Empyrean

I loved the world building and story for Empyrean. The author did a great job of creating an interesting dieselpunk world and filling it with interesting characters and a dramatic political crisis narrative. Unfortunately, as far as CoG games go this one was disappointing. The stats were confusing given the choices offered during scenarios and I never really felt like I understood what my characters strengths and weaknesses were. In fact, I don't know if my character had any strengths because every choice I made seemed to backfire/go wrong and allow an NPC to save the day in my clumsy wake. As a result, when I should have been enjoying the story I was just getting annoyed at how little information I was being given to make good choices as my character failed every choice I made.

Beautifully written characters and plot. Wordy, but exciting. Definitely one you'll want to play over again. The stats are kind of difficult to understand? I still can't figure out exactly what will affect them

Not going to lie; I was nervous spending so much money for one COG and risking hating it. But I took the risk and it was worth it. The story took me half a day reading through it all to get through it. Even on replays it takes me an hour or two from start to finish. The story itself was enjoyable and I found myself taking pleasure in getting to understand all the characters. (My personal fav is Amro, whose cheeks I just want to pinch!) It does get slightly confusing when your given the options to save building A or B and you can't remember what the two are. The stats confused me by their titles- I didn't get how they were matched up or how what you did would effect what. Made no sense to me. (After a few play through I got some of it figured out but I hate how long it took me.) I also struggled with imagining the world itself. There were details but then there wasn't at the same time. So I had to knock a star off for those reasons.