Sovereign Syndicate

A decent narrative-driven game, with some significant caveats. I think this is the most blatantly Disco Elysium-inspired game I've ever played, right down to it opening in the aftermath of the player character's alcohol-fueled bender. Trouble is, Disco Elysium was still a CRPG, despite lacking many of that genre's hallmark mechanics. Sovereign Syndicate's RPG mechanics are a paper-thin veneer. Your ability to make meaningful choices is virtually nonexistent. One of the game's big selling points -- "tarot cards instead of dice rolls!!!" -- is... just reskinned dice rolls. You're told that your skills will disagree with each other, but that's barely true, and it never leads to anything particularly interesting. If you want a game with mechanics beyond walking around and talking to characters, Sovereign Syndicate is not for you. But! But! I have to admit that the game's writing is pretty darn good. The characters are all compelling, and the story was interesting enough to keep me bought in. At least until the rushed, wildly unsatisfying conclusion, that is. I have a feeling something went wrong in development -- they ran out of time, money, etc, and had to wrap things up lickety split. But still, I've seen worse, and the 90% of the game leading up to the ending was solid. Visually, Sovereign Syndicate is... okay. The environments look decent, and the little comic-esque vignettes used for action scenes are stylish. The soundtrack, similarly, falls on the side of "good enough." There's nothing truly striking, but it gets the job done. I know I've been harsh on the game, but I ultimately had a pretty good time with Sovereign Syndicate. Just don't go in expecting Disco Elysium and it's a pleasant way to fill a few play-sessions.

Proper Disco Elysium clone. Don't be discouraged by the more budgetty visuals/overall feel - it has meaningful choices, interesting characters and the gameplay loop is clear/simple, so you can click at the screen, chill and just enjoy the game. Overall UX is great. ...until the ending that is. (which is bang average and felt as if somebody ran out of ideas, which is depressing)

An interesting story and setting, a fair amount of side content/ interaction to definetely justify it

This game get thumbs up. I would give it a 7/10. Definitely fun to play through, even a second time if you missed out some side quests or use some different character traits. Points subtracted for: - the soundtrack is can get boring to annoying after a few hours play. - the game has a tendency to give you quests but not always enough hints to complete them. - limited locations and characters to interact with. - some parts of the map locations appear unfinished, dead ends that you cannot interact with, same with some NPC - some interactions/conversations are only possible in certain chapters and it is not always obvious that you are about to finish a chapter with your action. This leads to tasks you cannot complete. - the longer you play the more you miss the possibility to quick travel between buildings, not just streets. - the one voice in the game is the song one of the characters sings - and it is definitely not a well written song and not sung by a professional - or intentionally off. - the ending sucks. Probably aiming for a sequel. - most of the city you cannot properly interact with, like vehicles parked, statues and drawings. You get to collect gears, fans, gin bottles as a task, but no meaning behind that. - some NPCs are glued to the map, always hanging out at the same scene. It destroys immersion.

While it clearly takes some cues from Disco Elysium, the actual gameplay reminded me much more of Shadowrun (Hong Kong especially), but without combat. A point-and-click with a lot of text. The story took a while to get going. Opening chapters where you investigate everything for the first time did feel like a slog at times. But it grew on me as time went on, and I feel that in the end things came together pretty nicely, I was glued to the screen during the 2nd half. The writing also seemed to improve, suddenly becoming wittier and oft charming. Playing several characters working independently of each other was really fun, a great narrative feature that really stood out to me. There might be a bit too much busywork and running around, the game could use some trimming, but overall I enjoyed my time with it and wouldn't mind getting a sequel.