Sovereign Syndicate - isometric narrative RPG set in steampunk fantasy London

[Grampy_Bone]

Imagine playing a game for "the message"

 

[OttoQuitmarck]

Imagine playing a game for "the message"

You gotta play this shit for something, it doesn't have any gameplay to speak of

 

[Lord_Potato]

Imagine playing a game for "the message"

And what would that message be?

 

[mediocrepoet]

Imagine playing a game for "the message"

And what would that message be?

'taur lives matter.

 

[Tyranicon]

I probably would've bought this game if it had combat. As it is, I'm not a huge fan of Disco, so a Disco-like in a setting I'm not super keen on is a hard sell. <--- I expect that's the perspective of a lot of would-be buyers.

That being said, I can respect some studio following their indie dream and putting out a complete product in a competent manner. Good steam reviews and not too many bugs (for an RPG).

That's pretty rare these days.

 

[Konjad]

I tried it a while ago and didn't post about it as I left it to try to play some more later... but I never did. So here are my thoughts about it.

It copied the formula of games such as Disco Elysium or Planescape Torment - where the bulk of the game is reading, making some dialogue choice or two and reading more.

But where DE or PST succeeded many games failed. It's easy to see why. PST was a game which touched a lot of philosophical matters about mortality and morality, ideas people thought about thousands of years ago and will probably think about it in thousands of years in the future, and an abundance of text was the consequence of it. Disco Elysium was a game which brought into question modern politics and culture, with the player making choices about his own worldview and spiralling into it, and a lenghty texts were the result of such approach.

Sovereign Syndicate, however, is written with a contrasting perspective. It reminds me more of Torment: Numanuma. It's a game that was made with the design like "let's make a game like that other one 'cos it was popular, it had lots of text, so we need a lot of it too". So you read through pages and pages of tedious dialogues to get dull stories in a passionless world to complete jejune quests. Then you start skipping it more and more and finally ask yourself "why do I even play it?"

 

[Lord_Potato]

Kind agree on this one. With this kind gameplay the game had to be carried by the writing and the story - and ultimately they were too underwhelming to make the whole experience memorable. Where Disco Elysium succeeds, Sovereign Syndicate fails.