The Master of the Land

I went into this game intrigued by the blurb’s statement that several totally different playthroughs are all possible, and the game definitely lived up to that premise!

It truly feels open-ended. It takes place at a festival and captures that atmosphere, at any given moment there are so many different people to talk to and things happening in different places. You will always miss things. The protagonist Irene can choose to pursue her own goal of getting a permit to wear trousers in the forest (which I did eventually manage), or go off and investigate the many mysterious happenings: the invisible crying man and the poet, the strange Burber, a political conspiracy, all of which intersect in various ways. It can be confusing in the beginning since you don't have context for the things and people you, but over time one can follow each thread and begin figure out how it's all connected.

After completing seven or eight playthroughs over a week, I think I have a good idea of what’s going on? But there are still many things that I have not seen. I think that is longer than most players, but I kept having new ideas for things I wanted to see and try, each playthrough answering some questions and bringing up new ones. I wrote up my notes on the story and timeline of events on the forum here (spoilers galore).

The UI is great. The background changes, and the text is at a very readable size and leading. The updating reminders of current objectives are very useful, as are the prompts to auto-navigate to quest locations, which cuts down on constantly opening the map or missing things from poor navigation. Some of the images look out of place and a bit amateurish, however, as there isn’t a consistent style among the different graphics. But that is a small quibble.

I think the storyline I’m most intrigued by is (Spoiler - click to show)the aunt, currently pretending to be a Burber. She knows so much seemingly about the political assassination plot against her brother and is fighting with one of the conspirators — what is she trying to accomplish here? And her illness, brought on by dreams that come true, surely connects to the crying man come alive from the poem, but how? Gloria, too; the game starts with a warning about her and I still have no idea what her deal is.

I will definitely come back to this at some points, try to find out more about my unanswed questions