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2K View2022-12-22

Depersonalization (Reviewed)

Developer: MeowNature

Publisher: Gamera Games

Released: Dec 20th, 2022

Price: $19 USD

Depersonalization is an early access Lovecraftian cosmic like horror inspired adventure, blending gorgeous sprite-based visuals and strategy RPG gameplay packed mixed in with classic D&D stat building and dice rolls, its interesting but in it's current state falls short of being something enjoyable to play.

It's a scenario based mystery while fighting elder gods to restore the timeline.

The biggest concerns for this game right now

If you can't get passed act 1 the game never truly opens up

After finishing the first scenario which is about yourself, you'll gain access to a space hub with many features allowing you to create things for character creation, scenario selection, items, etc.

The games translation makes the story kinda indecipherable in the beginning

If you don't understand Chinese, you're going to run into a lot of errors with the English version of this game, due to the poor translation in its current state.

When you pick up a new game and play it for a few hours, you get some understanding as to what is going on in the main plot, the characters and the basic understanding about how to do specific things like combat, building, etc.

Depersonalization isn't fully translated, and the things that are translated do not make any sense whatsoever. It's a Lovecraftian RPG, but doesn't feel like it.

What I could understand about this game so far in the few hours that I have played, is it seems like the game you are playing is revolving around the SCP Foundation, most notably the SCP - 3999. This specimen was a very powerful entity, one capable of ending reality. It destroyed reality, and rebuilt it around a specific researcher, for the purpose of torturing him. He eventually managed to figure out how to destroy 3999, but doing so was at the cost of his own life.

This is all mentioned in a notebook, which seems to be the main character's father, so with this knowledge you're the son of the deceased researcher and are now being plagued by 3999 with the world built around you? Sounds ok.

Outside of this the game falls apart in its unfinished state. Translation errors here and there that do not translate well to English making next to no sense.

The games uses dice rolls for literally everything you do like a D&D Campaign

Reading a book? Dice roll.

Opening a door? Dice roll.

Inspecting something? Dice roll.

Interacting with something? Dice roll.

Fighting in combat? Dice roll.

Using an item in combat? Dice roll.

While this isn't too big of an issue, being the mechanic of the game, it's rather the outcome that sucks the most. You'll mostly be failing everything while getting them the next time you attempt to make a roll by spam retrying.

The very first boss for example is next to impossible to kill, because the game doesn't even teach you how to fight in combat properly. You'll just keep rolling dice, missing, taking tons of damage and repeating the process until you die.

It is and was beyond tedious, even crafting better equipment did not help.

The crafting system looked interesting

But you have to figure that out yourself

The game doesn't teach you anything about it or how to properly utilize it. The premise of this system is, you have to find materials in the locations you visit, dismantle them and you'll get material to use to craft things.

Then these things you have crafted can be used with others to craft even stronger weapons and armor to make you stronger in combat with enemies.

But remember what we stated earlier?

Crafting an item? Dice roll.

You're never safe from this. It gets annoying quickly, you do lose materials every time you fail, and it's not like you can get more without doing save scum.

Despite the issues

The game is a multi-choice multiples ending game

This game has a pretty unique concept of being very heavily dependent on choices you pick and your character stats over the course of the game.

Character attributes that you choose influence choices you pick in the game. You have a lot of freedom and choice/strategy in the way you play the story.

The artwork

Is well done, the pixel graphics really stand out, but I wouldn't call it really spooky or anything like that. It's a little bit creepy, sure but nothing horrifying.

Would you recommend this game?

In the current state? No

The concept is alright. The visuals and music are good and appealing, however, with a terribly unfair dice roll mechanic and translation errors / menus not being translated at all, it's not something I could recommend to anyone expecting to understand much of the story, having to double take the story in confusion.

I would wait a few months and perhaps check it out when it's more fleshed out to be a little more cohesive.

This concludes my review of this game, while my opinions may be met with criticism, that's what makes gamers unique, you don't have to like the same things that others do, nor do you have to agree with them.

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- Pawkt

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