Lords of Infinity

Tierra and Victory

Great story, great writing.

Great Story

14 year old stat decay. That's it. That's the whole review. This should've been the game where the player character who made it through the nightmare that is Sabres and Guns *should* be starting to do better, but it's like Paul Wang forgot that he included multiple difficulties in his game. I made a near perfect character going into lords only to hit consecutive decreases in a build that was already much lower than the 25 year old. Wang. Buddy. You gotta fix this. WHY are the 14 and 18 year old functionally no different from each other stat wise? WHY does the first time we go to the estate decrease our stats? WHY is my dragoon losing intelligence and charisma in Aetoria? Shouldn't it go up, especially for a character just now hitting their later twenties? We speak and engage in politics every day, Wang! It feels like Lords of Infinity, moreso than any previous Infinite Sea entry, wants you to feel malnourished and wanting. You won't get progress within your relationships, you won't pass a lot of important stat checks due to stat decay, you will spend ten minutes restarting the chapter after making a single mistake (better than the entire game, like the previous entries at least…

So I will say off the bat, I like the slow burn, I think the writing overall is pretty good, I do think you if you are reading this review as a player should take a look at other reviews to see if the game is up your alley, and I think one day I will finish it. However, I literally can't make it through this game with the choices I made in the prior 2 games, even after feeling like the character I left behind at the end of Guns was fairly successful! It feels a lot like the designer took a look at the wealth stat and went "people remembered to prioritize this, right?" despite the fact that most options to secure wealth had really rough tradeoffs in the previous games that would reasonably deter most people from securing them. I think that concept is interesting at first glance, your character in Sabres and Guns was a warfighter, and Lords goes to great lengths to contextualize returning to peacetime as something the warfighters can't come to grips with so easily, but the mechanical brutality of economic management here paired with the usual lack of consequence telegraphing made it fairly hard to want to see the story of my war hero bumbling through politics and economics through. …

After playing the Infinite Sea series the whole way through multiple times now (as you can probably tell from my hours), I have to say; Lords of Infinity, for me personally, is the strongest entry in the series in terms of choices and freedom, but a relatively major shift when it comes to content, which places you at what might seem as a loss. This initially feels like a weakness, but serves only to further immerse you in the shoes of a person who has come home to find the world he returns to changed, and his most formative experiences of little use. The first two games feature an immaculately carved rendition of "Gunpowder Fantasy", that is to say, magic exists and is very much alive in the setting, but is more of a backdrop to the occurrences contained within a war of powder, shot and cavalry. It is absolutely magnificent. The Third sees your departure from the war and entrance into politics. Lords of Infinity begins with the end of your career as an officer in a Dragoon Regiment, and the beginning of said character's involvement in stately affairs and politics. Where the first two games have you wrestling with the prospect of keeping your men alive against nearly insurmountabl…