Elite Status: Platinum Concierge Reviews

love it

This is an interesting one. With full caveats that I'm at best only so-so interested in romance in Choice of Games and I enjoy the work of both writers, I played twice and had a good time. I intend to play a couple more times. Lots of interesting detail and the occasional great sardonic line - my playthroughs focused on the company itself and I saw a fair bit of variation on the "main" route. That said, it isn't all that easy to make a [i]plan[/i], for achievement hunting or otherwise. It may help that I am old enough to have experienced the web at the height of Livejournal, but some of the net-related themes of the loss of anonymity, trying to manage a persona, learning the lines of what can safely be shared and what feels risky -- I enjoyed this exploration. I also enjoyed exploration of luxury-as-weapon. I feel I have not really pushed at the edges of its box yet, so I can't speak to entertaining chaos. It does threaten to become didactic in places and I agree that it feels a little abrupt. But if a fairly rooted take on, well, ten years ago and the strange place of service workers appeals to you, the game has a lot on its mind.

I enjoy the work of both listed authors and this is no different. Some really interesting situations and characters! Some routes take a little puzzle solving I suppose you could say, but they are fun if you figure them out.

I really wanted to like this game but it was just too difficult for me personally to read. This isn't political but I know people may take it that so please read this knowing it comes from a place of a learning disability and not judgement; one of the characters I had to interact with a lot uses they/them pronouns, again I'm not judging people for this but I absolutely can not follow when characters in written material do this. I have difficulty reading at times, despite my love of text based games, and this is just one of those things that I struggle being able to read, this isn't the first story I've struggled through and it won't be the last but I don't know if I'll revisit it. If you don't struggle with that sort of thing or are actively looking for representation of non-binary characters then what I could follow of the story may appeal to you. Just not for me, I guess? Maybe I'll try to give it another shot someday when I can have someone else play with me and read it for me or if I learn some kind of trick to make it easier to read. I'm aware this is a me problem not necessarily a problem with the game. Again, this is not intended to be political or rude, just serve as a heads up that if you have reading disabilities or struggles this may be extra difficult for you, it was for me. Much respect, thanks for reading.

Having played other games both from Choice Of, and indeed in this genre, I was generally looking forward to this. In terms of the positives, it's a well written game with some interesting characters involved, and most of the scenarios appeared to be fairly realistic in terms of what one might expect of someone in this line of work. It nicely deals with some of the challenges involved in working with such clients and indeed some of the human side of the worlds of power and prestige, such as clients encountering sudden wealth, dealing with nepo babies etc., and most of it manages to do so in a manner which is nuanced and fairly balanced. In terms of the negative, my three main criticisms are around coherency of story, player agency and substance. In terms of coherency of story, there's really not a single thread which I was able to follow in my playthrough. My character bounced between a primary client who I was assigned after the prologue, the general issues of a secondary client and their overbearing parent, and then the general issues facing the Agency, and none of those events seemed to follow in line with my character's role or expertise, or indeed tied together, and the ending I gained seemed to be.. well, entirely random. In terms of player agency, it's not necessarily a matter of having no control, but equally it seems to be that there's no clear route or logical direction to gain that control. There's obviously some choice of client somewhere in the code based on the available ending and achievements, but getting there seems to require a level of knowledge which is either very trial and error (to the point of being counter-intuitive) or follows a pathway which isn't at all signposted by the game. It's not to say one necessarily wants a 'click here to acquire romance', but at the end of a full playthrough, I genuinely couldn't tell you which choices I should change to get a different ending. Finally, in terms of substance... there's actually not a lot here. I don't mean in terms of there being things to do, but I never got the sense that there was some overarching central core or ethos or question which needed to be answered by the game. There's a lot of things that the game touches upon, hinting at politics or climate change or class struggle, but it just namechecks them and moves on, and if there was one single, deep question to be answered or choice to be made, to set oneself on one side of a fence or another, to be an X or a Y and deal with the consequences... I never found it, or more accurately, it got lost amid everything else. All in all, I bought this because I enjoyed the rest of the Harris Powell-Smith bundle, but it seemed to lack both the charm and the clarity of the others.

The best way to describe my experience was complete and utter whiplash. It's like being put in a chair, spun around a hundred times, walking around a room blindly, then repeating again. This was a really odd and out of pocket writing experience from Harris Powell-Smith, because I quite enjoyed Creme de la Creme and Royal Affairs, two pieces of work that felt cohesive at its core. It was hard to follow any plot lines because they were so disjointed, and it felt like a really punishing read, like half the game was cut. I can't say I enjoyed myself x.x

I bought this first on mobile but bought in on Steam to review. This game has a much more realistic setting and play style than most Choice of Games games. I was able to identify with the protagonist in a lot of the situations, because the kind of things that come up are: -What do I do about a difficult client? -What should I do with my coworker who got me in trouble? -Do I sacrifice my personal life to advance in my job? The game is more character-focused than story focused, but pursuing different characters unlocks different story lines. I played through twice and my chapters 7 and 8 were completely different both times (once I focused on a billionaire client and got a long storyline about secrets from the past and in the other I focused on a problematic child of a different client and got an international mystery storyline). I like my main choice for RO (a coworker), although it asked me a few questions about whether I liked them or not before we had many scenes together. I liked that you can customize religious and dietary preferences. There's not one big overall plot, it's more like a series of events that shape your character. I ended up selling out and becoming rich at the expense of my ethics. 500K words is a lot, and I think a big chunk of it is in the different lategame chapters. Worth playing, definitely glad I bought it. Not a power fantasy, lots of self reflection. If you liked Creatures Such as We, I think you'd like it.

The intro had me interested: I thought this game would be more puzzle-like, using your skills to fulfil client needs while balancing time, cost and legality to avoid losing your salary, or being fired. In the end, none of it really mattered. You don't have many character motives apart from "charitable" or "business" and your hard work neither tires you or earns anything of worth to your character. The NPCs and ROs range from unremarkable to straight up annoying. Whatever path you end up following feels rather the same and the rather short epilogue only further makes the whole story feel bland and unearned. I often enjoy Choice's Game, have bought many of the games and appreciate that different authors and stories will vary in style and gameplay. I look forward to every new story and rarely mind paying the price for them. For me to feel like this game isn't even worth the time or money spent is a great disappointment.

I regret having to say this one is not good. I love other work by the two authors, so I had high hopes here. I am disappointed mainly because, after three playthroughs, I think there is too much "game" and too little "choice" in this story. You can make choices about what to do in a particular situation, but you can only affect the course of the plot indirectly, through personality checks. A lot of games seem to be doing the "no skills, only personality traits" thing, but gamifying it can result in a mess, as in this case, where you actually have very little agency in the story because the story is not actually determined by your choices (e.g. I will cross the road, for I am a chicken), but is determined by the personality scores assigned to you (e.g. Based on your prior decisions, you clearly are a duck, and thus will not cross the road). This approach robs the player of a feeling of agency. Setting aside my quibbles with this design decision, and focusing on the plot, I can only say it's way too short. Just as the game switched to the epilogue, I was thinking that it had been a pretty good first chapter, introducing me to the characters in order to set up for the main story/conflict. I was shocked that it ended so abruptly. I finished a simple dialogue scene with the MC's boss, and just out of nowhere the top of the page said "Epilogue" in big letters. The worst part is the ROs, though. Two of them are co-workers, which, ew. Another is described as a "whimsical" millionaire, but could be more accurately said to be insecure, flighty, and stupid. Don't get me started on the lunatic reporter who tries to convince a queer person to donate their entire net worth to the Catholic church. I'm also convinced that it's not possible for the scion of the billionaire to actually be romanced unless it's through some kind of Monkey Island-style nonintuitive puzzle solving where you have to somehow figure out that drinking wine instead of beer in the first scene will lead to you having a cork in chapter three that you can throw at a pelican which is carrying a key to a buried treasure. Awful, awful ROs. The opportunities to interact with them are limited, which is good because not one of them seems like the kind of person I would want to know. I really wish this were better. I was looking forward to it.