Dustborn

A generally annoying, boring and stupid experience. I bought this to play with some buddies after hearing it was bad and after what felt like 10+ hours, only an hour and a half had passed. it's just awful. Awful writing and terrible attempts at humour. The characters are incredibly annoying and unlikeable; it also has a wholly uninspired story that constantly seems to dodge around the topic at hand. Decisions you make feel unimportant/unimpactful as you mostly just whittle down all of the dialogue options. There's also simple combat that lacks any real purpose or adds anything. The graphics are boring, stale and not really interesting. Just like the characters. And the gameplay. Pretty much everything really. No thanks.

This game is a mess. It's a genre mashup and it doesn't really do anything well. I can't really get behind any of the characters as they are all pretty unlikeable.

Soooo... It is a game, like a game made in like a studio umm... As a LGBTQA+ member those chaarcters were... Indeed chaarcters? Like they were there? they are... Yes. They are :3 I would prefer to eat rocks than play this game, it was unbearable, I felt like pushing through a swamp trying to feel the story That's what's wrong, it was just SO BORING, not engaging, none of the characters were memorable, me and my friend who are like, the gayest of gays didn't enjoy those gays :< It was 5/10 in the worst way, like the midest mid of mid

Aight, buckle in. The discourse over this game was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid. If you unironically use the word 'woke' you can check out here because I ain't one of you. I finished this game and my thoughts are that this game is controversial for two reasons. First it is currently controversial for a game to be anything other than a 0 or a 10. Either it's the worst game ever or its the best game ever. But I remember the PS2 Era, the Xbox 360 era. An era of what we call 'Double A' games. Dustborn is... that. The second reason is that this game is very... corporate diverse. To the point it feels like a checklist was on hand. You know a certain very loud group of idiots hated this game the moment a black woman was the main character. But I don't care about either of those things so I gave it a fair shot. The combat is bad, it just is. This should've been like a telltale game or life is strange and just forgone the combat because I cannot stress how bad this combat feels to you. It never gets better. Beyond that the game is just downright broken in a few places. A hard lock after a boss fight that happened every single time I fought that boss. Another hard lock after doing dishes *after* that boss fight. Both bugs reported as early as november of last year and still unfixed. Luckily they seem to know the combat is bad, so every combat section has a 'skip combat' feature which if that's there... I must ask again why this isn't a telltale/life is strange sortof narrative thing? Why is this half baked combat here? If not for the skip combat feature I wouldn't have been able to complete the game from the above mentioned boss bug so thanks for that feature at least. The story is all over the place too. There are some genuinely cool ideas here but the story is so ADHD and won't focus on any one thing. The main villain comes out of no where with no explanation or build up, the ancillary villains just kinda... vanish because of vibes, and your crew feels bloated and filled with a bunch of characters who if they got cut from the game wouldn't change the plot. The crew that DO effect the plot are of mixed quality. So if we go back to my point about review scores. This is somewhere between a 5 or 6. It's not awful, it's just also not great either and it frustrates me to the degree that I can see potential in the ideas that aren't well written out. Also what the ♥♥♥♥ is that ending. The last hour or two of gameplay feels like they ran out of budget and were sprinting towards the ending which definitely didn't help with the feeling that some of these cast members were pointless. I would genuinely be fascinated to hear about the cut content of this game because what the ♥♥♥♥ must that look like given all the halfbaked ideas. It's very rough, going back to my talk on review scores i'd give it a five or six. If you can get it on a deep sale for less than like... ten bucks? Grab it. It's a weird trip.

This game is a joke, right? I went into this with an open mind, despite the negative buzz, in hopes, that it might not be as bad as some have painted it to be. And it's actually not...........it's far worse. I'll just get the positive out of the way - the comic book style visuals are actually kind of nice. Those are all the good things i can think of. The story follows Pax and her friends in this dystopian alternative version of America, She is an anomal, which, in this universe, I guess, basically means X-men, but with way lamer superpowers as is evidenced by her own, which is a power of a word, where she can, for example, block, trigger, or later even cancel to, essentially, influence or manipulate others. This feels like a parody of millenials made by a boomer. It doesn't stop there. The whole story aspect of this story driven game is incompetently made. The characters are insufferable and their dialogue sounds like it wasn't even written by a human being. They are supposed to be this gang of loveable outcasts fighting against opressive regime, but each time they interact with each other or anyone else, they come off as either obnoxious, or as toxic idiots. I have way more complaints - The plot is just unfocused. the world-building is bad. Plenty of moments don't make sense, or feel forced. The allegory, or symbolism is ham fisted. They later introduce other characters, some of which could have been cut out of the game completely. the pacing is terrible - it meanders until the final leg, which is rushed, almost like writers gave up. The gameplay isn't any better. In this type of borderline visual novel/walking sim game, it usually comes off as an afterthought, this being no exception. It includes way too simple adventure game puzzles, clunky Guitar Hero minigame and even clunkier combat. That last one is just painful - seriously, I recommend skipping every encounter. Oh, and there's music. The instrumental/ambient tracks are serviceable, i guess, but the vocal tracks? Forget the great songs from games such as Persona series, Silent hill series, or, from more recent examples, Hades and Claire Obscure: Expedition 33. The tracks we have here, sound like they were written and composed by a middle aged person, who tried to mimic style of hipster indie rock, that is at least a decade out of date and completely failed at it. I wanted to try this game mostly out of morbid curiosity, since the same dev made Dreamfall chapters (A pretty bad final entry in a franchise with a lot of wasted potential). Both of these are essentially poor man's Quantic Dreams games. At least QA titles have great presentation and can be enjoyed in "The Room" or "The Samurai Cop" type of way. Dustborn is just an unlikeable slog that drags for way too long.

So, where do I even start? If we manage to put aside the forced inclusivity - constant lines like ‘you’re free to be whoever you are,’ ‘choose your pronouns,’ ‘your appearance doesn’t define you,’ and similar messages that flood you from the prologue onward - the game is actually very enjoyable from a narrative standpoint, at least until Chapter 7. There’s a HUGE mystery, unanswered questions that genuinely pull you in, the identity of the missing girl, the origin of the Vox, the heist plan, the betrayal… all the ingredients for a great story are there. Then, suddenly, the abyss. Everything collapses into a messy pile of random ideas, and the game turns into nothing but combat - repetitive, poorly designed combat - which ramps up dramatically toward the end instead of easing off. You’re hit with a barrage of explanations that make no sense, decisions made simply because the script says so, weak and predictable twists. Honestly, despite what people call ‘woke,’ I would have recommended it up to well past the halfway point. But I really can’t. The last three chapters were extremely stressful to play through, and watching what unfolded without suffering was impossible (And not in the sense that it’s hard to digest or emotionally overwhelming, no, nothing like that!!! The explanations are practically nonexistent, the story couldn’t be more predictable, and instead of building up any emotional weight toward the finale, it somehow manages to completely shut you down. Disappointment everywhere). Not recommended. You can decide for yourselves why.

The worst choice-based game I've played this is so boring and nothing happens except playing random ass music