The Hero Project: Open Season

I really, really wanted to like this one. The first Trilogy was awesome, like unable to put it down fun to read. It was always a bit tell-don't-show-y, but I really felt like I was driving that ship and that my character was mine. So, despite bad reviews, I wanted to get Redemption and Open Season to see where all of my favourite characters ended up! Do not do this. Redemption was a struggle to get through, with its forced political stances and illusions of choice, but at least some of the characters were fun! I couldn't finish Open season. I did everything in my power to not make a certain choice, but was forced to make a choice anyway because of the author's clear ideologies making their way into the story and constantly trying to force their political agenda on my character. If I wanted to be preached at I'd read twitter for five minutes, not pay $5 for a game that isn't interesting or clever enough in its politics to keep me interested in the weak story. Have Herofall be your ending, and skip this one. Really disappointing. :(

I've played through the entire Heroes Rise trilogy and enjoyed it. I picked up Redemption Season, and while I felt that it didn't quite have the charm of the first series, there were definitely some interesting dynamics going on. Open Season is an on-rails bait-and-switch that drops all of the personal drama and superpowered action in favor of political messages that are no longer clever commentary on politics that your character can thread their way through, but a forced ideology. Not to give the plot away, but eventually, there are rebels and no matter how hard you say "No" to them, the game will not accept that answer, effectively kidnaps your character, and forces him/her to work for them by eventually not giving you dialogue choices to refuse any more, despite not giving your character any motivations to stay and do so and not undermine them. So I hope you like it when the LGBTAQ expys take over an American city and secede from the Union, because you're one of them and you're going to agree with their tactics whether you like it or not.

First off, ignore all the bad reviews. This game has all of two actual flaws: You don't get any kinds of 'heads up' when being forced to read as a different character. & A few minor spelling and grammatical typos. Secondly, if you liked this series before, you will like this game. This game, right from the start, throws tons of information your way. It goes a long way to making you feel as overwhelmed as your character does/should feel. The biggest bad thing people seem to say about this game is they didn't get enough information on Magnuspiral. This series has always left certain things intentionally vague, so that you as a reader can fill in the blanks yourself. It's a technique they've been using very well that promotes personal creativity, replayability, and connecting the reader with the story in a way that can change from playthrough to playthrough. I guarantee the bad reviews are all from people who either aren't used to playing text based games, or are against the issues this story covers which has expanded from the previous stories from gender identity, light politics, and a small taste of the tension between different kinds of powered individuals. This story includes …

This got a LOT more LGBTQ hate then I thought it would, which is a shame because it's pretty good and people are like. Uncomfortable with the material. Which is also a shame because they could've learned something if they weren't too uncomfortable or uh, bigoted I guess.

Crashed and burned after chapter 3. Taking away the player's own thinking, telling you what you should feel or believe instead, not to mention the entire Magnuspiral part and the forced Underrepresented Awareness message ruined what could have been the grand finale of this serie. Honestly, I mostly just kept reading because of Prodigal (MeChip Prodigal is the best thing of THP, period) and the Heroes Rise MC appearances. Zachary Sergi is a great writer that unfortunately decided to ruin his own interactive stories with his activist program. Same happened with the Versus story. Shame.

Yeah im sorry but im going to have to go with the the rest here... No offence to the author. I really do like your writing and your previous works. It was just extremely difficult to immerse myself into the role of a character who didnt seem to know himself. It was like looking into the mind of someone with schizophrenia... I kept asking myself why doesnt this character need a psychiatrist waking up different every single day seems traumatizing even playing it kinda traumatized me.