Empyrean 12+

Not going to lie; I was nervous spending so much money for one COG and risking hating it. But I took the risk and it was worth it. The story took me half a day reading through it all to get through it. Even on replays it takes me an hour or two from start to finish. The story itself was enjoyable and I found myself taking pleasure in getting to understand all the characters. (My personal fav is Amro, whose cheeks I just want to pinch!)

It does get slightly confusing when your given the options to save building A or B and you can't remember what the two are. The stats confused me by their titles- I didn't get how they were matched up or how what you did would effect what. Made no sense to me. (After a few play through I got some of it figured out but I hate how long it took me.) I also struggled with imagining the world itself. There were details but then there wasn't at the same time. So I had to knock a star off for those reasons.

It's tragic that a game with such a good story and unique setting is ruined by awful stat designed.

Seriously, for most of the choices in the game you have to guess which stat correlates with it, and the stats themselves are just confusing sometimes. Some choices I can't even tell which one is reaction or vigor, or which one correlates with finesse and not vigor. It honestly ruins the game when I make every single decision incorrectly because I don't even understand what stats are being used.

Besides this, this game is great.

I loved the world building and story for Empyrean. The author did a great job of creating an interesting dieselpunk world and filling it with interesting characters and a dramatic political crisis narrative.

Unfortunately, as far as CoG games go this one was disappointing. The stats were confusing given the choices offered during scenarios and I never really felt like I understood what my characters strengths and weaknesses were. In fact, I don't know if my character had any strengths because every choice I made seemed to backfire/go wrong and allow an NPC to save the day in my clumsy wake.

As a result, when I should have been enjoying the story I was just getting annoyed at how little information I was being given to make good choices as my character failed every choice I made.