Saturnine (2025)

First time in a while I've requested for a refund. It's not terrible, it's just written with an immature tone that I abhor. There is a trend with a lot of these CYOA's feeling like they're written by a snarky millennial redditor. It's beyond grating and I just couldn't continue. The restraints are also incredibly stark, preventing me from killing people with paper thin contrivances that made me roll my eyes. Lastly, the flashbacks, exposition dumps, and history lessons every other paragraph slows the momentum to a crawl. I just couldn't do it..

I really want to like this game more than I did. Maybe I'm just bitter with the choices I was (forced) to make. But I have complaints even if I doubt anyone will even read this. For one, gender. No, I'm not upset that you can be very specific with it. In fact, I love that I can be "ambiguous" (which is barely true, but I'll get there). I love that you can refer to yourself as an "it". It's not something I see very often in these kinds of games, let alone more "common" nonbinary identities like just they/them. No, my issue lies in the fact that it means basically nothing. I wonder why this writer put thought into something like this just for there to be so many instances where its essentially completely ignored. At the very beginning of the game, you can choose to be Male, Female, or "Ambiguous". On my very first run, I chose the third option. So, it really sucked when a few choices later, during a flashback sequence, my character was referred to as masculine and the identity I initially chose basically being pointless. It felt like a complete thievery of player agency. But okay, fine. I just reset the game and stuck to having a female body, I guess, not that I should have had to …

If there was a mixed rating to give to that game, it would receive that. However, between choosing either to recommend this game or not, unfortunately I can not recommend it to any adult person. The writing is mostly okay, however there are some parts that are way too "cringe", or aimed at a much younger audience. And those parts negatively influence the overall flow and tone of the game. For instance, there was an interesting, "deep" conversation with the person, if the android can be truly Christian, if the God can accept a being without soul, so to say. And it is an interesting piece of writing, that is immediately overshadowed with the same person mentioning just seconds later, that for a 900 year old android we still look "hot".

surprised to see this is mixed the story is pretty great and the characters are interesting in a pretty equally interesting worldspace

Been following this ever since the demo on the CoG forums, which I replayed with basicallt every update. An amazing game with a fascinating setting and very interesting characters. Probably one of the best games of its time I played.

dragged for me