Alexandria IV Steam Charts & Stats

Alexandria IV is an interesting space opera themed visual novel where we play the role of the commander of one of the large space stations. The game takes place in the far future when humans are already freely travelling through space and have come into contact with many alien species, some of which are vastly more powerful than us and do not even bother to pay attention to what we do unless things badly escalate. As a visual novel Alexandria IV is quite fast-paced. Things kick off from the first 5 minutes and as a commander you have to start making tough decisions from the get-go. Yes, who thought this job would be easy? Many visual novels can be slow to get started and introduce the world. But Alexandria IV doesn't waste any time and is great if you enjoy stories that are always moving forward. And before you could even resolve one problem, two or three more occur that require your attention. Did I mention that the job as a commander of a space station is pretty hard? The game helps to convey that across pretty well. The gameplay itself is not hard though, but because we're often given choices and are asked to assign our people to different tasks, in a hope to achieve the best result possible, we start to feel the weight of each choice. And sometimes we have to make hard choices in a hope to incur as few losses as possible in order to keep the space station and its people safe. I felt like I was Commander Shepherd from Mass Effect, except dealing with problems in VN-style rather than through a 3rd person shooter RPG. The game consists of 5 acts. Each act throws its own problems and dilemmas our way, but they do keep building on top of one another as part of one big story arc. The writing is clearly very good. There is plenty of tension, there are interesting characters, and there is detailed and intriguing world-building. Overall a single playthrough takes about 4 - 5 hours long, but a lot happens in that time and every minute is engaging. My only criticism is that the game ends a bit too quickly and abruptly after the finale climax ends. Usually after a final climax it's good to see some sort of an aftermath of our choices, perhaps to speak with the major characters and see how their lives have been changed and affected by everything that had happened, and to see where their lives will be moving to next. This is especially important in games such as this one, where we frequently make choices. And yes, choices do matter here and do end up changing what happens, but we need to be able to witness these effects of our choices more, because that's exactly what brings satisfaction in a game such as this. The presentation is very neat and beautiful. I really liked all the character artworks. They are animated and do move slightly, which makes them look more alive. Environment visuals are also good, even though there are mainly a dozen or so of the same locations in the game. Music was also decent and fitted with each scene. I did not come across any bugs. Only two or three misspelled words and that's about it. So if any bugs were present in the game at release, it looks like all or most must've been fixed. Overall I've enjoyed this VN very much! It kept me hooked from the first minute till the very end. I'm surprised it hardly has any reviews. I sure hope people are not sleeping on this great sci-fi VN. If the full price seems too high for the amount of playtime, then it's worth getting at the very least on a discount if you enjoy fast-paced sci-fi-themed VNs.