Mesmer

I feel I have spent more time with this game than pretty much anyone else. Finishing every NPC mission, burglarizing every building, getting every Blackmail, acquiring every Achievement, and collecting every Crowdhorn. As close to 100% completion as anyone could wish for. All for the purpose of making a video about the game's lore. But the amount of research I have put into this game has not gone to waste, because I also published a series of guides within the Steam community showcasing everything I have found. Now with all of that pedigree out of the way, what do I think of Mesmer? The graphics are fully 3D rendered, bright and colorful. The music, like the rest of Rain's games, is excellent. But those things are superficial. The gameplay is the biggest determining factor in whether someone will like it or not. Mesmer is a unique genre, a social survival game. It is not an action-focused game. Instead, it is a puzzle. In going around town, talking to NPCs, completing their missions, getting hints and clues about what's going on in town, all while managing your resources, it plays a bit like a board game. You are being challenged mentally rather than through action or reflex, though there is a little bit of action that happens at night if you choose to do illegal activities and evade police capture. But because the game challenges the mind, it requires a respective commitment from the player to rise to that challenge and figure out how things work. In that sense, Mesmer is Nintendo Hard in its design and attitude. It does not explain mechanics. It does not hold your hand. It throws you into the pool and leaves you to either sink or swim. Its difficulty is unapologetic. Once you have overcome that difficulty, the city is yours, leaving you fairly open to fully explore and discover the story, which is fragmented into gossip and rumors from character to character and has to be collected by the player and assembled piece by piece before it starts to come together, weave a cohesive narrative, and finally reveal its richness. Most players never reached that point. And once you have seen everything, the content in the game remains static. The same NPCs in the same places offering the same missions and stories. After discovering it all, there is nothing enticing multiple playthroughs. You finished the game. Congratulate yourself and move on. Another aspect that may deter some players is that Mesmer needs a bit of polishing that it will unfortunately never get because of its overall poor sales. As a result there are some small bugs and typos to contend with. The worst of them are a couple of edge cases that can result in softlocks. And of course the game should have been a bit more player-friendly in explaining how its mechanics work and be more clear at times in cluing the player into where to go and what to do. It would have also been nice to have a New Game Plus mode that eliminated the challenging elements and let the player freely roam to get all of the pieces of the story. Overall, I genuinely liked this game for offering something a little different from the boring old game genres we're all used to. If you aren't afraid of the challenge, you might like it too.

This game is amazing.

the concept of this game is amazing. i truly wish it becomes what its potential says it could be. the core mechanic of spinning dials and trying to quickly click them when they're on the right number, plus spending precious resources to increase the odds and not getting those resources back if you fail, feels bad and needs a complete overhaul.

Mesmer is hardly a democracy simulator, rather an exercise in balancing notoriety and security, and using it to topple power in a brief burst of rebellion. It benefits from a simple, straightforward presentation in offering a short, but replayable and enjoyable run that delves more deeply than the initial impression would suggest. It offers a number of systems for players to experiment with, and they play into each other in creating moments of cozy tension.

คอนเท้นน้อยไปนะ เล่นไปนิดหน่อยก็เบื่อแล้ว ไม่อัพเดทอะไรอีก 5/10 ไม่กด dislike

I can't play the game for more than 30 minutes and losing

感觉比较可惜的一款试作。美术仍然很有19世纪末20世纪初欧美工业城市的沉浸感。定位是开放世界+剧情冒险，但是无论是玩法深度还是剧情深度都很浅。似乎只有一种结局，拉拢不同势力最后的结局都是一样，只是描述和cg略有不同。虽然有一些自由支线和次要玩法，但通关玩法其实也只有演讲拉人-》冲国王，势力值/地区只是影响更方便拉到哪些人（纯数值）。游戏没法手动存档，大概是为了让玩家做选择的时候有谨慎感，增加失败成本。但实际体验很差，而且还是可以通过中途退出来回档的。感觉这个设计很失败纯多余。游戏有不少bug，优化也不是很好。 总的来说感觉框架是有潜力去展示一个更有深度的世界和游戏玩法的，但是很可惜，它的体量和玩法深度都很小，简直就像半成品一样。

Interesting mix of mechanics. Like some have feedbacked, you've got to figure out how things work by yourself, not much hand-holding. I've been "horsed" within 2 to 5 days so far. It's not that easy a game, but there're many ways to go about managing quests, so it's fun.

Communist propaganda training simulator. No build up, one-dimensional. Laughable dialogue.

Great game playtested it, found a flying man. Now there isn't a flying man 10/10