Review for v.95012
Edit: Ended up dropping the game, moved down to two stars.
At the time of writing this I'm just over 60% done according to the walkthrough, which is still many hours into the game. My original plan was to review this upon completing the story, but truth be told I'm starting to find this so much of a slog to get through that I'm not sure that will happen.
I've likened the previous NLT media games to enjoyably bad movies. They aren't my favorite games, but the NLT style for lack of better words was enjoyable when in a mood for something less serious. However where Treasure of Nadia was a big step up from the first game, The Genesis Order feels like a big step to the side, and even down in some ways.
When I first began playing this, I thought it was going to take a bit of a more grounded approach compared to previous games. The MC seemed a little more mature, and perhaps intelligent even. I like the idea of being a young small town detective trying to prove himself at the station.
Man did that feeling go south fast. The Genesis Order provides you with an arguably interesting plot, but takes every single supporting character and dumbs them down to the most mind numbing level possible. The MC is a cocky asshole who solves things mostly due to plot armor, but because every character is just as dumb as him it doesn't even matter. Even the characters who are presented as intelligent, like the commissioner, fall prey to dialogue that feels like it was written for middle schoolers to enjoy.
Though this is just as much of a fuckfest as the last game, there's even less development this time before you're doing threesomes with the whole town. Characters have a couple traits slapped on them to make them stand somewhat apart from each other, but regardless all sort of mesh together in the end with how easy they all are. If you liked the sex scenes from the previous game, this is much of the same. I'll give points for creativity on some of them, and I do like the girl on girl stuff. But once again which such shallow characters, even compared to ToN, they don't hit as much.
The game has stuck to its puzzle-like nature with how it plays. Once again you'll find a lot of familiarity here if you played other NLT games. I don't mind it, but it didn't really innovate on it. The treasure hunting feels tacked on as well, considering we are a detective in this one. It feels like they couldn't figure out a better way for us to make money so they copy pasted it.
Obviously the devs have found a formula that works given the backing they have, but I can't help but think how amazing their games would be if they just put any effort at all into making deeper characters and dialogue. I'll probably push myself to finish this at some point, and I'll update my review if the remaining parts change any of my feelings. But as of being halfway through the game, I'm truthfully more bored than anything with this.
And the worst part of it all? They did away with the fishing minigame. Diabolical.