your companions to do whatever they want (even on "hard" difficulty, only a couple of bosses required me to dodge stuff)

I'll give this a positive review but with some caveats. First of all, you have to go in knowing this is more a visual novel with strategic fight elements rather than a roleplaying game; in fact it is so trainlined that I think calling it a roleplaying game would be a massive stretch as you can't but play the role assigned to. So knowing it is a visual novel with some extras, what are those extras like? Unfortunately, not that great but also not terrible. The fighting is simplistic and easy but there is definitely some strategy. You can customize your toons via different masks, inks and engravings however the difference these make is negligible and you could completely ignore these if you wanted. The game was definitely made with love however seems to fall over itself in the final acts as things become less polished. For example: random bits of lore that you need to collect will tell you about some part of the world, however it will be found halfway down a random hallway with no thematic relevance for it being there. Where as earlier in the game lore spots would make sense: it in a library, next to a storyteller, etc. If you go in to it knowing this is a visual novel that will lose its polish a little in the later acts. It can still be quite enjoyable. I'll give it a 7/10 for what it is.

Doesn't feel special, don't like it.

Great story!

As much as I wanted to like this game, the whole journey was more painful than entertaining. Pros: +Art style and animation are good +Voice acting is great +Enemy variety Cons: -Story was convoluted. Dialogue choices were hard to listen too, it's difficult to catch what they are trying to say plus cringy moments. I think the premise was okay but the delivery was so bad that I didn't really care much about the story and just wanted to get it over with -The world is so empty. Lengthy passages with nothing in it. I didn't even bother collecting all the collectibles or read the lore -Skill upgrade system is mediocre. The skills themselves are okay but the upgrade paths feels like they ran out of ideas I was after the gameplay which was average but it didn't feel satisfying. The visuals sometimes interfered with seeing what was going on and the arena especially for the final act was too cramped and didn't feel the glory that it was supposed to be. The main downer was really the writing for this. If you like the gameplay, just skip all dialogue, won't be missing much.

Very linear game, Combat is not great and to top it of, it's woke. Hard pass for me.