Recent reviews by ghostie

I've been watching this game since the announcement trailer and patiently waited for over a year to be updated on the release. It's a little rough around the edges (minor bugs, minor glitches, things that can be fixed most of the time when you just restart the game or reload your save) but for an early access game I'm really happy with it so far. The devs seem nice, and fairly active in responses as well. Very easy for me to support them and give a recommend in its current state. :)

At first, I was EXTREMELY unsure whether or not I would be able to play this first episode and come away from it with a "I actually really enjoyed this." Life is Strange remains one of my top 5 favorite games, and while Before the Storm is good, it's definetely more of a nostalgia trip along with a plethora of new (mostly) interesting characters.

As you will see, most of the negative reviews for this game are because of the crashing during playing, failure to start up, or not optimized for controller settings. A very select few of them are for the game itself, which is surprising to me, but also not, depending on if they even played the first game at all.

That being said; if you did not like Chloe in LiS, you will NOT like her here. It's pretty self explanatory.

I was underwhelmed, to say the least, when I saw the game reveal because of the change in voice acting. Not just Chloe is different, I mean EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER you liked, right, they're a different voice now. (Though I could be incorrect on Nathan, I can't quite remember.) This may not impact you, but for me loving the original so much, it was a step in the wrong direction, I miss Ashly Burch immensely here. The new VA is great, don't get me wrong, it's just hard to get used to. My only other problem would be Rachel and Chloe sounding almost TOO alike in some scenes, but again, I was surprised at not being too annoyed with this decision.

Making Rachel an actual, living, breathing character instead of an unknown entity guiding you, was one of my other concerns, but surprisingly, I like her. She's everything you thought she would be, yet everything tortured and so... imperfect than the vision Max had of her. I won't say any spoilers, but the depth provided in the first episode alone is enough to make me crave more.

Being a gay woman myself, obviously this factors in on how much I'm enjoying this new beginning. Chloe is one of my favorite characters, for obvious reasons, and her struggles are very relatable to me. She's dealing with a lot of grief here, so if you expected everything to be more calm and lighthearted, or even more relaxed than the original, you're dead wrong. The romantic subtext helps ease the mood, and though I do quite like the vibe they have going, knowing how it all ends makes me dread each decision that much more. In fact, there were actually some jokes that made me smile, or even laugh a bit, which gets a few bonus points for appealing to my emotions. Yet, despite Before the Storm already having a canon ending, I can't help but want to go back and try the things that I didn't, just to see how much I can mess it up.

Backtalk was a new and very interesting way to revise the time traveling mechanic, and while it may not have that Life is Strange-esque feel, it's something I love to push my luck with (and I haven't failed yet!) It was a wise decision adding this, and I feel if the game didn't have this, I may not even be listing BtS as recommended, truthfully.

All of this is coming from an avid LiS fan, crazy conspiracy theories and all, but each game has it's faults, and I won't deny that I was EXPECTING to be disappointed, which is no good for a game. I'm betting that a lot of people have felt the same way, but I do encourage you to give it a try, because it wasn't as bad as I predicted it would be (and I love Max dearly, so you can imagine how I felt.)

Even so, if you didn't like LiS, here are some big improvments I noticed:

-the animations!! Finally the voice lines up with the mouth movements. Faces are much more expressive, legs and arms aren't jittery. Obviously LiS had it's own, endearing way of hair clipping through hoodies, but I do enjoy the jigglebone feel when Chloe moves her head around.
-character design. This may be a little vague, but if you payed close attention to earlier models, a lot of them were... cut and paste. I felt a bigger sense of realism when interacting with other people, even animals. The squirrels are different sizes now, the people have their own busts, and there's a wide range of them to look at. (I honestly love squirrels a lot so seeing a chubby one with a skinnier one made my day.)

TLDR : So. If you are on the fence about purchasing this game due to Reasons, here's what I have to tell you: give it a try. I was one of those people, and I do not regret spending my money on this game. I look forward to more episodes.

character creation in this game is absolute garbage. you can barely adjust the face, all the classes are sex locked and every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ female character looks the same. What a waste of my money. Also? did I forget to mention it installs a program which can track any files you've installed or visited in the last 48 hours and sends them to "the mothership." No thanks. getting a refund immediately and had to go into my system registry to delete the programs left over

While it is true the fighting mechanics are a little wonky, not all that great, the story itself is very enriching. I have never been so captured by a story driven game like I have with BioWare and their plot decisions + how they effect your future. So much replayablity involved if not for the fight sequences, but for many outcomes in the story. This is an easy thumbs up from me.

After playing a few skirmashes, I can pretty much tell you this : it's a downgraded Civilization except it's in real time.

Here's why
-Very buggy AI.. you make friends only to find out your friends will randomly attack you for no good reason, yet after the war is over, you maintain good relationships with them
-Wait, did I say war? war only lasts about 2 minutes because the AI runs out of warriors and decides to concede.
-There are only 3 clans so far (which isn't bad, I promise) But AI doesn't depend on the clan they have, it's all completely random.
-I love the idea of having neutral tribes that you can eventually develop a friendship with so that they join you, but it takes ingame years, good luck actually getting them before someone else (or you) achieves victory.
-The game even reuses some very obvious Civ sound files, like when your villagers get angry.
-The lore system doesn't really make any sense (this is basically your technologies that you upgrade) because you can go all over the place and each branch doesn't have a common theme, it's just random traits placed in a row.

For an early access game, I can tell you that I really respect what the devs are doing here, but A LOT of it feels like a rehash, I found myself longing for other top-down strategy games like Rome, Supreme Commander, Command&Conquer etc. because they did the job first and they did it right.

I couldn't tell if I was turned on or I was just pissing myself but its still good

This game is so stupid but buy it and hit me up we can play

Lilith is really cute but I have to go change my pants now

the thirst is real

I lost my virginity to this game 10/10