Unfortunately, a lot of people can't stand the very idea of giving people goods without some requisite suffering in exchange, so I fear we'll need to experience a lot of The Nightmare before we have a chance to get there.

BTW you can't change the country of registration and for some changes of location the Ebay FAQ just plain tells you "create a new account with your new address" lol. And that's not difficult to do, whatever, so the unhelpful fucking error message was the main offender here, I'd say.

Oh I missed the earlier post and this looks amazing. Pledged, really hope you get the funding!

That said, once I am done with this, I think I gotta forbid myself from roguelites.

Like MOBA, gacha and MMORPG, some games not only take too much time, which is bad enough, but also draw me in and occupy my mind to a degree that's detrimental to my actual life.

Bluesky in August

Dorry for not cropping the image, I forgot this isn't twitter and Bsky will display the entire picture 😭

Playing this game is haunting. 20 years of dreaming of - and dreading - a Bloodlines sequel, traces of the cancelled project, even the vision behind this one. I look at those beautiful bespoke interiors surrounded by perfunctory side-quests and can't stop thinking of the wasted potential of it all.

As I said, I don't think you feel like an elder, and a noir detective is a tired trope imo, but the NPCs and their dialogues are colourful and entertaining. This is a decent story adventure game padded with an action/RPG they didn't have the resources to polish or indeed finish, it feels to me.

Okay, to find some good: the visuals and the music are good across board imo, tying clothes to clan skill progression is a cute idea, the selection of powers isn't bad actually, it's just dragged down by the combat system's other deficiencies.

And hell, the story is... fine.

Well, it's too large compared to what I'd prefer, which is a small packed hub. It would be very difficult, even impossible to pack the map of this size with interesting stuff. I feel like this is a small map for a different genre, but an untenable one for either an RPG or an action/RPG of this kind.

The last complaint for now: I actually quite like Phyre so far, but what's the point of making you a temporarily embarrassed elder so that you can neither flaunt your boomer power nor roleplay an underdog, ideally one of your own choosing? Fabien's sections feel much more natural, honestly.

The game is just clearly under-baked all around. Like, picking up a note opens up plain text in your codex. Nobody would consciously choose to make it this way, I'm pretty sure that's a lack of time/resources thing. As well as most of the things I'm complaining about.

Approaching a story NPC often traps you in the dialogue, and then kicks you from the room once you're done. Not that the game has much "flow" to speak of, but then even the dialogues take away your agency.

Don't get me started on the always available detective vision and following scents.