Paradigm City

Paradigm City is well-written. It has a compelling story, a cast of complex characters with deep and sympathetic motivations. It would make for an amazing novella, visual novel, kinetic novel, or piece of interactive fiction. Paradigm City does not, however, work well as a CYOA, ChoiceScript game. Allow me to elaborate. Fair warning, spoilers ahead. ChoiceScript games, at their best, are about player agency. When you make a choice, it affects the story, and it does so in a meaningful, long-lasting way. It can completely change the outcome of a chapter, or of the whole game. It can mean the death of one character or the survival of another. It can mean choosing one route or going down an entirely different path. Paradigm City's choices offer little to no player agency. At best, your choice results in a romance option or an additional scene (but not one where you can change what ultimately happens with the plot). At worst, your choice results in a few changed lines of dialogue that don't have any significant impact on what happens next. You will always join SOLAR. Blueshift and company will always be ambushed on their way back from the club, Ada will always be injured, but they'll always survive. The attack on the precinct will always happen, Aegis will always be turned comatose, and you'll always be promoted to team leader. Courser will always be the traitor, and you will always fight him; whether you arrest him or kill him, he essentially disappears from the story. But hey, at least it changed a completely inconsequential morality meter, right? Sentinel will always be the leader of the conspiracy, and you will always fight her. No, you are not given a choice to join her, to sympathize with her motivations and her goals; you MUST fight her, because that is what the story demands. Let's move on and talk a little bit about the stat points the game gives you. There's four of them: 1. Brawn 2. Bravado 3. Brains 4. Power I could go into more about what these mean, but that'd be pointless. Their only purpose is to allow you to handle these mandatory, rail-roaded scenarios in one of four different ways. None of these ways affect the outcome of the scenario, mind you. If you win using brawn, it's the exact same outcome as winning using bravado, as winning using brains, or as winning using power. None of these stats offer you opportunities as to *what* you can do, they only offer you opportunities as to *how* you can do what the game has already determined that you *will* do. Oh, and those relationship scores? Yeah, don't worry about those, unless you care about romance options. No matter your relationship with Courser, you can never talk him down. No matter your relationship with Sentinel, you can never talk her down, either. No matter how bad your relationship with Blueshift is, he'll always trust you, in the end. All of those relationship scores are *virtually* pointless. Again, allow me to say that I think that Paradigm City is *very* well written. But as a game - as a ChoiceScript game, as a CYOA game - it fails on the critical point of offering the player meaningful agency, and that's why I can't recommend it. I do encourage James Rhoden to write regular fiction, though - I think he would be very successful at it.

really enjoyed this one. It gives you a good sense of Trying to be a super hero, slowly walking you through the still all to human strengths and weaknesses of the would be heroes and villians alike..., while still giving you a couple of minutes to still be totally badass and make a difference when it matters. Oh and showing you of course how even when everything goes as good as possible it can still all be for naught. So hopefully that makes you a bit curious without spoilering anything = ) Honestly probably the best super hero CYOA game ive played yet. It felt believable

This was a very solid entry into the Choice of Games library. I enjoyed the writing, everything was logical and there were minimal artefacts. Managed to play through it twice in about 12 hours (second time much faster) and while there are still significant branches left of the story left to explore I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. Worth a buy.

I sat down and burned through it in about three hours, but it was extremely enjoyable and i wanna run through and get the other achevements

Para no poner spoilers: de todo lo que el juego promete en el anuncio y en la primera parte de la historia, no se cumple prácticamente nada. No se desenreda la conspiración, los finales son similares y no hay manera de "ganarlo". Se siente incompleto; termina en suspenso. To avoid spoilers: Of all the promises in the advertisement and the first arc of the game, it delivers close to none. The conspiracy is never unveiled; endings are quite similar and there's no way to "win" it. Feels like an incomplete work of fiction, ends on a cliffhanger.

注意此游戏难度有点高，不但有数值要求而且需要根据队友的性格和能力来安排合适的位置不然就直接失败

So-so.

Clean. The story is good. Every plot end has an ending, the story know where to go. More story like this is needed. [ Embedded in this commentary that the author did a good job. I have spoken.]