PARKSIDE: DECAYED SOUL MANIPULATION

Fun gameplay with plenty of tools at your disposal. Many missions have got different ways to go about completing them for replayability.

The game is Deus Ex with worse graphics, sound design, music, guns, animations. Everything about this game but the level design, and some animations are ripped straight from the 90s, but occasionally has some chugging loading in levels likely due to some extremely poor coding. An unfavorable comparison with one of the best games of all time should still be taken as a glowing endorsement. The story is good, the gameplay is excellent. The progression actually is a bit better than Deus Ex with some cool powers, and the game's difficulty is well balanced. The lack of an exit save, or saves alltogether is a bit of a nuisance, and either only two objectives in the game have an objective marker randomly, or the objective system just flat out didn't work for almost the entirety of my playthrough.

LOVELY

I want to love this game because it is an immersive sim and is basically like cruelty squad meets deus ex (the original). The issue is that immersive sims rely on consequence and interaction with the world to build immersion. The game mechanics actively punish you for exploring with things (AI suddenly goes gun blazing if you pick up the wrong cigarettes, the "save" system doesn't save the world state it just teleports you back to that section of the level when you die). The worse thing though is that if you go guns blazing then the game is simply too easy with the base gun time upgrade. The player needs consequences to incentivize exploring the world. That all being said, the game is still fun (the most important thing) and extremely impressive for a (solo dev?) project.

[h1]General Impressions[/h1] Parkside Decayed Soul Manipulation takes a stab at the immersive RPGs while relying Deus Ex formula, but it doesn't quite scratch that immersive RPG itch I was looking for. As of this review, I would prefer to wait and see what this had to offer instead of buying it outright. The demo certainly showed a lot of promise, but after buying the full version and discovering how similar it was to the demo, [b]like any other steam review, it's.. complicated. [/b] If you have multiple playthroughs of Deus Ex under your toolbelt, Parkside might actually be a great recommendation for you. There's not a lot of extraneous pathing, hacking has been simplified to using keypads/lockpicks and there's additional side quests in each playable map. The control scheme even matches very similarly to that of augmentations, with a couple of other convenient hotkeys to access them. There's also fair amount of jank. I think what struck me the hardest thus far is how saves are being handled, which is to say that [b]Parkside as of right now utilizes the coin-operated format of saves[/b]. The group that you automatically side with provides you an estus flask that you can only use in certain locations to act as a second life, but not necessarily a second chance with the same supplies. Once that estus flask is gone, you'll need to start over. What this means for the player is that you would need to have the foresight that you'll be screwing up some time in the near future, or to practice well enough to not need a save. There may be some that enjoy that level of difficulty in the sprint to the finish, but with the exception of those that traded the hours for the approach, I prefer cheesing in whatever way I can, and if that means I'll be going through the same path in the first mission to minmax my experience points, that will be how I end up playing the game and with all due opportunity costs, suffer from playing. I enjoyed playing DX:HR and DX:MD, but Deus Ex (2000) was slightly outside my range of games when I was younger. In taking off the metallic black shades, Parkside has a lot of systems that are available, but not necessarily integrated in a way that makes the game a true gem. Though it has been mentioned that the game may not necessarily have the developer's undivided attention, I think it would better fit the narrative if these systems were polished a little more.

Um otimo immersive sim, lembra muito o deus ex original embora o "sistema de checkpoint" pra um jogo desse tipo não seja o ideal na minha opinião (ainda mais com os bugs, a tela final do meu jogo ficou preta no final "full recovery". Dito isso ainda amei o jogo e vou fazer meu segundo playthorugh agora

good

A lot of fun from start to finish. Lives up to its name as an immersive sim and gets to stand up there with the greats like Deus Ex.