Some aspects of the gameplay are fine - some, right up until you start noticing the limited amount of variety. Not much enemy diversity here, which is a terrible shame, in particular enemy types, and all that. Strong DEI focus on White Men as the leading enemies, which is painfully cliche at this stage. A bit more diversity with respect to our bad guys would have been much appreciated. It's going along the "gender diversity" route as well with aspects of the narrative, and character choices, but quite full on with a lot of that, to an extent that actually pulls you out of the game, and back into the social politics of the real world. Nothing subtle in the writing at all. I wonder if they could have tapped into these things with a bit more care and attention. It's a shame, because I don't expect to be pulled back into real world social political dynamics when I'm playing a fantasy game, however maybe that is indeed where some of these issues are best placed. Hmmmm? Interesting thought there.
These things can actually be helpful to tap into, but the full frontal approach, so to speak, in this game, unfortunately doesn't appear to have been particularly helpful.
Another aspect of repetition that I quite dislike is all the "zit" popping that goes on, in order to progress through most areas. Lumps of blight that need to be burst here there and everywhere, in light of which the overtly "kind" and cheery tone of the narrative feels very out of place. Corny and quite patronising actually.
In any case, you can avoid certain themes, to an extent, and get one of the worst endings, or allow it to go full throttle at you with respect to it's ideological overreach, in order to get a "good ending." There were certain story elements I steered away from, which seemed important to me, and although you don't get off completely Scot free, you can make the experience somewhat more tolerable.
I paid full price for this the moment it became available, because of my previous love of the franchise. Such a blasted shame it all went the way that it has here, and I've felt forced to play it in the interests of not throwing £70 in the bin.
There are some good bits, some decent moments of story, here and there, however these are sadly quite limited. I've had to engage in a considerable degree of radical acceptance in order to move through this game.
I won't make the same mistake again!
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