Heaven's Vault

Sitting on the fence with this one. It's basically a mix of a mystery-exploration game and a branching-path visual novel, and the two sides are at odds with each other. Every branching path locks off exploration - you can almost never return to a point of interest - but what exploration you can do is really slow and often grinds the plot to a halt. It also has a really poor user interface, with an endless list of little annoyances that make it cumbersome at best - and parts of it are buggy, too, so a system that works poorly at the best of times sometimes becomes completely nonfunctional. It also has a bloated script and extremely limited graphics, so there's a ton of filler dialogue, and it's prone to telling rather than showing. It has plot triggers which are often poorly-telegraphed and which are easy to stumble into accidentally. And its traversal mechanics are extremely sluggish and awkward, especially when you're moving between points of interest. This game is not well-designed a...

This game should have had all the success and visibility that Chants of Sennar got....

While the graphics can be a bit glitchy at times and progression of the game can be slow or force you into loops you'd rather not follow, this is an epic story that really engages you. I'm sure i will return to the Nebula to explore more in the future (and perhaps see what happens if I choose another ending).

First the positives: - Deeply atmospheric. - The location art is stunning. - Some decent voice acting. - The language puzzles are interesting. The negatives: - I experienced two big glitches. The first lost me a ton of progress that I had to re-do and the second was game-breaking and I decided to stop playing after it happened. - You have to fly your ship between locations, and you have to do it A LOT. This is thoroughly tedious and boring. - The walking speed is mind-numbingly slow and sometimes your character just walks in random directions. Very frustrating UI. - You often can't re-visit locations, which makes it too easy to miss important things. - Lots of needless filler conversation that adds nothing to the plot. The negatives made me not want to restart a new game after the bug ruined it (a glitch rendered a location I should have been able to visit un-visitable and I could not progress). It had already taken so long to get to that point and I could not bring myse...

The game felt a bit underbaked; the camera rotation was a pure nightmare sometimes. I also think there are a few storylines that could have been developed further. I do believe that they nailed the experience of exploration and discovery though: it was a great feeling to stumble onto new sites and discover their purpose.

I really like this game but it comes with some big caveats when considering if it's a match for you. - It's astonishing how much better this game would be with a run button. The amount of time you spend just trying to walk from A to B and sitting there bored is quite terrible. Well past the point of just pacing things. Just that one button would raise this game 1 whole point on a 1 to 10 scale. - While other games have language deciphering as a mechanic, this is the only game I feel strikes a magical balance between guiding you to the answers (via verification) while really having the deciphering truly be the gameplay. Those moments where you finally puzzle out the meaning of a particular word then step back and read the whole phrase which changes your whole view of what's going on are magical. - The overall structure is overly ambitious and a mess. It does feel like you can wander about and encounter the game in the order you want but it does mean that you can kinda get to the end of...

Its to slow, no speed up, no extra save files. no skipping cutscence, nothing to speed up the gameplay if you already completed the games once, the lines are to slow, something it just randomly pause for a bit before continuing. if it wasent for this one fact that the gameplay is frustrating slow I would have really liked it and even rekommended it.

So: first off, gorgeous game, and one of the games I have played recently that I respect the most. Definitely recommend. This is not to say it's not without flaws, though. First, the good: The story is great, the atmosphere and tone are amazing. I loved being in this world, exploring this world. It felt like there was real love put into the setting, into depicting the ways these characters interacted with and saw themselves as part of the world. From Aliya's struggle with thinking of herself as Elborethean while having spent most of her time on Iox and being viewed as an outsider by her home people because of it (and the way that places like Maersi do not acknowledge her Elborethian roots because of her Ioxian present situation), from the way that Six reacts to Elboreth, and to the other moons. The way that you can get called out for doing the same thing to [redacted] as [redacted] did to you, although the dialogue presents this as a neutral choice, so that it makes you think about ...

9/10 game