MASQUERADA: Songs and Shadows Review [Ep.92]
1Want a Renaissance ARPG where you use magic masks to cast elemental magic? Then check out this Cheapness affordable gaming review of Masquerada: Songs and Shadows [Episode 92]
This review of Masquerada: Songs and Shadows (By Witching Hour Studios) shows how:
-Good visuals (Nice cel shading and faction colour-coding, hand drawn backgrounds, better than average comic cutscenes and thumbnail facial animations, if they show little emotional range. Som details look blurry and some areas can look lifeless and too clean but some can look brilliant and overall it looks very good)
-Great music, if not that memorable (Nice operatic, choral singing and lilting music that's somber yet hopeful. A heart racing, blistering, combat track too)
-Great, extensive voice acting that breathes life into everything (Very beefy cast in voice acting circles but it doesn't handle the codex)
-Very good story (OK plot, good world-building, good interactions with the characters and great internal monologue from Cicero in the codex. The codex is where the most profound thoughts will be contained. Cicero is a lovely, morally compromised, yet understanding character but there are occasions where he behaves irrationally, where dialogue feels cut short to set up talking about it later and maybe some obvious reveals)
-It's a story based game, that's the main draw, it's most of what the game is and since the codex is not voiced over you will have to read a lot to fully appreciate it
-The gameplay isn't great and on normal difficulty it did not require much tactical thought, maybe it's harsh to put this here as a con but it's busy work adjacent. The systems aren't that deep, it's very linear, finding the engravings, inks and codex entries isn't hard. I'm really trying to find a con because I really like this game but the gameplay breaks up the story so that it feels less like a movie and an appreciation of the story is probably needed to buy this game!
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0:00 Cheapness Intro
0:11 Gag and Summary
1:20 Good Renaissance Visuals
3:14 Quality Voice Acting with a Pretty Stacked Cast
4:19 Great Music
5:39 Kind of Shallow Combat
6:57 Quite Linear
7:07 Lovely Morally Compromised Yet Caring Character
8:26 You May Have to Read a Lot!
8:50 Length Compared to Other RPGs
8:57 Value for Money
9:05 Download Size
9:11 Is It Easy to Run?
9:53 Is It Kid Friendly?
11:08 Pros
12:23 Maybes
12:32 Cons
13:07 Ending Gag
13:24 Cheapness Outro