The Eagle's Heir

Reviewing (mostly) every game (or DLC) in my library, part 639: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆☆☆☆ (6/10) The catalog of CoG is vast: you have excellent games, and you have not-so-great games. Smack dab in the middle is the silent majority, as it were. That’s where [i]The Eagle’s Heir[/i] rests. It’s a fine game, a perfectly fine game. And not to sound bitter or anything, but that’s my main issue with it. It falls prey to the allure of grasping too many fantastic ideas while glossing over the consequences. Political intrigue, alternate history, steampunk airships, romance, espionage, monarchy versus republicanism, French or Austrian or English … it’s an incredibly ambitious game, and I found the concepts so interesting that I wished the game would spend more time exploring them. Unfortunately, it never really does. At just a few hours long, [i]The Eagle’s Heir[/i] tries to juggle far more than its runtime can reasonably support. The romances have virtually three scenes before they’re asking you to commit; political conflicts are black-and-white and resolved too quickly; stats are obtuse; and even the wonderfully realized alternate-history setting feels more like a backdrop than something that ce…

[h1] The Eagle's Heir [/h1] [h2] Summary [/h2] In an alternate past, play as the bodyguard of Emperor Napoleon's son. Survive attacks from would-be assassins, race airships, find romance, or maybe help determine the political future of France? [h3] Things I liked [/h3] [b] - The Story [/b]. I really enoyed the way the story unfolded, and because of the actual writing I was pretty much down for wherever the next twist or turn went. Defuse a bomb? Sure! Sabotage the French throne? Why not! Help a British Princess elope? I thought you'd never ask! Eventually I found out that if the story was by Amy Griswold and Jo Graham then I was probably going to love it (at least a little). [b] - The Characterization [/b] of every single person in teh story was so significant and different. I especially liked (well, liked might not be exactly the right word) Alexandre. I feel like we really had the opportunity to get to know him and we had a reason to care whether or not he survived. [b] - The Player Character [/b] was similarly strong. I felt like I had a significant amount of choice, whether that was in terms of race, gender-presentation, political stance or abilities, to define my character. …

*I played this in the Choice of Games omnibus app* Having played Belle-de-Nuit four times this year and Revolution Diabolique nearly a dozen, I ought to have had my fill by now of the politics and passions of historical France. Or so you might think - but you'd be wrong. When I sat down to play The Eagle's Heir, I knew I was in good hands. It was Jo Graham and Amy Griswold's first title for CoG, but not my first experience with their work; their third game, The Play's the Thing, found its way almost immediately to my personal list of favorites. I didn't expect The Eagle's Heir to reach quite those heights - The Play's the Thing was almost as suited to my particular interests and tastes as if it had been created especially for me - but I had no doubt that I could look forward to vivid settings, appealing characters, a good story well-told. And that's exactly what I got. Unlike Graham and Griswold's other CoG titles, The Eagle's Heir isn't fantasy, it's alt-history, set in a world in which Napoleon defeated his enemies at Waterloo and ruled France for another twenty years. His position secure, he invested heavily in steam power, resulting in technological advances that our timelin…

Okay, this is negative for the sole reason that you can't vote mixed. This game is really quite enjoyable if short. It simply has one problem, sadly it's a rather big one, in the later chapters of the game it's rather easy to die... and this game doesn't have a save system. I have already played through the exact same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ scenes 5 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ times because I happened to pick the wrong choice, died, and had no choice but to go back. I get it with other decisions that don't prematurely end the story but just straight up end the story because you made a wrong choice and have to skip through all previous scenes again, that is plain and simply horrible game design. And I know that those things can easily implement a save system, both Choice by Gaslight and Vampire Regent have them.

“The Eagle's Heir” is a game that took me several attempts before I managed to reach the ending without losing interest. It’s a story with fantastic ideas and beautiful writing, but it only ever briefly taps into any of the concepts, relationships and themes. (5/10) For example, a few flying races are all you get to see of the interesting steam-powered airships, and similarly, the romances are just as brief. I sparked a romance with Amilia Weiss after only a few conversations, leaving me feeling that we barely knew each other, yet my character had apparently already decided they were meant to be together. The latter parts of the game felt even more rushed. An important person had no reason to listen to my character at that point, but he did so anyway so that the ending could happen before reaching any sort of natural conclusion. In summary, “The Eagle's Heir” is a game with a lot of potential, but only some of it was realized. The rest felt rushed and underutilized. That’s not to say the game’s bad, but I’d have preferred a neutral rating over a strictly positive one. (5/10)

Good