#5 - Echo Bazaar!

So I heard that I needed to play this browser game. I'm normally not a fan of these kinds of games, because most of the time the main objective is to just get more stuff and be a higher level. Now I've done my fair share of grinding, back in my FFVIII days, but a game based solely off of grinding just doesn't sound awesome to me... I decided to give this one a shot on a whim, and because the experience sounded nice when it was described on Extraw Credits. At first it starts like most of these other games. There's a lot of railroading and doing one quest right after another while having a very limited amount of ways to deal with things. Then once that's over I realized that this first part was just a tutorial, and with that realization came one that the four or five solutions I had for each problem opened up into their own settings, quest lines, and achievements.

Basically you pick sections of town based on what kinds of interactions you want to have. So if you want to be a socialite and go to parties, there's plot lines for that. If you want to be a thief and steal for your money, there are plot lines for that. I was impressed by the amount of options you have, but if you're a person driven by gameplay and not by plot, then this game has virtually nothing to offer.  Personally I'll take a good story any day, but I can see how a straight cut RPG like this could be boring to some. I will say though, that having your actions limited to only so many per hour, is so frustrating. I hate this device where you can only do so much so often, and is probably one of the biggest reasons I don't keep playing games like these. If I want to sit down and play a game, I want to actually sit down and play a game. Not play for ten minutes and then try to find something else to do for an hour while the game waits to let me play again. Although it does beg the question how many good games like this I could find and just play them in a rotating circle...? I might have to look into that.

You know if you want to play this game already. I enjoyed it, but most people probably wouldn't. Games like these have a bad reputation, so it might be hard to get your friends to play with you. And if that's the case, in conjunction with having to find something else to do between playing, it could be extremely fucking boring. But on the other hand, there is some cool stuff to see here, and a lot of the plot threads have extremely good writing, and it's shitty that more people won't see them because the game doesn't have much more to offer. I really enjoyed playing it for a week or two, and then the luster kind of faded. But if you do like these kinds of games, this is the best one I've played.

I don't know what the hell this thing is, but it's in/a part of the game, and it's creepy as shit.