Pendula Swing - The Complete Journey

This is a recommendation with reservations. There is a lot to like about Pendula Swing; however, you should also know a couple of things going into it. We’ll start with the good. The lore and worldbuilding in this game is fantastic. It’s a mixture of typical fantasy fare (e.g. the hierarchical breakdown of the races, the clear social commentary, the various gods being a source of conflict among mortals, etc.) with some interesting twists and iterations. I enjoyed learning about this world’s history more than any other part of the game. You find out about this lore by completing a variety of tasks for people around the city you’re exploring. There are a lot of tasks, but none of them are particularly difficult or long. This is almost a cozy game in terms of how little challenge there is - and I say that with affection. Now for the neutral: this is not an RPG. It’s a visual novel stylized as a CRPG. Giving it an isometric perspective makes it look like you’re going to be playing something like a Disco Elysium. To their credit, the devs are very up front about the fact that there’s no combat in this game. But there are no skills or abilities or anything of that sort. The RPG tag (and yes, I know those are given by the community) is wrong. Every task follows more or less the same pattern: talk to person A, find and talk to person B, ask them politely to agree with you, return to person A. This is why I say it’s more of a visual novel than anything. The goal is only ever to talk to people and be nice to them. I like VNs, so that’s fine with me, but be aware if you’re looking for something more involved. Along the same lines, I don’t entirely understand why there are “rewards” for the tasks you complete. I have thousands of gold and several items, but there’s nothing of substance to buy, nor is there any real use for those items. It doesn’t detract from the game, but it is confusing. In an ideal version of this game, the writers who crafted the cosmology and history of the world would still do so, but they would have other people write the tasks. The bad is mostly in its performance. It is very buggy. I’ve completed tasks that were never crossed off in my list and consequently was unable to complete subsequent tasks. I’ve bypassed others simply by talking to characters out of order. Most frustratingly, there is a bug with the (I think) very last task in the main questline that has completely prevented me from doing it. For all intents and purposes, I have completed the game. But I can’t see the last scene because even though I’ve completed the one before it, the game doesn’t know I have. There’s only one save file and it’s all autosave, so I can’t go back to old save, either. Again, I did enjoy my time with Pendula Swing. But before buying, be aware that it is buggy and a much less roleplay-y experience than you may be expecting.

This is a very charming game that shows a lot of heart and promise, though it could use a bit of polishing, which I hope happens in a future update! This game should appeal to RPG fans as well as VN fans, as it has elements from both. The 1920's/fantasy mashup was a clever and interesting way to present issues like class disparity, education access, prejudice, and queerness. I do think that some additional elements could have been incorporated to increase the 1920s flair - for example, a dress code for entering speakeasies would give a reason to visit the shops. The game does a pretty great job of letting you shape the MC's personality, and the romances are a cute and completely optional addition that don't interfere with the main story. As for room to grow, this game could use another round of proof-reading, though it never becomes unintelligible. There are grammar/spelling issues sprinkled here and there, as well as a few buggy lines of dialogue that repeat strangely. The most disappointing aspect to me was that several quests seemed to be bugged. There were multiple occasions where I had quests stuck on my list that were already completed, as well as a few times where talking to characters out of the intended order seemed to prematurely close out dialogue lines that were critical to completing side quests. As a side-quest completionist, I think I ran into this more than the average player would, but if I could recommend one area for the developers to make fixes, it would be here. Overall, this was a very charming, inclusive and engaging game. I rarely leave detailed reviews, so the fact that I am here is because I really appreciate the heart in this game and would absolutely replay it if it were polished up.

I have very mixed feelings on the game. I genuinly like it, it's very charming, I love the world that Pendula builds and love being able to change everything on you, the poly option etc But some stuff I was eh on. For example the elf on the cover is not a regular love interest or character, you can interact with him like once. And the game imo bites off a bit more than it can chew? Trying to talk about systemic racism in regards to orcs and goblins, talking about colonialism and how it would look with long lived races involved. Imo it maybe would have been better if it stuck to only one thing? Talking about the struggles about immigrant goblins or the inequality of orcs or about the stereotypes and problems of class mobility of dwarves who are only hired for specific jobs (hard labor). There are some bugs or weird things, like me unable to talk to the magician after I backed out of the dialogue to get to have him do a ritual for me. And for anybody who got lost as me and thought their game was broken, you can walk through to the frozen dwarf/protest, but there is a LONG way around, not through the small gap you see when you enter the industrial district. Over all, I enjoyed the experience and I would say worth the price still

Pros - Looks gorgeous. - Nice music from the era. - Great world building and lore. - Interesting characters - Solid controls, entirely playable with mouse. Navigate with mouse click, select items and characters with mouse click and there is on screen buttons for any other actions including exiting the game. - Pleasant game-play, very chill. Cons - The RPG tag might be a bit flattering; there is no experience system,character leveling nor skill trees. Also while you can change your characters clothing and wearables, they all seem cosmetic. There are side quests but not the level of branching side quests like you might expect from a full RPG. In fairness the tags are set by steam users not the developers. - Lots of inventory bugs, items disappearing, re-appearing, duplicating. Sometimes restarting the game will resolve issues. - No manual save. The auto-save can be very unforgiving, if your unhappy with a dialog choice then you just have to live with it. - No voice acting. - You meet so many characters and hear about so many things and places but there is no simple index to categorize all of this information like you have in a lot of other games. There is a log book which stores the entirety of all conversations but its not searchable and you have a manual notes taking section but that is too much work. - While the game-play was pleasant it could also be argued that it was maybe a little bit boring. A lot of reading and very little else. -You can have pets and different animals kind of join your party and follow you a long but they don't actually contribute anything and frustratingly will frequently block your path. - Long loading times when starting the game and loading from the save file. - Some bugged quests that you can't finish. Overall its an interesting game and while its super rough around the edges there is enough done right to get a recommendation...just about.

Overall I would recommend simply because if there were more games set in the world I would play them. I've finished the game in one sitting but bare in mind I have apparently only completed 25%. My reason for not going back to it after finishing the main storyline is it's just too buggy. I had to use a 5 year old hotfix to get out of a frozen state, and even then there were certain characters that would lock up the game and not let me move around/chat to people. I was plagued by numerous other bugs including decisions I didn't make coming to fruition, and quests that had been completed (or could no longer be completed) staying in my journal. Plus not being able to talk to people about things that are in my journal currently that say 'talk to this person' A lot of the bugs could be fixed if we were allowed save states rather than autosave. It would also let people try different options without restarting. That being said I was able to finish the game therefore it's worth playing! The world is very interesting, though I did feel like the entire game was the beginning of a story rather than a whole one, but that in itself is charming. I didn't find any further quests that use the analysis feature that you use in the tutorial which was disappointing as I enjoyed that and assumed it would play a big part in the main quest. It has a very diverse range of characters, and they all weave into the story in charming and interesting ways. I didn't feel like any of the characters were there to make one single point, they all had nuanced and 3 dimensional personas. I did feel it was odd that the dressing choices for the MC seemed to all be very feminine, she seemed more masc presenting to me and I would have liked to have seen more options for that, but perhaps I just missed it. The hair choices as well had a lot of options for fun colours more like elves, but not all of them had the MC's own hair colour which I found odd. The writing was excellent, some proper laugh out loud moments and really interesting quests that made you want to help people. I wasn't sure that there was enough about what happened in the past, why the war happened etc, to really convince me as a player that either side was in the wrong but again only 25% complete according to the journal. Though I didn't have anything left 'to do' so I'm not sure if that might be down to the bugginess.

I really liked this game but mid way i encountered a bug that never allowed me to progress and finished the game. I can’t recommend this game being out with such big problem. And I won’t reply another 8hours to possibly encounter it again.

Jolly old time running around.

https://youtu.be/O8M4wMgy-G0 Tackling the themes of post heroism is an under realized narrative hook that plays out well here, even with some rough elements in presentation.

I LOVED this game. I cared about so many of the characters that fulfilling their quests felt so good. They're the kinds of quests I always wish I could do when I meet downtrodden NPCs in RPGs so it felt great to finally live out that bit of fantasy. I really hope you make something similar again but either way, thank you for the experience.

It starts a little boring and I almost gave up but once i entered the main city, it became a fun game. The main quest is very short but there's heaps of side quests to do, although all of them are fetch quests. If you take pets along with you they'll constantly get in the way, so it's better not to take them. They don't add anything anyway. There's no combat or puzzles. You can romance some characters.