Of the Devil: Episode 1

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Why

Why Not

Impressions

After the initial shock at the degree to which dialogue/gameplay balance collapsed in the direction of dialogue compared to the demo, I had quite a good time with this episode. It makes sense there's a lot of exposition setting things up for a much longer and more complex episode with all the new characters to introduce and worldbuilding to do so you can make educated guesses at where the story's going later on. As with the demo I really enjoyed the articles establishing what a corporate hellscape the world is, and the expanded cast of characters retains their quality despite a drastic increase in quantity.

The story is also enjoyable, revolving around whether your famous friend David Ashur killed himself or was murdered, despite all evidence pointing to the former basically the whole game. The investigation is kicked off when his PA lets you know David asked her to make sure you got something, which turns out to be an incredibly advanced (and smug) android with more ...personality than most. Naturally you put your lawyering skills to use by opting to defend David against charges of suicide, providing the authority necessary to compel even corpos to talk to you (up to a point).

The mystery and overall story each have a few twists which still feel earned, and it's entirely possible to figure it out (or at least have a good guess) early on. The courtroom/questioning gameplay remains engaging and definitely required me to carefully consider my answer at times, though there are also times where the correct course of action seems pretty unmissable.

Overall definitely worth a try if you enjoyed the demo, just don't go in expecting the same ratio of 'action' to dialogue and you're in for a good time.