Spire, Surge, and Sea

Not for me im not doing this pursuing ro and then she gets with another dude the moment he shows up (why) 88% on the relationship btw

I have a lot of Choice titles, both on Steam and on my tablet. I found this one to be fairly boring, and aside from a few choices, the game is fairly linear. It could just be me, but I am not really feeling this one.

I have mixed feelings about this, so this is a "cautiously recommended" opinion (I wish we could just post neutral opinions). I think when it's on sale, if you want a story in a pretty unique post-apocalyptic setting, then it can be nice, but as it is, I wouldn't recommend getting it at full price because of some of the flaws it has. PROS: I love the setting in general, and I really liked the lore of the universe this takes place in. I have also never seen a setting where signing is normalized to the level it is in this game, which is actually pretty nice - I like how it's implemented. And overall, I liked the characters well enough, and the final battle was really cool! You don't see [spoiler]roc birds[/spoiler] very often in fiction! The style of writing is also pleasant enough - and no issues with repetition or typos either. CONS: There are three cons imo, though they sort of have ramifications on others stuff. It could be summed up to: - A LOT of coding errors and bugs (I have reported all that I encountered, so hopefully this won't be an issue anymore soon) - Needs more "padding". Sounds weird to say it like that, right? But it's literally the core issue here. The game has a lot of time skips ranging from a few days to a few weeks, and while in itself this isn't necessarily an issue, here it would have been good to actually make things happen in these gaps. And this ties into the last issue. - Not enough time spent with the ROs/LIs. While this isn't a romance game at the core, it still has a few characters the MC can bond with and in some cases enter a relationship with, yet we don't get many opportunities to spend time together - and the time we get to spend with individual ROs varies greatly depending on which one it is. It's a shame because they are interesting characters and the time skips could have been used instead to get closer to them. Fields of Asphodel for example does a GREAT job of having a very "routine-oriented" plot with a lot of down time, and that down time is "padded" with RO interactions that allow us to truly know them. Now, while these things separately are minor complaints, I have to talk about an issue I had with the romance I was following that seems to stem from the mix of all three cons I have mentionned making for a very very weird situation. Keep in mind this will spoil a lot of details about the story! (and as a disclaimer, gender selectable characters are both set as male in my playthrough) [spoiler]In early game, the MC meets the first RO, Aanan, and can have a pretty detailed scene with him (though another RO can be chosen instead, or a solo scene). I picked Aanan and had a pleasant "outing" with him. Later on, during another opportunity to hang out, I picked Gerran instead to balance out the affinity points a bit, especially since I wasn't interested in romancing Aanan. The first bug happened during this scene because suddenly Gerran was replaced with Aanan, and I had a weird out of context scene with the MC and Aanan seeing three people in a poly relationship and discussing polyamory, and the option for the MC to show interest in Aanan and be okay with polyamory, to show interest in Aanan and NOT be okay with polyamory or to just not be into polyamory. Obviously, the presence of this scene was a bug in itself, and it was also very weird since two out of three choices showed romantic interest in Aanan and there wasn't even a way to say the MC is into polyamory without also being attracted to Aanan. Needless to say, I was confused as hell, but at least it went back to Gerran after that, so I ignored it.[/spoiler] [spoiler] Sadly, it seems that scene had repercussions later on. Midway through the story, a new character was introduced, Teurix. I immediately took a liking to him. He seemed like a forward person, incuding towards Aanan, but his greeting seemed to make Aanan uneasy, which is understandable. Regardless, since that moment, I tried to trigger any scene with Teurix because I was really interested in him. And, only a single chapter later, we can invite him to a date and try to make our MC's romantic interest obvious. And then, he drops the bomb - he and Aanan are "involved", SOMEHOW? Only a single chapter happened between his introduction and that scene, and Aanan was clearly uneasy with his behavior at first, even though they became friends later. I genuinely though they had a cute friendship born from their comparable situation as "outsiders" of sorts, but nothing indicated they may have romantic interest towards each other. And it became even weirder because the MC can just give up (and chose to be happy or unhappy about it), say they can share (despite me having explicitly said my MC is not okay with poly AND my MC never having shown romantic interest towards Aanan) or ask Teurix to pick between MC and Aanan... I was SO confused. I chose that option and at the very least Teurix picked my MC so the relationship could proceed, but this scene was so out of the blue and illogical that I'm sure something must have gone very wrong in the code.[/spoiler] [spoiler]A lot of the issues with this must come from the weird misplaced polyamory conversation with Aanan, and possibly some other coding issues. But another problem is the time skips. There is a single chapter between meeting Teurix and locking into a romance with him. A SINGLE opportunity to truly hang out without it being a crisis situation or someone else being there. And the worst part is that between the two chapters, we get a few weeks time skip. This should have been used as an opportunity to get to know the new RO! He's a late comer, but right after his introduction there are a few weeks of down time. At least one additional scene focused on him during that time would have been great. Instead he somehow got together with another RO with whom he didn't seem to have any romantic chemistry before, forcing the MC to ask him to pick between the two[/spoiler] Obviously, I have reported this and I'm assuming it will be fixed one way or another, but yeah, I really love Teurix as a character, and it's very sad we get so little time with him and that this bug also sort of "dampened" the romance itself. At least I still got a happy ending with him, and ultimately I'm satisfied at how the story ended overall too, but I can't ignore the flaws and issues of the game either.

A bad ending because your best stats aren't the ones needed to get anything but a bad ending, is simply bad writing. Every story line, sub-plot tossed out in the immersion breaking rush to the climax that starts abruptly [spoiler] with the antagonist literally proclaiming, 'I don't want to play this game anymore". That should have been taken as the sign it was. [/spoiler]. Not typically what is meant by foreshadowing but on par with the rest of the 'novel'. True foreshadowing is calling this a 'novel' rather than a CYOA. It seems that someone misunderstood what 'interactive' means and that it requires valid 'choice' throughout the story and game mechanics (read: choices) that support results. I cannot think of more than two times when the stats and results did sync. It's quite clear that the writer has only one story to tell and it isn't one that allows for variation. Good premise, bad execution. Suggest the author write a novel, not a CYOA that disrespects the players by failing to grant them any agency - or respect for the time and money spent.

先不讲那个恋爱对象谈到一半会跟其他人跑了的妥妥red flag, 毕竟被修复了。这款游戏本身就是经典的“作者有明显倾向”的作品。这就是个王道的正义起义者 vs 腐败贵族，description 里写得可以自由选择，实际上很明显，只有一个路线才是“正戏/ canon”

+ Liked the worldbuilding and story so far; + Alchemy; + the Shallows; But - Time skips were a little bit weird, and some scenes were illogical to me; - Very little time interacting with the ROs to bond with them; - Have some questions about magic and its impact on the world (the king's power, for example). 7 mixed feelings out of 10

I'd recommend this just because I think it has excellent worldbuilding and is well-written, so it's good as a story. As a game, however, it's one of the weaker Choice of Games games. I think the author was an excellent writer who didn't quite know how to use the Choice of Games format, especially due to the number of times the plot goes "on rails" and disregards your choices to create the more linear story the author clearly wanted. So I'd say play this one only if you're willing to accept that it's more of a good Wattpad story than it is a fully fleshed game with interesting choices.

So-so