Recent reviews by Hemlock

World building is exquisite, as is the sound and music. Gameplay is decent, but the writing is... awful. What a fall from the first game. The voice acting, particularly that of Amicia and Hugo, is very good and does much to polish the turd, but it's laid bare with the supporting characters who have the worst writing and mediocre acting. The game tries to deal with the elephant in the room - why should Hugo live if he causes the destruction of thousands of innocents? - but then glides right past it as you continue to play a merry band of murderers with pangs of conscience. This is only made worse by the truly painful banter between Sophia and Hugo, and the complete lack of logic to any of the character arcs. Holy hell what a rat's nest of a script.

Might be worth it if you're very curious and the game is on sale, but I wish I hadn't.

Production design, environments, and audio work were good. Voice acting also top-notch. But that's about all worthwhile here.

The gameplay is boring, the level design childish, the animations constantly take you out of the narrative because of how rough they are.

And the story... truly terrible. Pretty much no one makes any logical or good choices, main character included. As the main character investigates the ruins on Mars, she learns that those who colonized Mars endured despotism, terrorism, and a civil war before finally finding peace and balance. Doesn't last long though! The Earthers (main character) show up, blow up the colonists oxygen supply, and steal their two ships (ARKs), basically condemning every colonist to a slow death on Mars. All based on a 3 minute conversation between a daughter and a father who don't see eye-to-eye. To boot, the poor colonists who try to prevent the travesty and are trapped on the stolen ships... also meet a bloody end at the hands of the Earthers. And the writers have the gall to end the story with the main character saying "We can do better." Well, yeah. Your characters are a four-person murder squad. Low bar there.

Don't bother with this one.

The core game around which everything revolves is decidely unenjoyable. Style and music are delightful, but it's not worth slogging through the crappy gameplay for the paper-thin narrative. Better off playing Banner Saga or something else better designed.

Truly one of the most painful video game experiences I've endured recently. The environments are creative and the music is good, but everything else is eye-rollingly amateur. Voice acting like they cast from the worst community theatre troupe they could find, movement so slow that you're discouraged from playing the one mechanic the game has (finding ink drawings littered at random), and the script... dear lord, the script. It felt like listening to a philosophy lecture given by a junior high boy who was just dumped by his first serious girlfriend.

Don't waste your money. Terrible experience.