Overall, I really enjoyed this game. Bought it some time back after seeing the trailer, loved the concept. Actually sat down and played it recently.
I'd rate it a solid 4.5/5, or an 8-9/10. Worth the money, and I might go back and do another playthrough. There's a good mix of mechanics and areas, with a good amount of exploration.
Things I noticed that, in aggregate, bring it down half a star: (most of these will be followed by a positive point that counteracts them)
- The dialogue for some of the characters is a bit more... open about themselves than I'd expect from a complete stranger. I think one or two offhand comments about "after seven months with the same faces, you get used to everyone knowing the basics about each other. Might as well share it all early, no? Makes it easier in the long run" would have helped a bit with immersion.
+ Writing otherwise was an awful lot of fun, and I *REALLY* liked the variety in dialogue options for the player! I didn't feel like I was pushed into being a particular personality, and I just really like how the devs approached the player's dialogue options
- A few bugs involving different dialogue trees. Non-spoiler example is that if an event had multiple options, sometimes the NPCs might say the dialogue for both events. Spoilers about the voting: [spoiler] For example, if I had Galerius tell Malleolus to drop out of the vote, then sometimes there would be two exchanges with Domitius - one where he overheard Malleolus and Galerius talking, commented on it, and was told to tell Equitia, and then a second (separate) exchange where Malleolus would tell Domitius to tell Equitia that he was dropping out of the race... even though the first event covered the content of the second. [/spoiler] My guess on this is probably something involving event queuing across loops. Similarly, a couple bugs where a step wouldn't get checked off on a given quest until I'd done the step [i]after[/i] the bugged step.
+ However, even though there were a couple bugs, they didn't impact gameplay, and having various events (especially casual interactions between NPCs!) was very nice! Really enjoyed that. And quests were well-written enough that the mentioned bug was fairly minor, more of a "huh, that's odd, that should have updated" rather than inconvenience or any kind of actual detrimental impact.
+/- Neutral addition: the one thing that did bother me is that, if I finished up a conversation chain in an early loop, there sometimes wouldn't be a way to repeat it in a later loop. This was a gameplay choice by the devs, and overall it was REALLY nice as a way to keep conversation trees from getting overwhelmed. But it meant that (spoiler for Galerius) [spoiler] I wasn't able to revisit the conversation about Galerius loving Equitia. Early in my run, I'd told him that hey, she's a priestess who has made her vows, you gotta keep it to yourself. But, later on, as things got revealed, it would have been nice to redo that conversation and encourage him to confess. [/spoiler]
- Quicksaves treated as full saves PLUS no way to batch-delete. As someone who quicksaves often, I ended up with a LOT of save files. It'd be really nice if there was a way to batch-delete save files, instead of having the delete them one-by-one. And maybe a way to rename saves would be nice.
+ On the other hand, quicksaving didn't take very long, and load times overall were pretty reasonable. I'm running on a laptop from 2018, and there would be a short moment between zones as the next area loaded, but it was pretty unobtrusive. Nice design there by the devs. Quickloading wasn't instant, but it was short enough that I wasn't overly bothered.
- During the late game, once most things have been done, it felt like there was a fair bit of waiting if I wanted to do/try something new. And that makes sense - most content had already been done/explored - but it would have been nice if there was some small, repeatable thing I could do to kill time.
+ Pacing overall was very nice, though, and I really liked how different quests/exploration pieces sort of wove together.
- the main city was huge, and took a while to run around between a few different major locations. Mind you, it's beautiful (even on my old laptop), but sometimes I was looking at the Grand Temple (big building on a hill) and internally trying to figure out how to get up there in a shorter amount of time.
+ HOWEVER, the devs [i]did[/i] mitigate travel times to an extent, and that helped an awful lot. Overall, I really enjoyed the design and layout, especially all the little nooks and crannies! Side passages were very fun, and I kept finding new [spoiler]tunnels[/spoiler] and places to slide through. Very nice.
Minor historical quibble: while the Greek and Roman gods were very similar to each other in many regards, they are separate (rather than proper copies). And, from my understanding of historical cultures, gods of different regions (e.g. Egypt vs Rome) were often treated as, well, gods of different regions, rather than "my gods are more real than your gods." Spoiler about character reactions: [spoiler] so some of the crises of faith, like themes of replacement - especially for Khabash - felt a bit modern in how they viewed that. Though I can totally see why the devs went the direction they did, to help things fit with the theme of the game.[/spoiler] Also, there were a few moments where I felt like maybe a wax or clay tablet might have made a bit more sense than stone (easier to write things quickly). HOWEVER! Those are minor quibbles. Past those, the rest of it was [i]excellent[/i]. Clothing choices, locations, character histories, all sorts of things! Names of objects! There was a level of detail and thoughtfulness to it that I don't often see nor expect, and overall it was just lovely. From building design to lamps to layouts and construction, to names of characters and treatment of cults (what a nice touch that was), to the game as a whole, it was excellent. Really, really enjoyed that.
The NPCs! Excellently done on those. Motivations, some reveals (Iulia - oof), and so much more. Just very nicely thought out.
For the story - excellent. Gameplay - awesome. Characters - fantastic (Georgius is great). Sound design - very nice. Plot development - excellent. Implementation of a loop - awesome. The details on each ending - stellar (ending 4 was a BLAST, but they were all good).
I'd recommend this.
