The Council

[biggytitbo]

Really loving this little episodic adventure game -



Plot starts out as a kind of grand political conspiracy thriller, with you invited to an english aristocrats island mansion in the late 17th century, where he has gathered influential global figures like Manuel Godoy, Napoleon Bonaparte and George Washington to form an illuminati style 'council' to try and manipulate world affairs. Really quality writing and characterisation, lots of good plot twists, secret rooms, ancient manuscripts, double crosses, murders etc. Then it all takes a twist half way through into the supernatural.

Plays like a mix of a traditional Broken Sword-esque adventure game, an RPG and a Deus Ex style immersive sim - so there's exploration, puzzle solving, collecting objects and dialogue with other characters, alongside light RPG elements like maintaining your character's attributes with collectibles, and a full skill tree with different upgrade paths. A central gameplay mechanic is the 'confrontation', which is like a standard dialogue sequence with an NPC that you get in an adventure, but where different branches can be unlocked depending on what skills you have leveled up. Quite an unusual combo but it works really well. Graphically very pretty, although obviously made on a low budget so plenty of jank and framerate issues on the PS4 version at least.

Very highly recommended though, if you like this sort of thing. All 5 episodes are out now so you can play it all through in one go.

[bgmnts]

I would recommend this about as much as a dose of the syphilis, it would probably be prettier to look at.

[biggytitbo]

You get a free pass with that wrong opinion by virtue of having a really brilliant avatar.