Weishaupt Scholars

I've given up on this game before completing it, so my review might be impartial. What prevented me from finishing it was the general sensation of fragmentation I got from playing it so far: switching from one point of view to another didn't really provide an enhanced view of the story, as some other multiple-viewpoint IF works did.

Interactivity is rather limited in this game, it's more on the story side of IF than the traditional game-puzzle sort. Therefore, all expectations shift from mechanics to storytelling.

Somehow the story didn't hook me in enough to stay in the game and play along with the author. I think there is a lack of background story, the player is just thrown into stage without much to work on, which gave me a sense of disorientation. Changes in viewpoint occur too often, without much really happening between each switch. Also, I would have expected POV changes to bring about some good cliff-hanging, leaving you wondering about the fate of the character you just jumped out of his shoes; but this doesn't happen simply because there isn't enough at stake in the story to care about any of the characters your playing in turn --nothing to make you either like them or hate them, they are just so flat and unfleshed that the only thing differentiating them is their names.

Maybe it's me who missed out some of the core points, but so far the overall sensation was that the most (and best) I could do was just playing along with the story plot as it comes. I didn't feel much choices and freedom of exploration, the world geography is rather claustrophobic and interaction with the environment very limited--and, surely, not encouraged by descriptions.

Maybe if I bore patient I might have discovered that the story changes and opens up later on, but so far I got bored and with all my effort I just couldn't feel a solid narrative grip that could keep me going along with the plot — even though the theme is of my liking and I had good expectations.

Possibly, the failure I experienced could be attributed to the attempt of conveying suspence through mystery: but where the plot should "thicken" it actually slims down, leaving an already rather clueless player even more clueless about the true motives that keep him going wherever he's meant to be going.