Saturday, November 11, 2023

Liberté - a lovely mix of horrors

 The world continues to burn in Ukraine and Gaza, but those horrors are too real and too fresh to be in any way "entertaining".  How about a nice mix of French Revolution horrors and Lovecraftian horrors instead?

Liberté (Compatibility: Verified) is just such a mix.  In an alternate-universe France, around the time-period of our French Revolution, King Louis has died and the crown prince is going through his coronation, when a giant "monster" appears, wreaks havoc, takes the crown, and disappears.  You awaken in the rubble, with a bit of the ol' amnesia at play, get identified as one of the Rebels, hack down a few soldiers with your rapier... and are led to meet with what's left of the monster.  One thing leads to another, you rescue a few more Rebels from the Monarchists, slip away to get the monster quietly established underground (running into (and through) a few Inquisitors of the Congregation in the process), whereupon you get the guiding quest for the rest of the game.  The monster (which calls itself Lady Bliss) sees itself as an agent of balance, while the world its in is wildly out of balance (there's a definite ecological aspect involved as well).  They want you to go out into Paris, which is in the throes of revolution, and ingratiate yourself with each of the four major factions involved (mainly by slaughtering loads of their enemy of choice at the moment), learn what truly drives each of them, and find someone worthy to receive the crown from Lady Bliss.

Now, that's a fun enough combination of ideas to begin with, but honestly it's not that much to hang a compelling rogue-lite game from on its own.  In particular, there's nothing there to justify central mechanics like reviving after dying to start a new run... or so I thought, until I died the first time.  Turns out, you're more pod-person than human, you just absorbed the appearance and memories of an unlucky Rebel named Rene, and you are sufficiently "attached" to Lady Bliss that she can squirt out a new clone of you whenever you die - and you don't have to come back as Rene, if you have unlocked access to other forms while getting in good with the factions.  So, handily, that not only covers respawning, but also different weapons and combat styles to experiment with.

All in all, it's a fun setup for a game, and I'll get some mileage out of it... but it's also fair to note that I likely won't see everything it has to offer.  The gameplay I've seen so far is what I would call "thoroughly adequate", consisting mostly of fights against a few enemy types per faction in fairly close quarters.  In part, that's because most of the fights happen in the streets of Paris, which tend to be pretty repetitive.  In fact there are some maps that, from what I could see, take advantage of your inability to move the camera to present themselves as a different map by simply rotating the map a bit.  Combine that with different "world tiers" that it offers when you go to select a mission, with each tier mainly increasing the difficulty level of the enemies, and it's clear that the intent of the game is for you to get to know the patterns of the enemies over many multiple plays... and, much like souls-likes, I doubt I have the patience.  But, who knows, maybe the story of Lady Bliss infesting everything while the various factions squabble with each other will be enough to keep bringing be back for one more run.

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