fantadomat
Arcane
Buahahaahha got had yet again.
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Sovereign Syndicate - isometric narrative RPG set in steampunk fantasy London
- Thread starter LESS T_T
- Start date
Lord_Potato
Arcane
Just be unhappy (plenty of opportunities to lower your happiness level) and you won't be getting those leftist linesBuahahaahha got had yet again.
fantadomat
Arcane
But doesn't make sense!!! I am happy and am a top tier racist.....while all the libtards i know are miserable fucks....
luj1
You're all shills
Steampunk can be done well. This game just ain't it.
Look at Arcanum. Very bleak and melancholic... sort of this doomed world with an uncertain future. You can remember that style and feeling your whole life.
Meanwhile this is like Overwatch... cartoony colors and cartoony models. Artistically no different from others in a sea of mediocrity. Doesn't even have combat. It will be forgotten quickly.
Dishonoredbr
Erudite
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2019
- Messages
- 2,499
ooof It might be over but i gonna buy later.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2012
- Messages
- 30,207
Buddy only you can prevent wastage of tax money.
Grampy_Bone
Arcane
Wrong forum. Belongs on general gaming.
It blows my mind that someone would put this in the same category as BG3, Arcanum, Wasteland 3, or the Owlcat games. Who do developers think they're fooling with this? Imagine being a normie gamer playing BG3, hungry for more, and someone recommends you this, a game with 5% of the same features. "It's totally the same genre." Yeah right.
My wife loves Stardew Valley, let's say I recommended her another game and said it was similar. But it had no farming, no crafting, no mining, and no adventure. Just walking around town and talking to people. How divorced would I be?
It's not a lack of marketing, all the sites have reviews up for this--a marginally interactive ebook. People can just see its crap. They're really trying to push VN adventure games into the RPG genre for some reason. It's just like Walking Sims; game journos with an axe to grind trying to fool the audience to to buying trash games.
It blows my mind that someone would put this in the same category as BG3, Arcanum, Wasteland 3, or the Owlcat games. Who do developers think they're fooling with this? Imagine being a normie gamer playing BG3, hungry for more, and someone recommends you this, a game with 5% of the same features. "It's totally the same genre." Yeah right.
My wife loves Stardew Valley, let's say I recommended her another game and said it was similar. But it had no farming, no crafting, no mining, and no adventure. Just walking around town and talking to people. How divorced would I be?
It's not a lack of marketing, all the sites have reviews up for this--a marginally interactive ebook. People can just see its crap. They're really trying to push VN adventure games into the RPG genre for some reason. It's just like Walking Sims; game journos with an axe to grind trying to fool the audience to to buying trash games.
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Grampy_Bone
Arcane
He said Starfield was great, opinion auto-invalidated forever.
VonMiskov
Educated
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2021
- Messages
- 288
He has shilled multiple times if you watch his videos closely.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2012
- Messages
- 30,207
Worst game is probably bang on though.
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2020
- Messages
- 2,720
Well, shit. I wanted to come in with an "is this any gud" post, but that would be pointless I guess.
Lord_Potato
Arcane
So far (just finished chapter 6) it has its moments, but its definitely inferior to Disco Elysium.
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Mortmal
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2009
- Messages
- 9,602
In my old time, we were calling them CYOA books; they had a great cover and inside, great black and white illustrations. Games like this and Disco are barely less primitive than those. Ah wait no, in those books you had a combat system most often.
fantadomat
Arcane
It looks like a list made by one of those fake "influencers"....i mean worthless fat millennial soygoys that make videos on the internet. I doubt that he had played anything older than 5 years. The ones that put prestigious titles on their list only to look capable and knowledgable.
luj1
You're all shills
Does it remind you of anything, let's say in the world of social politics?
OttoQuitmarck
Educated
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2023
- Messages
- 438
So conversation on this game is dead already? Shame. It did seem awfully short (8-12 hours), mechanically not very complex, quite lacking in dialogue options. And to think it has 1 million in budget... guess it all went into the 3d modelling, what a bizarre choice.
Do these devs not understand what made Disco Elysium succesful in the first place?
Do these devs not understand what made Disco Elysium succesful in the first place?
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2015
- Messages
- 13,290
marxism?
OttoQuitmarck
Educated
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2023
- Messages
- 438
I mean at least the game had something to say, sovereign syndicate doesn't. From what I can tell anyway...
It says, "We love government gibz!"
OttoQuitmarck
Educated
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2023
- Messages
- 438
Welp it is always as they say, limitations breed innovation. If they can just get a handy dandy 1 million from the government it's not going to exactly encourage them to make more efficient use of their resources. In fact, I don't know of any succesful game that relied on government funding to get made.
Lord_Potato
Arcane
Finished Sovereign Syndicate today. A couple of thoughts on the game:
- the world - alternative Victorian England with steampunk technology taken from Atlantis and mythical creatures living among humans - is interesting and pretty well presented, I'd like to see more of it in the potential sequel,
- writing is efficient and believable; it supports the setting and the story pretty well, yet it's not even close to Disco Elysium level,
- the three playable characters: the minotaur illusionist and drunkard Atticus Daley, the human prostitute and an occasional thief Clara Reed, and the dwarven war veteran, monster hunter, and engineer Teddy Redgrave are all likable, if not always at first, while the fourth playable character that we get access to later in the game is adorable, but we don't spend too much time with it,
- the plotline sure was interesting enough to carry me until the end. Each of the playable characters pursues a set of clearly defined goals, either searching for long lost mother, a couple of children kidnapped from an orphanage, trying to capture a Jack the Ripper-like Courtesan Killer, or investigating the dark deeds of a popular and brilliant industrial magnate,
- the story is divided into chapters, in each we control one of the characters. Sometimes others appear as NPCs in different protagonists' chapters, but usually, the three heroes act alone and independently of each other, trying to unravel numerous mysteries; only in the grand finale they start to interact and exchange vital information, which helps them to achieve their respective aims,
- the game world, while bigger than in DE, is still quite small, it's mostly 6 general areas of London's East End connected by rail, from which characters can enter various establishments, ranging from an apothecary to a cabaret/brothel, there's also a mandatory sewers level, some of the shady dealings of the criminal underworld happen in the actual underworld,
- the RPG systems are pretty underwhelming, despite the fact they were inspired by the ancient medical theory of humorism; each of the playable characters is described by a set of 4 stats (different for each), governed by 4 bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. These stats "talk" in playable characters' heads DE style, suggesting actions, making observations, and allowing checks. Unfortunately, failing these checks (instead of dice Tarot cards are used to establish the result) does not produce funny or interesting consequences, like in DE - failure usually means you don't get to explore some line of questioning or you don't succeed in a certain action. Stats can be improved by certain actions and usage of limited resources, but there is no real difference between which you choose to improve because you never know and have very limited influence over what stat will be checked next, so the wisest move is to strive to improve all of them as much as possible, to be able to advance various plotlines; hence there are no real 'builds',
- there is no proper combat system; several violent confrontations are visualized in the form of lightly animated comic book strips, and governed by stat checks and items you carry. While Teddy's blunderbuss and Atticus' swordstick get some usage, I don't believe I ever had the opportunity to fire Clara's derringer, though I pointed it at several characters,
- Sovereign Syndicate is more of a detective game than a full-fledged RPG - with each character you gather clues, question witnesses, investigate crime scenes and bodies, and sometimes chase after a suspect. Stat checks merely decide whether you succeed or fail in each of these endeavors, but they are often very arbitrary and don't give you much control over the character system.
Of course the game is considered Disco Elysium clone, but what it really reminded me of was Vampyr. Not only because it's plot is happening in the poor neighborhoods of London. Also because it's very character-driven. The 6 zones we can explore are populated by several dozens of NPCs with which we interact numerous times throughout the game and can observe them through the eyes of three (four) different characters. In the end we will learn their darkest secrets, discover what they are hiding and sometimes - pass our judgement on them. I suspect a pacifist playthrough is possible, but in my adventures with Sovereign Syndicate blood was spilled more than once by my playable characters. In the end only Clara's hand were kept clean (of murder at least, cause she managed to commit several other sins).
All in all, I find Sovereign Syndicate as an ambitious first-time effort from a small studio with very limited budget. I would like to see what the talented people at Crimson Herring will come up with next. After all the plotline of the game seems like an introduction into a much greater adventure, an origin story of the characters and the uneasy alliance they forge (should the player decide so). The world of Sovereign Syndicate awaits further exploration and I hope we'll get the opportunity. Perhaps next time with an actual combat mechanics? One can always hope.
- the world - alternative Victorian England with steampunk technology taken from Atlantis and mythical creatures living among humans - is interesting and pretty well presented, I'd like to see more of it in the potential sequel,
- writing is efficient and believable; it supports the setting and the story pretty well, yet it's not even close to Disco Elysium level,
- the three playable characters: the minotaur illusionist and drunkard Atticus Daley, the human prostitute and an occasional thief Clara Reed, and the dwarven war veteran, monster hunter, and engineer Teddy Redgrave are all likable, if not always at first, while the fourth playable character that we get access to later in the game is adorable, but we don't spend too much time with it,
- the plotline sure was interesting enough to carry me until the end. Each of the playable characters pursues a set of clearly defined goals, either searching for long lost mother, a couple of children kidnapped from an orphanage, trying to capture a Jack the Ripper-like Courtesan Killer, or investigating the dark deeds of a popular and brilliant industrial magnate,
- the story is divided into chapters, in each we control one of the characters. Sometimes others appear as NPCs in different protagonists' chapters, but usually, the three heroes act alone and independently of each other, trying to unravel numerous mysteries; only in the grand finale they start to interact and exchange vital information, which helps them to achieve their respective aims,
- the game world, while bigger than in DE, is still quite small, it's mostly 6 general areas of London's East End connected by rail, from which characters can enter various establishments, ranging from an apothecary to a cabaret/brothel, there's also a mandatory sewers level, some of the shady dealings of the criminal underworld happen in the actual underworld,
- the RPG systems are pretty underwhelming, despite the fact they were inspired by the ancient medical theory of humorism; each of the playable characters is described by a set of 4 stats (different for each), governed by 4 bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. These stats "talk" in playable characters' heads DE style, suggesting actions, making observations, and allowing checks. Unfortunately, failing these checks (instead of dice Tarot cards are used to establish the result) does not produce funny or interesting consequences, like in DE - failure usually means you don't get to explore some line of questioning or you don't succeed in a certain action. Stats can be improved by certain actions and usage of limited resources, but there is no real difference between which you choose to improve because you never know and have very limited influence over what stat will be checked next, so the wisest move is to strive to improve all of them as much as possible, to be able to advance various plotlines; hence there are no real 'builds',
- there is no proper combat system; several violent confrontations are visualized in the form of lightly animated comic book strips, and governed by stat checks and items you carry. While Teddy's blunderbuss and Atticus' swordstick get some usage, I don't believe I ever had the opportunity to fire Clara's derringer, though I pointed it at several characters,
- Sovereign Syndicate is more of a detective game than a full-fledged RPG - with each character you gather clues, question witnesses, investigate crime scenes and bodies, and sometimes chase after a suspect. Stat checks merely decide whether you succeed or fail in each of these endeavors, but they are often very arbitrary and don't give you much control over the character system.
Of course the game is considered Disco Elysium clone, but what it really reminded me of was Vampyr. Not only because it's plot is happening in the poor neighborhoods of London. Also because it's very character-driven. The 6 zones we can explore are populated by several dozens of NPCs with which we interact numerous times throughout the game and can observe them through the eyes of three (four) different characters. In the end we will learn their darkest secrets, discover what they are hiding and sometimes - pass our judgement on them. I suspect a pacifist playthrough is possible, but in my adventures with Sovereign Syndicate blood was spilled more than once by my playable characters. In the end only Clara's hand were kept clean (of murder at least, cause she managed to commit several other sins).
All in all, I find Sovereign Syndicate as an ambitious first-time effort from a small studio with very limited budget. I would like to see what the talented people at Crimson Herring will come up with next. After all the plotline of the game seems like an introduction into a much greater adventure, an origin story of the characters and the uneasy alliance they forge (should the player decide so). The world of Sovereign Syndicate awaits further exploration and I hope we'll get the opportunity. Perhaps next time with an actual combat mechanics? One can always hope.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2015
- Messages
- 13,451
Lord_Potato
Arcane
That's because I purchased it on GOG
Anyway, if most of their budget came from a grant perhaps they don't need to sell a lot of copies to get even. Hopefully.
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