Fallen Hero: Rebirth

One of the best Interactive Fiction options available on Steam. The writing gives plenty of opportunity for introspection and is effective at questioning the player's decisions. I especially liked that there are plenty of options for the protagonist feeling like their life is out of control and they're just along for the ride. One of the biggest criticisms of this story is that the protagonist's motivation is abysmally vague. Unfortunately, this was an intentional choice on the part of the author, because that motivation is revealed in the sequel: [spoiler]the protagonist is a Re-Gene and was made, not born, and resents being tortured and molded into a tool[/spoiler]. I understand why the author wanted to conceal this, but that ambiguity makes it incredibly difficult to empathize with the protagonist. There are many options about "showing them" or "revealing the truth" but without any context, those all ring hollow, if not being downright confusing. Who are we even angry at? Organized criminals? Hero society? The government? It was a calculated risk to hide this until the second book, but... it falls short. It is simply too much to ask that readers ignore the protagonist's entire motivation for their plans. One thing the game suffers from (which is thankfully resolved in the sequel) is the lack of checkpoints. If you are achievement-hunting and make a mistake, it's back to the beginning for you. There are also some rare typos (usually pronoun swaps) but they aren't common.

自己绿自己这个内容太好味了……本来想着用第二身份跟老O谈但是发现特别拧巴……用第二身份逼问老O对MC自己还有没有感情的时候真的太爽了！作者你真会拿捏人的心思……你要是对Cythia还有感情为何还要flirt别人啊！但还是很好吃就对了……MC被迫假死的原因在本作里面有点不明了，以及，谁是第二个RO啊！完全不知道，不会是Dr吧！

I only have 5.6 hours in the game at the time of writing this review. I knew absolutely nothing about this series before playing, I saw someone mention it online and decided to dive in head first. And man did it not disappoint. The game ran fine with no issues; the inclusion of dark mode and a dyslexia font was super nice and made my experience so comfortable. I won't spoil anything but I need to include this in my review. Being a trans person, it was so nice to see transgender not only as an option for my character, but actually thought of. What do I mean by this? Usually in stories/games when a character is transgender, it's mentioned once and never brought up again. In my playthrough, it was brought up at least 3 times and there was a moment where it kind of went into the world building as well. This is the kind of inclusivity I like to see! Actually having that be part of the world and not just thrown into a sentence for points really means a lot, at least to me.

Very good, extremely emotional, takes you places you don't expect and makes you have so many mixed feelings. Hardly an interactive experience (there are many many choices, but you don't get to feel them in this one, it all feels like a setup, I hope they matter in 2nd and 3rd books) and the replayability is nonexistent (due to that). Even though there is more text than you get on the first playthrough, in practice you always get to see 90% of the story. There are some errors as expected, both in continuity and description, sometimes the choices are impossible to understand. The two replays were almost slogs, because apart from trying hardest to craft a different character it all turned into basically the same (with slightly different spices/flavour on top) apart from a 10 minute emotional scene. I played it in total 3 times. Tip: You can get all the most emotional scenes in one playthrough (aside from one where you [spoiler] pick between 2 characters [/spoiler]), you just have to [spoiler] keep your relationship fairly positive with everybody, romance them and be personal [/spoiler] Well worth the full cost, and makes it feel like the second is too

为了给第二部刷开局打了四个档，总之没买的快来买！买了的快玩2！[strike] 如果你有逃避型或者committing problem那你有福了作者允许你无尽地选择逃避是不是很棒[/strike] [spoiler] 完了Ortega彻底改变了我的xp体系（悲） [/spoiler] [spoiler] 以及存档一下开门大吉的攻略，不知道门是啥的请忽略（？） Opening Gates Guide Creator: shad https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V6-nDRoHBtR1L7xcqW4B7xEm-pDWdQPkySB43Cd94qQ/edit?tab=t.0 [/spoiler]

Absolutely incredible writing, I never knew I needed this in my life?? I'm not even a big fan of the genre, but this does everything I could possibly want from a telepath MC and MORE!