The Shrouded Isle Reviews

naaah, get something else

There are a lot of things I like about this game, and I do think it can be an enjoyable experience- which makes it hard to have to say I don't recommend it over all, but read my review and make your own choices based on what you like. The positives about the game, it has great art direction and vibes. The theme and aesthetics and how you progress through it the first time can be satisfying and interesting. I really enjoy how the music progresses and changes as you get further into the game. If you like the idea of a dark cosmic horror resource management game it accomplishes being that very well. Unfortunately what I find is lacking in the game is the depth that would make this experience worth playing more than once. Basically you are using your limited actions each round to figure out which citizens have good or bad stats and try to find the worst ones to perform your obligatory seasonal sacrifice. You have to maintain the 5 virtues and 5 household's opinion of you high enough while doing this. Other reviews don't like the RNG that each character has random positive and negative traits but I don't mind that aspect. I do however find it lacking that their traits are just positives and negatives for when you utilize them and there isn't much further into it besides figuring out who is the worst so that you can efficiently sacrifice them with the least negative feedback from the houses. So this esoteric and mysterious shell is really just covering a simple game of "guess who" try to find the bad people and don't make the people too angry game. There just isn't any more depth past that which makes replay value for me very low after one win, especially when there isn't too much variety with the endings with 5/7 of them being failing at the end with each specific stat being low. The random events don't lead to much besides random stat modifiers. There is no depth to the characters beyond what you might come up with in your imagination during play. Also the original game lasted 3 in-game years, with the free update they added it extends the game to 5 years which makes it a lot more difficult you run out of "major" sinners to sacrifice in this time so you have to start sacrificing lesser sins which hurts your stats more. It adds nothing to gameplay besides making it shallowly more difficult and chaotic at the end and it just seems like a missed opportunity for more depth, which I think is just lacking from this experience overall. If you like the vibes and resource managing in a dark setting it can be entertaining for at least one playthough. I would def recommend looking to get it on sale as I didn't find much worthwhile in going back to it after one.