The ORPHEUS Ruse Reviews

This was honestly one of my favorite titles I've come across. The entire story was interesting, and I really grew to like the characters. I seriously hope that this story ends up with a sequel. I give this a 10/10.

A purposely disjointed story plastered with cliffhangers, abuse, fake choice and false dilemma. It pretends depth through stacking emotional drama against the reader, to put them at a new disadvantage at each new junction. As if that wasn't enough sadism in one package, we also get a cast of cripples, burnt and scarred people and someone with a hole in the face where a nose should be. As if that's not enough, it also casually and repeatedly blames the reader for crippling one of the side characters. While offering no way to prevent that, it's the choice between crippling an old man or a child or both. It will make clear that saving the child was the wrong choice. It's like a sick twist on the term "crippling debt". In Choice of Robots, casually exchanging a blown off arm with a cannon seemed somewhat odd, but since it's become a recurring theme in this publisher's titles, it may be argued there's something wrong. After Mecha Ace, where they have explicit torture to burn out the synapses of the main character's hand, and Floating City, where the main character has no legs and wears a prosthetic, it seems like there is a publisher with an agenda of mutilation, or a mutilation fetish, preying on unsuspecting customers with body horror. This seems well out of hand. The game has the choice of suicide, including providing an excuse why players could want that. The game's idea of a moral dilemma is a decision between helping innocent people or helping the embodiment of pure evil, then punish any good deed. It minces no words about using children as shields in combat, or possessing their bodies and have them shoot people in the gut with a gun (so that it's messy and they die more painfully, as we learn in Mecha Ace). It's astounding the "game" has space for some paragraphs of serviceable writing, aside from reading like a guide on how to blackmail and coerce someone to sell out their family. If there have been any plans to lead up to some cathartic experience, they are buried under a ton of rubble. There is no closure or meaningful end, just another chance for failure when trying to select an ending deemed antithetic to our former choices. Despite premise and background a disservice to humanity.

Many of the stats don't actually affect most of the game, the only reason to change which body you are in is in order to learn a short backstory of them used in the ending. There is no major difference in outcome regardless of your choices and most of your choices are meaningless.

Just... an okay game. Not great. The pacing was off and it's unclear how to get specific choices (such as having a high stealth stat at the end, for example)

[h1]Well written superhero-esque rather linear story[/h1] I really loved the idea of possessing other characters and in a few cases this games does some cool things with that mechanic. Mostly however, it plays like a somewhat generic superhero story, with the other characters being more powerful than you. There is a some amount of choice in who to possess (and how to create your character), yet these things don't really change the plot or even your interaction with other significant characters (mostly only some small subplots change). The story is fairly concise and linear, giving a somewhat limited replay value, yet there are some different paths to explore. On a more positive note, the individual pieces of the story are well written and quite action packed. It feels like you having experienced an action movie with a relevant amount of choice at the end of the game For context, this is the first choice of games game I have finished, but I have played a few similar (mostly free) games. To my knowledge it seems games from choice of games have an emphasis on stats resulting in partly set paths (such as encouraging/discouraging violence depending on your initial "build"). ORPHEUS Ruse partly steers away from this by offering a sligthly more linear story yet retains stats as a relevant factor that limits choice in some instances. The game took me 2 hours on my first playthrough and seems like it might offer about 2-3 interesting playthroughs with somewhat different paths All in all I'll give the title a weak recommendation, yet I would caution anyone considering this game solely for the premise of being able to control other people (as it doesn't play a truly significant part in the story). 7/10

Pros: -It's well written and immediately draws you in. -Non-stop action. -High stakes, felt every decision I made would have dire consequences. -Reminds me of the TV shows Alphas and Heroes. -Characters are realistic and stay within the lore. You don't always get the reaction or answers you hoped for. -Enjoyable surprises and twists. -Makes you question your morality many times. How far are you willing to go when using someone else's body? -Really liked the character growth. Really liked interactions with mentor, judged me harshly but fairly. Cons: -There's parts were it refers to previous missions you haven't gone on. Which can make it feel like your missing a part of the story. -Some of the dialogue is forced, when it should really be giving you a choice how to respond. A few times I was like "wtf, I should be making the calls, I would never do that!" Overall: -I LOVED this story and lore. I really want to play a game set in this world where you can control your movements and abilities. Would love to see the TV show or movie. -I think the game is worth the price. The story is really good, but it is short and has limited replay value. -Would definitely play another game by this author. -A MUST have if you find it on sale.

Verdict: 3/5. The good: - I like the story and the main character - Some funny dialog options to choose from in the beginning - [spoiler]Luke I am your father moment, sort of[/spoiler] The bad: - Short story - The stats on the main page seem to have no concrete meaning - Sometimes the flow of the story is choppy - Missing the funny dialog option later on - Romance feels forced - Ending not fully realized - Weak epilogue - Feels like there should be a sequel but non forth coming?

My only gripe is that paragraphs are ignored. Please fix the formatting; I've not finished this yet but I love the crossover between this and MetaHuman Inc. Keep up the good work Paul! For example: RAW - He switches on a flashlight, and then passes a second light to you. With their aid, you find a trapdoor in one corner of the room. No-Nose opens it up. A metal ladder descends into the gloom below. "After you," says No-Nose, indicating that you should go first. The two of you climb down, reaching a long, cramped tunnel that slopes down further still. As you walk along it, No-Nose says, "A quick history lesson for you: the streets of Paris are just the tip of the iceberg. Below that, you have the metro tunnels, which date back a century or so. After that, there's the sewers. Go lower still and you find the catacombs. That's where we are now. They were lime quarries at first—hundreds of miles of quarry tunnels beneath the city. About eight hundred years ago, when the lime stopped coming up, and when the king of France noticed that all the cemeteries in Paris were overflowing with the dead, six million corpses were moved down here. More recently, in the second world war, the catacombs housed the base of the resistance in Paris. They say that the resistance base and Gestapo HQ were only a few hundred meters apart, but the Germans could never find them." FIX'D - He switches on a flashlight, and then passes a second light to you. With their aid, you find a trapdoor in one corner of the room. No-Nose opens it up. A metal ladder descends into the gloom below. "After you," says No-Nose, indicating that you should go first. The two of you climb down, reaching a long, cramped tunnel that slopes down further still. As you walk along it, No-Nose says, "A quick history lesson for you: the streets of Paris are just the tip of the iceberg. Below that, you have the metro tunnels, which date back a century or so. After that, there's the sewers. Go lower still and you find the catacombs. That's where we are now. They were lime quarries at first—hundreds of miles of quarry tunnels beneath the city. About eight hundred years ago, when the lime stopped coming up, and when the king of France noticed that all the cemeteries in Paris were overflowing with the dead, six million corpses were moved down here. More recently, in the second world war, the catacombs housed the base of the resistance in Paris. They say that the resistance base and Gestapo HQ were only a few hundred meters apart, but the Germans could never find them."