Btw, people should really temper their expectations for a za/um game with tactical combat, or any combat for that matter. DE was made by a team of 20 people working for a few years, yet it's still one of the most static rpgs out there. All of the npcs are stationary. Nobody patrols the streets. Since there's no combat, the npcs are never forced into changing their location. All animations/events are completely scripted, which is what gives the game such polish. Yet, even with such constraints, the health and morale systems feels superfluous and unnecessary and have no impact on how you approach each situation. If Zaum made a game with combat, I'd expect it to follow a jrpg template where you just cycle through your party members and chose an attack for each one, sit through your enemy's turn, repeat.
I think you hit on a valid issue with the game. Some ways of playing are inherently more satisfying. Being a fascist meathead is terrible, because the usefulness of the skills you'd tend to go for with physique/motorics lack utility for the most part (physical instrument, half-light, etc.). The best skill from those stats is perception by a mile, based on my experience. My first playthrough was a 4/4/2/2 specialising in logic, visual calculus, and rhetoric, and it was hugely satisfying amassing information, breaking down people's alibis, and solving the case. Then going inland empire/shivers makes for an amazing Malkavian style playthrough. I can see why your experience would have been painful. Unfortunately, you missed out on a lot of the really great inter-brain battles and input you get from high intellect or psyche - having at least one of those is a must for this game.
I did go with very high shivers (think it was 11 by the end), so I wasn't left completely out of the loop. I did have a mixed reaction to it, though. It's quite nice, but by the end I was skimming over it because it started repeating itself (I think altocumulus clouds came up at least thrice). It's also an inadvertent spoiler generator (like grabbing the flowers on the roof and hearing Shivers tell you that a man picked them). Also, because of the stat system, you can save scum all of the white checks (I think red checks can't be save scummed), so I did pass a couple of visual calculus checks that I had no right to. I reconstructed the ballistics of the shot, for example. I also got the quest from Joyce to find out about the union's drug trade. I convinced Titus to disclose info pertaining to the case with an authority check just by playing dress up. So yeah, my playthrough wasn't short of social interactions or thoughts on the paranormal. Perception was a great skill to have, too. Found a few hidden rooms with it.
This. I said it from the beginning when I said Motorics was a dump stat. There should have been more intimidation checks, some torture, the opportunity to kill/arrest more people, more opportunities to give fines, and the chance for Kim to leave you or try to arrest you because of how terrible you are.
Agreed. What's disappointing is that this wouldn't be an issue if motorics gave you the chance to drastically alter the course of events when the chips are down eg. by shattering the tribunal with your high gun & dodge skills. This doesn't happen though, which doesn't quite gel with the 'countless role-playing possibilities' that were promised.
Honestly no, just no. If you pick a dumbfuck character, expect a dumbfack playthrough. You are a detective, not a beat cop. If you want all builds to be good you end up with Sawyer grade autism, or Numenra's cakewalk. I can understand it's contrary to ZA/UM's game advertising tho, but I'd rather dump it all on the fact they shouldn't've said such things in the first place. If all builds are viable, there's no point in builds.
You're a detective with no badge, no gun and not even a name, but full of drugs and alcohol. You'd expect to be a beat cop in that situation. Except the exact opposite happens. I wasn't a dumbfuck meathead at all. I didn't have many options to simply abuse my power or intimidate people, I did however solve many things that Kim couldn't simply through high perception and interfacing, and also through lucky successes in social interactions just by playing dress-up. I also failed at the one moment where motorics should have given me a considerable advantage over my opponents. If you're saying that expecting 1 stat out of 4 to do what it says on the tin is 'autism', then yes, I'm very much on the spectrum.
