The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante

Got this game for free, and I've enjoyed it quite a bit. I definitely recommend it. I want to make that clear, only because I'll probably talk about the negatives more than the positives- but only because it's easier to articulate what this game does right, and harder to explain what it does wrong. I want to be clear that, this is a positive review and the good outweighs the bad. The good: This game is basically a choose-your-own-adventure novel, in the best way. If you like narrative-driven games, this is great. It's basically an interactive novel. The story is genuinely compelling and the characters well-developed. The narrative made me actually care what happened to the characters, and made me want happy endings for them as well as myself. The world and lore are interesting, and the world with magic and reincarnation in a 1600-1700s setting is fresh enough to feel like something fantasy, but not just another LOTR or D&D setting. (Hey, there's this and Greedfall, what else?) The artstyle is simple but it works. It's visually interesting even with as muted as it looks. I think it works because it fits the setting- one could imagine illustrations like that in a book in the early modern era. The bad: There's two complaints I have with this game, and it's not in ideas, but in their execution. First, there were the skill checks. This game does not need skill checks. Choose-your own-adventure novels did not have skill checks. This game isn't an RPG and shouldn't try to be. (I love RPGs, don't get me wrong, this just isn't one.) The problem is, it doesn't enhance the story to have a decision shown that you could make, but an arbitrary number tells you you can't. Again, that works in RPGs but not in the type of narrative that this is trying to be. The story itself should limit your options. Don't let us make inconsistent decisions, but there's no need to attach numbers to it, just give us a story that branches off as a result of our past choices. The second issue is the plot twists. Even though the narrative is great, there were times when the plot twists felt, for lack of a better term, like a betrayal. In a sense, a narrative makes a sort of bargain with the audience. We agree to suspend our disbelief about elements of the story that may be unrealistic but that make the story more interesting. In exchange, the narrative agrees that those elements operate on some sort of internal logic. Plot twists walk a very fine line on that bargain. They want to catch us off guard, give us something we weren't expecting by bending the rules, but when the rules are broken entirely, it feels cheap and we feel let down instead of surprised. It's the difference between M. Night Shyamalan in the Sixth Sense vs. M. Night Shyamalan in the Village. The former gives us a plot twist that answers resolved questions we had in the narrative, and make it fun to watch a second time, knowing the twist. The latter just completely betrays any trust we put in the narrative to make sense, and so instead of being surprised, we're annoyed that we invested ourselves in a story that doesn't follow its own premise. This game has both kind of plot twists. The good ones are good, but the bad ones feel unearned, and feel like you're being railroaded into choices you don't want to make, in a game that's supposed to offer you choices that matter. Overall, this is a positive review, but the game isn't perfect.