Rough Justice: '84

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this game in good faith. Right from the intro, there are a few typos and misspells, which wouldn't be so bad if the game weren't so text-based. This game is REALLY rough around the edges and you can see so right from the title screen. Sloppy work. Also, the game is VERY poorly optimized and runs VERY choppily even in its lowest graphics settings. Combine that with the now slower-than-intended "typewriter" text effect and you're in for a sluggishly slow ride. At least you can turn the typewriter effect off. Also, it could really use some really easy to implement quality of life features, like auto-pausing the game everytime an agent reaches their destination spot. I guess it doesn't do that to artificially increase difficulty. I had fun playing this, but the bad fairly outweighs the good. Very sorry.

Au son d'une musique typique des années 80, où les synthétiseurs, les boites à rythme et les guitares électriques étaient au premier plan, vous allez prendre votre service et diriger une agence de détectives privés qui vont réaliser le boulot que les forces de police ont de plus en plus de mal à faire dans une société où le crime explose de partout. Roulez jeunesse, et gare à la banqueroute, votre agence devra faire du profit et ne jamais tomber à court d'argent. [b]Daedalic Entertainment[/b], qui au départ nous avait plutôt habitué à des jeux de société adaptés sur PC, se diversifie de plus en plus pour éditer des jeux de qualité, comme le très bon "Shadow Tactics" ou encore l'originale "New Cycle". Alors que vaut exactement ce [b]Rough Justice '84?[/b] [u]Le Jeu[/u] Après une brève discussion avec un ami de longue date qui dirige cette agence de détectives privés et qui vous demande d'en faire partie intégrante, vous voilà sur l'écran de sélection de vos agents, qu'il faudra bien choisir avant de les embaucher. Ils ont tous 5 caractéristiques plus ou moins développées que sont la Force, l'Intelligence, la Perception, les Réflexes et l'Empathie. Ils démarreront à 1 ou 0 dans chacune de ces caractristiques, voir 2 pour les meilleurs. Ensuite ils pourront évoluer en montant de niveau (+1 dans une des carac. au choix) et en achetant du stuff dans les nombreuses boutiques de la ville, comme les stylos micro, les transmetteurs, les mouchards... ces objets s'utilisent afin de vous fournir un boost dans une caractéristique, le nombre d'utilisation dépend de l'objet. Au départ vous serez dans votre bureau et choisirez des contrats auprès des différents chefs de votre agence. Les contrats demanderont de réussir plusieurs missions notées de 1 à 3 pour leur difficulté. Ensuite il faudra envoyer sur la carte vos agents réaliser ces missions, le temps est compté car elles ne resteront pas indéfiniment; certaines caractéristiques seront plus demandées que d'autres lors de ces missions, le choix de l'agent à envoyer sera crucial; un bref descriptif de la mission est alors édité par l'employeur qui a besoin de vos services lorsque vous cliquerez dessus, puis vous enverrez alors le bon agent sur place, le temps de trajet est à prendre en compte également (n'arrivez pas après le délai imparti sinon la mission disparaît). Une fois sur place il y aura alors un tas de mini-jeux à réussir. Le plus commun est le jet de dés, dont le nombre de dés à jeter sera lié à la caractéristique demandée pour réaliser la mission, (Force pour faire du service d'ordre, Intelligence pour dénouer un problème, Réflexes pour conduire et rattraper un voyou...) Tous vos agents ont également des Points d'action (une quinzaine au départ) qui seront demandés pour se déplacer, réaliser les missions mais également obtenir par exemple plus de dés. Une fois à court de Points d'Action, vos agents devront alors finir leur service, ils rentrent au bercail (le bureau) puis disparaissent, il faudra alors les réembaucher plus tard (et payer à nouveau). Par ailleurs vous aurez d'autres type de missions avec une foule de mini-jeux que vous pourrez pratiquer pour vous entraîner au centre de Formation. Il y en a une bonne vingtaine, comme relier les fils d'une voiture pour la faire démarrer, repérer au rayon X les armes et explosifs, crocheter les serrures, percer des coffres, battre le détecteur de mensonges, réaliser un portrait-robot, comparer les empreintes digitales... Tous ces jeux demanderont logique et adresse et seront souvent à réaliser en un temps imparti. A certains moments, des indics vous donneront rendez-vous, si vous acceptez la rencontre,il faudra alors les payer pour avoir un tuyeau et débloquer une mission très lucrative mais un peu plus difficile. Comme je le disais plus haut, votre agence devra toujours avoir de l'argent, si jamais vous vous trouvez à -500$, alors ce sera Game Over. Vous pouvez à tout moment emprunter à la banque, mais il faudra rembourser votre emprunt en temps et en heure, ce qui vous permettra alors de pouvoir obtenir de plus gros emprunts. Enfin il y a en toile de fond une trame scénaristique, très liée aux USA des années 80, où il y avait une réelle explosion de la délinquance associée à une corruption qui gangrenait les forces de police. Cela donnera lieu à des missions particulières comme démanteler un réseau, faire des filatures, interroger un membre d'un gang... Le jeu obtient une note moyenne, cela peut se comprendre car il a une certaine répétitivité, son prix est de 19.99€ ce qui est finalement assez cher même si la réalisation est impeccable et la traduction française nickelle, mais cependant une optimisation moyenne. Je l'ai pris en promo à 7€, la pilule passe mieux. De plus une démo vous est proposée, ce qui vous permettra de tester la bête et voir si elle pourrait finir dans votre assiette de gamer. Pour moi ce fut un oui, un petit oui d'un jeu que je fais à un petit rythme mais qui ne me déplait pas et me détend, que demander de plus?! Allez, à bientôt les gamers!

A good detective agency management game with great voice acting, stylish art, a catchy soundtrack and some unfortunate rough edges, namely some questionable plot twists, plenty of (non-gamebreaking) bugs and typos and jarring performance drops during certain minigames.

Glorified mini-game, dice-roll, and micromanagement game. I hardly see any compelling game-play reasons to play this game.

I've played games like this in the past and they've been alright. Nothing to write home about. However, Rough Justice: '84 has been phenomenal. The mini-games break up the monotony often seen in manager games, great voice acting, great music, great scenarios. The mini-games that I mentioned are just top notch. The shining star on this one has to be the character models though. I feel like I know some of these people that I'm hiring. Based on their look and abilities along, they feel like actual people. I like the occasional little joke here and there as well, for instance, Detective Paddington's nickname is Bear, etc. That all being said, I have run into an occasional issue or glitch. The sound of the typewriters, though atmospheric, do get annoying after a while. There is an option in the settings area to turn that sound of specifically, but it does not seem to work. Instead, one has to turn down all sound effects. The problem with that is that it makes the sounds needed to be heard during the Morse code and phreaking mini-games far more difficult (not sure if I'm forgetting any other audible mini-games, but do include them in the issue). Another issue is during the mini-game where one needs to match the IDs. Occasionally, the ID itself will be completely blank, most of the time, the names will not match up, but the photographs will. That's the only mini-game that just seems to be consistently broken. I have no problem matching pictures, but with an ID, it's kinda the point for both to match. Another area that may cause some issue is that some missions will randomly fail if I'm doing another. What I mean by that, I'll send a detective to a location before starting a mini-game, finish the mini-game, and come back with the mission already failed when they were still en route. It won't say that it's because they didn't receive orders from me, the game will act as if I've already played their mini-game and just failed it. Also, Penny seems unnaturally difficult to impress. I've done and succeeded her missions every time, but she still tells me they "could be better". So...*shrug*. Overall, though this game has it's minor issues, it is so much fun if you enjoy these types of manager games. I would absolutely recommend this to anyone who enjoys manager games, and even to people who are simply just looking for something new or different to play.

Guud visual, music and all stuff. But those dice they aren't random and you will fail every time for the sick of a broken loop/mini games. This game have a TIMER for anything, even if you have good skills and good strategy u will fail thanks to the controls, they are really put wrong. Spectialy in all mini game. I was enjoying the game even with all the fault of concept but the devs don't like people so, i quit. Whats the point of finishing a game that is just design to fustrate you in any aspect. Good visual, good music but that all for me.

cringeworthy

Very decent game. And have some waifus too!

[h1]Several annoying issues that exist since the demo was available[/h1] The game itself isn't so bad per se, but the flaws predominate. I only bought this game so I can write this review and then refunded it... EDIT: I actually ended up playing it some more to give the full version a chance... but my opinion didn't change: [list] [*]There's only so much you can influence with good management, the right agent and equipment etc., but if the stars aren't right, you will fail a challenge only because of bad luck, not because you did something wrong... and that's extremely frustrating for thinkers, strategists, and the like. [*]Scrolling in and out of the map moves you either way too close or completely out into bird's perpective where you can't see the admittedly nice 3D elements anymore. [*]Bug (maybe?): I set the language to English twice and it still was in German, text, voice-overs, and everything. [*]The "puzzle" "minigames" claim to require wits or skill or both, but are either uninspired, boring nuisances and time-wasters, or blatant rip-offs of stuff that was already unnecessary in other games, even more so in this one. [*]Realism fail: Agents's shifts end when they're out of energy which is either never, if you don't assign them, or after only 1-2 hours. You can't tell me anyone but the president himself got paid over 100 $ for 1,5 hours of work in the mid-80s... and mind you: That's a level 1 agent's pay rate that is between 100 $ and 150 $ per shift. Wtf? [*]What I really really [b]REALLY[/b] didn't like is that any menu popping up pauses the in-game time (which is a good thing btw), [u]but dialogues don't[/u]! So, if you fast-forwarded the time it took your agents to arrive at the scene and your characters have to say something (usually about the story), you can either skip through that and don't know what they said, or you can risk failing one or more jobs, because their window of availability expires before you're done reading. [*]Also, it's really annoying that time doesn't stop or at least go back to normal at critical points like your agents arriving at a scene and awaiting instructions before they fail the mission. There should be an option for that in the settings. [/list] Questionable design choices: [list] [*]The case set mechanic makes sort of sense from the perspective of game design, but it seems so uncommon, almost unrealistic, that it breaks the immersion and comes off as really stupid. Whatever story the game has is hard to be taken serious, if all that's left is just [u]bare-bones management with flavour text.[/u] [*]There's that stupid woke message nobody cares for and still so many have on the start screen. You see that so often these days that you have to question whether a dev team is actually diverse or not or just puts this in for good PR. [*]Agent character called "Raven" has platinum blond hair, just because her actual last name is Somethingsomething [b]Draven[/b]. Is this an 80's thing I don't get? Because a character that goes by "Raven" and doesn't have black or at least dark hair seems off. [*]Also, usually sound settings in most games have the voice-overs and UI and stuff at maximum and the music lower so that by default you can hear what's going on - not Rough Justice, though. If you're not a go-to-the-settings-first guy like me, you're gonna be annoyed. Actually, if you are a settings-first guy, you're also gonna be annoyed. [h3]If you play this game, you're gonna be annoyed no matter what.[/h3] [/list] [h1]But the most questionable design choice:[/h1] The devs were too lazy to make a proper demo. Instead, they let us play the full game, but only for 1,5 hours which might be ample time for most people to decide whether they want this or not... but what if it isn't? You can hardly see everything the game has to offer in just 90 minutes - and [b]if[/b] you can, then that's proof of the devs' / the studio's shortcomings. Who wants to do the same stuff for the "25 to 40 hours of gameplay" that you did for the first 90 minutes? Was it so hard to come up with a short campaign that showcases the goods and the variety, instead of hoping the players see more than 1 or 2 challenge types? Also, what if someone doesn't like the game enough to buy it (20 € is unfortunately a lot of money these days...), but likes it enough so that he's fine playing through the 1st level again and again? Well, fu[b][/b]ck you, can't do that. The prez of Gamma Minus wants a new car. [b][u]The most annoying thing[/u][/b] is that [u]instead of a few MB[/u] that you download in literal seconds, you have to [u]download the whole 7,5 GB(!) and wait[/u] for the respective time just to play the fu[b][/b]cking demo!... And then there's still the chance that [u]you don't get a taste of everything the game has to offer.[/u] You know what? My wife was born in 1984 and apparently so much good energy was used up in her creation that almost nothing good was left for this game.

This game was recommended to me by Steam. I looked at the store page and was instantly attracted by the lovely ladies in the screenshots. I was lucky to pick it up for a steal during a sale. Once I started playing, I discovered the following flaws: tedious gameplay, terrible puzzles, non-existent difficulty and a ridiculous story. But the game kept me engaged and I completed it. It’s definitely an underrated experience for those who can look past the flaws.