Having played the game I have a few comments (hopefully constructive). I'm sure they've all been made before, but...
UI: Generally good and snappy and got the job done, but a few comments still
- It would have been nice not to have to go to the portal every time you wanted to go between Edinburgh and Camelot. Why couldn't the quick location thing have had a tab for each and moving would have been much easier?
- It would have been nice with a little more information in-game. Instead of going to the wiki to check skills for companions you didn't use so much when going to elsewhere, it would have been nice to have that information easily available in-game. Similarly for the exact effects of your stats.
- Very minor, but I kept being disappointed in the gem screen that it was drag and drop into the slots, but then you couldn't drag them between slots
- For some reason I could not get rollback/replay to work in Book 2, and sometimes it would skip conversation on mouse click or space, so I relied on that throughout to go back and read the text that it skipped past.
- I think the rules of the game is that you can only change gem-set in the first turn? It was never explained that I recall, but that seemed to be my experience. In any case it could do with some more in-game info outside the tutorial about how the game works.
Graphics: Great renders, other parts could be improved
- The renders are great, although a few of the movies could be improved. The dragonfire one looked a bit odd to me among others.
- UI graphics could be improved a lot.
Gameplay: Mostly fun, clever idea with the poker table, but with limitations
- The poker battle system is clever, but unfortunately very random. It turns out that a 3-by-3 matrix of hold-em and 5 cards on your hand often don't translate into very many possible combinations. Once you start getting companions that can mess with the board and the cards (Molly, Chloe, Akane) it helps a lot, and makes battles a lot more strategic and a lot more fun. However, then you have locked battles without any such companions - and often against the largest enemies in the game like outsiders and Ammit, and you have to whittle down 500k HP with more or less RNG. I fell back on relying on Barrier and direct damage companions far too often.
- Another limitation is how hard it is to hit any of the top half combos. Even with Sorceresses and Seers in your party expecting to hit anything above Four of a Kind or Full House is doomed. I'm pretty sure I never once saw a Royal Flush, and I had 1 or 2 Straight Flush and a handful of Five of a Kind throughout all three books. Given that the only gems with interesting effects are flawless gems, that means you don't really get to use any of them until Book 3 when you've accumulated enough Power, and even then 1 or 2 of them in each set at most. Some of them seem like they'd have very interesting synergies, but it never came into play.
- Mostly your power was more or less defined by the three lowest gems used. Counting on anything above Three of a Kind reliably was not happening. This also contributed to late game being more or less a set of lightning or ice, to slow the enemy while Bella/Emily/Katie nuke the enemy.
- It seemed like the enemies on the Paths stopped growing at some point and were more or less just irritants that could be killed with one or two whacks of Hammer Time.
Story: A++
- Excellent, excellent story. There were a few small hiccups to me and I remember thinking there was one plothole, though I can't recall it now. In any case extremely minor and the story is great. I worried with the "timeskip", and it did throw me out of my state of disbelief for a short while, but it picked it back up brilliantly.
- Even better than the story was the inter-personal relationships and how they were portrayed. Neither too dramatic, or too easy. This is the primary draw that lured me back to play and finish the game. Keeping that large a gallery of minor and major supporting cast balanced and working is truly impressive. Now that I'm done I find myself definitely wanting more stories of these people - everyday life or high stakes - doesn't matter. The writing for them was that good.
After I was done i found out the game was on Steam so I checked it out. I will say that €33 is a bit too much for me. But I'll wishlist it and maybe get it (perhaps when NG+ is done, though I'm unsure what exactly NG+ does here) later.
I give Steam keys to all patreon/subscribestar supporters, and those work in countries that have banned LoM for being too spicy (like Germany, North & South Korea).
