Whiskey-Four

So many of the choices are fluff I don't care about while the stuff I would care about are chosen for me by the author. Playtime is high because I accidentally left it on overnight when it put me to sleep.

The early chapters were engaging and left me eager to learn more about the story. However as the story progressed, writing quality started to drop dramatically. The dialogue choices also didn't really matter that much. Most were basically the exact same choice, just worded slightly differently. While the mystery element and the anomalies were intriguing, the main character felt super overpowered and came across as a self-insert. I thought this was a unique story that used a generic "detective in a dystopian future" trope as a starting point, but it turned out to be just that. Also there were so many fight and shooting scenes that I got the impression that the game was trying to be an FPS in book form. By chapter 30 I was already bored and skipping through most pages due to the non-choice choices and cringey dialogue. I think the story dragged on too long and could have kept its writing quality from the early chapters if it was shorter. It reminded me of those detective shows on TV that start off strong but gets repetitive and boring by season 5.

It is unfortunately a slog to play. The quality of the plot & dialogues decrease dramatically as the story progress. While I really enjoyed the dramatic writing during I, the Forgotten One; Most of the characters behaviors/motivations were unrealistic and edgy here.

It's one of the better games that I've tried in this genre. The story is fast-paced and packed with action, so much so that it's hard to find an uneventful page for a pause. + The book is well-written and manages to create a good atmosphere without too many descriptions. I felt fully immersed into the world. + Characters are interesting and engaging. It is believable that they come from this world, and not from ours. + The male MC is believably a man, which is unfortunately rare nowadays. There is a good variety of replies that still follow a familiar pattern. + I took the affectionate path with the MC's ex-lover (who was also a male in my playthrough). To my relief, the story did not devolve into the usual cringe populating the enemy-to-lovers trope. I mean, it was dramatic and a bit funny, but it did fit with the tone of the story. + I won't be rereading the book because I was pleased with the choices I'd made, so I can't speak on how much the MC really can influence. While reading it though, it did feel like many decisions mattered. I helped a person who later helped me; I used certain equipment in certain situations; got injured or saved by my previous choices. So it was in g…

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[i]Whiskey-Four[/i] is a great game. Alongside the author's other work, [i]I, the Forgotten One[/i], it's clear that the author is an excellent writer. I found the story compelling and interesting and really enjoyable. There's not any stat building in this one, although there are a few things tracked like your injury state or what items you have on you. This CYOA is on the more railroady side of the genre, but I don't think it's that bad. The narrative is linear but there is plenty of variation within that. There are meaningful choices, but their consequences sometimes come later rather than immediately. If you do a thing, then later on something might happen differently. It'll be a perfectly logical consequence, it's just that you aren't necessarily getting instant feedback about it. I don't think there anything wrong with preferring overt and immediate consequences over subtler ones like this, it just comes down to preference. I tend to find that CYOAs like [i]Whiskey-Four[/i] trade a bit of freedom for a more interesting and compelling main character. Which you prioritise is up to you. I will say that the last quarter of the game is where there's the highest density of meaningf…