The Luminous Underground

So first lets get this thumbs up or down out of the way. Ill give this one a thumbs up, all in all its a very solid read with alot of interesting things going on and just an absolutely amazing amount of detail and action to loose one self in. That said, its not without its shortfalls, and for me they are important short falls (though for others perhaps it wont matter much at all.) The hardest / most annoying thing about this story is the way it constantly makes the MC second fiddle to everyone else around them. Your constantly dealing with and worrying about everyone elses problems (or choosing not to over and over again, that is an option),... not because they are really important to you in any way, but because they are part of your team. Your team captain, but honestly your more like team cheerleader. Maybe if there was some personal pay off for all the work you invest in your team members it would be worth it, but all you get out of it in the end is team cohesion and team members not leaving, which while important, so isnt worth the literal chapters worth of holding their hands. Secondly the romance options make no sense, you dont get to even consider any until a good couple of hours into the story, and then its offered to you as a drop down list,... of people you have literally only met once (with the exception of your past partner, in which there is a "before the current story" history implied but not fully fleshed out) and would really have no reason to be interested in, in the first place. If you choose one of the random offerings you will be treated to about 4 very short scenes inbetween action scenes to go out on dates with them. You never get an opportunity to really interact with them (seriously i think the interactions are limited to one choice per date scene) even if the character is present in the action scenes that play out after you have started seeing them. Finally, the MC is further thrown into the "not really important to this story role" by the fact that a certain team member becomes empowered to a ridiculous degree so that not only does every scene hinge on coddling and getting that npc to do what you need done, but the author then decides to literally start split screening between the MC and the rest of the group in one place, and SUPER BARBIE in another. In the end it very much leaves you feeling like everything you do, say or think is meaningless as this is actually some one elses story. All in all I think this is a good story, that could have absolutely been great if they had just left out the dating stuff (because there is just no heart in it) and Wonder Woman (because she was alot more believable as an interesting member of the team that needed help like everyone else, than after she becomes Ms Indispensable.)

I bought this cause it sounded like a fun ghostbusters-inspired text adventure. It's so dull, mind numbingly dull to the point where I was just skipping pages at a time to get to anything even remotely interesting.

The first few chapters were interesting but boy did it get boring quickly afterwards. Out of around 30 text-based games I've played, this is the only one where I've started skipping filler texts and there were so many of them.

Perhaps the meatiest CoG game I've played. Not my favorite - there were some things that threw me off, like the occasional change of perspective, and the romance felt tacked on - but decent, and long. Most of the games by this company take me three hours or less to finish - this took me something like eight hours for one play through. It's good enough to satisfy, and long enough to be worth the price.

This is a choose your own adventure book with some RPG bits added in. I really enjoyed the story It's well written and flows nicely (which is impressive with how many options you get). There's a nice bit of humour in there and a definite nod & a wink to Ghostbusters. I'm looking forward to going through it again and seeing if I can make a total mess of the situations.

With a first-play time for me just over 11 hours, The Luminous Underground provides more "gameplay" in read time than many of its graphical peers, while effortlessly blending decisions you could and couldn't control into the narrative of each page. I'll explore how much variance there can be in the story on my second playthrough, but shallow it is not, and I found my time spent satisfying. Of particular note is how well done the human interaction is. I suspect many situations were no-win, but people's reactions to different tacks in conversation felt real. Hit someone with an empty platitude when they're hurting and they get upset. Push someone past their limits, and you'll have to think hard about what motivates them to keep them together. There is no magic button for success, except, perhaps, whichever skill you trained the most. I put all my time into Luminosity, and when all you have is an esoteric light-based magic hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. But that's the point of training a skill, and in the instances where I couldn't apply it, I struggled accordingly. I look forward to my second playthrough, and I enjoyed the game.

There are a whole lot of stats in this game. They don't do anything as far as I can tell, and it is unclear if and how anything you do affects anything else. It would be better to just read a book.

I can only recommend this game if you are persistent. 13 hours in I gave up on it, because it simply outstayed it's welcome. There is a lot of good stuff in here, but unfortunately, the author did not trim the fat from the story and it just draaaaaags on for forever and there is not enough payoff in between. Stuff gets added and added, relations are expanded, new ones are introduced, but you feel like you're always a long way from the conclusion to anything. If you like these kind of games and try to finish it as quickly as you can, before you lose interest in the story, go for it. Fair warning though, this game is extremely left-wing, LGBTQ+ leaning, so if that bothers you, save yourself the effort.

Good enough

Es un buen juego. No conectó conmigo, pero eso no es una buena razón para darle un no recomendado a un producto que esta bien. Porque lo está, el mundo está muy bien desarrollado junto con sus personajes, y es la historia más larga que he visto en esta compañía hasta ahora. El único fallo que tiene es que su extensión puede resultar agotadora, porque después hay cuestiones personales, como que el juego no conectó muy bien conmigo, pero eso como dije, son cuestiones personajes. Si te gusta el rollo tipo casa fantasmas este juego te va a encantar.