Sometimes Always Monsters

SAM is a pretty chill, free flowing game. I would say it isn't as over the top/urgent as ASM but that isn't a bad thing. It feels more grounded and real, like you have to make your own goals for each day as well as take care of yourself (just like in real life!). Sure there are tedious bits that come at that cost of "real"ness (watching your hygene, having to eat, etc. etc.) that are more extensive than ASM's bits, but I liked it. It's different mechanics for a different story. Story wise, it wasn't super dramatic in my opinion but I didn't think that was necessary given the set up. We're always going to be comparing the two unfortunately, but my thought is that ASM had too much heavy handedness. And not getting ragged on for making which ever choice I made was a welcome change. Again, it aids to the realism. I can give money to every person who asks for it and there's really no consequence to it other than my interaction with the person/their feelings. I really liked that, not every choice matters to the overall plot like I felt it did in ASM. [spoiler] The ending (as well as MOST of the rival related points, which seem to drop off after the second city at least in my playthrough) could've been a bit more substantial, I guess. I would've liked to see the "final showdown" being built up more, but it is what it is. I did like the ability to choose the ending by writing. Honestly I wanna go back to my save I made before I stepped off the bus and try a whole bunch of different words to see what happens. [/spoiler] If you're going into this expecting the same thing as ASM you're probably going to be a bit disappointed. But that doesn't mean SAM is a bad experience, or even a bad sequel! It feels like an evolution of ASM, not just more of the same. It's incredibly detailed, the art is nice, the music is fantastic as always, and the little side stories you can be apart of are thoughtful, funny, and really speak to me on the questions of morality and humanity, what it means to make a creative work and put it out there in the world for other people to see. It feels very personal in that way. Also, I really think the characters are written very well and are three dimensional in a way that makes me feel like I could know them in real life. Give this game a play, it's worth it.

Not a fan of losing my MC because I decided against ruining someone's marriage for selfish reasons.

If your a fan of visual novels but want something with more interactive experience then this is it!

PEAK

Choices actually matter across two games

Probably one of the most memorable games. I played ASM on PS4 and I fell in love with the down-to-earth, slice-of-life mixed with chaotic elements theme that went on. I was unable to import my save file but i was very surprised to see a continuity questionnaire that helped big time. I love the endless possibilities and little easter eggs scattered throughout, i can tell a great amount of love was put into this game. Great continuation of story.

There might not be something as a 'perfect sequel', but I think this comes pretty close. Firstly, there are SO many different viewpoints you get to explore depending on the people you choose to come with you. I love how they talk about writing and all explore separate issues regarding their personal experience. I also love that they all have their own relationships with each other, and you get to see how much they either like or dislike being around one another on the tour. Personally, I felt DeMarcus hit especially close to home in some cases because I grew up with the wrong people going free the ones who did their best to be good people seemed to always get caught for something meaningless. Or, they would take the fall for someone, and now they have a permanent record. As a woman, Ruth also hit pretty close to home, but she can also come off as pretentious (not a bad thing at all, I think it fits her character well and speaks to how we can sometimes push people away from our cause when it's the only thing we care about). Like, she didn't care about women, individually, but rather cared about the movement, itself, which is where it can lose people. (That's not to say she doesn't care about people, we actually see her and Alexa find common grounds at some point, and it really shows that Ruth wants to practice what she believes.) I related a lot to the conversations between the Devs in the game, as well. As a creative, there's always that balance of doing something you love and appealing to the crowd letting you survive off it. If you fail, you have to keep going, because what else are you meant to do? But if you succeed, you have to live up to the legacy you might leave behind. And if no one understands what you're really trying to say, is it still worth it to say anything at all? Can we be content with being able to have words, or do they HAVE to mean something to someone? The ending was a bit predictable for my playthrough, but I don't think that's a bad thing. The story built up to it, and I think there is nuance in how things went down. (For me, I was playing as Sam, married to the Love Interest, after she stole the work of the first game's protagonist. I typed that 'X Lived', and I found the response interesting. I can't wait to play again, maybe ending with 'X kills' to see if she'll shoot Sam? Like, a hint that Sam feels guilty for what they've done or something.) As an added note, I like that there's a balance between being a responsible writer and exploring the cities. I'm curious to see what the differences are if you ONLY write the book and nothing else. And, of course, I want to choose different people to ride with and see how THEY interact. [hr] There were two instances where the game glitched out on me: the first being following the black dog to get tickets for the carnival/park area, and the second being when I tried to get into the pricy restaurant without a reservation. With the dog, after I fed it for the fifth or sixth time, the game crashed and I had to reload from the auto-save. (This was before finding Hermes, if that's important.) With the restaurant, I was just unable to move after trying to get back there and had to exit out of the game window and reload the game. Other than that, I think the only thing that I felt was a bit off was doing squatos, sometimes when I pressed up the character wouldn't jump. I could have also been doing it too fast, though. I really enjoyed this, I'm so glad they made a second game.

you actually have to pay attention to what youre supposed to do, no map markers, you can legit avoid the entire story if you wants to... or you can have smexy time with your rival until the cops come and arrest them....