CONSCRIPT: Director’s Cut

КОГДА ПОДПИСАЛ КОНТРАКТ НА ДЕГУСТАЦИЯ МАЙОНЕЗА И ТЕПЕРЬ ТЫ НА ЗАПАДНОМ ФРОНТЕ

Brutal, estuve pegado durante horas a este juego, gran jugabilidad, escenarios brutales, no hay jumpscares baratos, nada alejado de la realidad, solo guerra, no hay nada más aterrador que eso...

A very good game, with an excellent story developed by Mochi throughout the game, depicting the horrors of war in 1916. I finished one of the four endings and it left me wanting to experience all of them. I usually stick to my usual games, but I gave this title a chance because of what I saw in terms of story and gameplay. I extend my sincere thanks to all the developers, programmers, translators, and everyone involved in creating this game, and a warm greeting to Mochi for this masterpiece.

Another difficult rating. At the end of the day, what it boils down to a solo developer putting a tremendous effort to build an interesting (yet flawed) action adventure game. So all in all, I recommend it + Good WW1 trench warfare atmosphere + Good pixed graphics + Good combat mechanics + Good delivery of the horrors of WW1 BUT... - Bad UI, really difficult to use menus which look very, very bland - Huge amount of backtracking with only certain map points for saving the game - Very bizzare choice of limited inventory and consequentially inventory management. A lot of exploration (and backtracking) is done because you put the quest item in the big infinite box but didn't have space to carry it with you. So you have to go back to the infinite box then walk again, use the item rinse repeat. - RATS!! I read that in the current version of the game, the rats are considerably nerfed but the fact that they can infect you which HALVES your max HP unless you get a first aid kit (which is a rare item) with possibly 1 hit is huge. Considering the fact that you are backtracking a lot in the game and rats are "re-spawning". You can limit the re-spawning but that is also done with limited resources. So, innovative idea, good early 2000's Resident Evil-like UI vibes, interesting and fresh setting, good pixel art, good combat, but a lot of design flaws. Looking forward to the next games of the developer though :)

Honestly, I was hoping this game would show us what real war looks like in the movies (1917, Dunkirk, All Quiet on the Western Front), and I was expecting to play a character who constantly suffers from shell shock. But the core gameplay is just mediocre. It feels like a mix of Battlefield 1 and old-school Resident Evil games. The atmosphere is great, but because of its slow pace, you feel like quitting every 30 minutes.

Has the guts of Resident Evil, some of the cosmetics of Silent Hill, the top-down cardinal map of Zelda, macabrely packaged in a dark pixel game. The horror is war. The enemy is man. There's nothing supernatural, no demons, no monsters. The reward for courage is PTSD. Very nicely done, good ambience, I think as respectful to WWI as a pixel game can be. Has raised my interest in the French military of WWI. Some people have complained about the backtracking. It's true—even after you kind of know where you're going, and despite some of the shortcut unlocks, there's a bit of tedious map traversal. That's to say nothing of the flashbacks, which you can—and I think should—skip (although you need to do all of them to get clues for an optional puzzle). The puzzles are fair and the information you need to solve them organically available...mostly. I read some other reviews and the puzzles are apparently unpopular with a lot of people, but I thought they were middle-difficulty, the clues readily available. You will have to read some of the text (in-game journals and signs and whatnot), but there's not a lot of it. I do kind of appreciate that they randomize some of the combinations so cheaters can't just look up the answer...but you might be a cheater who hates that. A lot of achievements are locked behind NG+, and there's honestly not a lot of replay value. It's emotionally hard-hitting (again, despite being a pixel game—maybe because of it), but replaying it completely breaks the immersion. I started a NG+ run to complete some things and I think it's ruining the magic of my first playthrough. Some of the weapons are so late game, you don't really get a chance to play with them. That, and the weapons and ammo hoarding (because of limited resources) has a very Resident Evil-feel to it. I don't hate the resource scarcity mechanic, but I wound up with a surplus of stuff I saved until some unknown moment which never came, afraid to use it up until I absolutely needed it. Gameplay-wise, it's not bad. The somewhat tiring, awkward movement is conducive to the scene, the sense of fatigue and reluctance and terror. As a piece of interactive pixel art giving homage to WWI, it was excellent. A good little piece of historical fiction, depicting war as scary, not fun.

This game has some cool stuff going for it, but it suffers from repetitive enemy placement and design, and some unusual sections/set-pieces. It has the skeleton of a resident evil game, but without all of the gameplay and environmental variation that made those games really memorable. If there was a middle option for this review, I would select it, as I don't think this is a bad game by any means. I do think this could've used more time in the oven, and I'm hoping this dev takes another crack game development in the future. I'd like to see what they make next.