Geneforge 1 – Mutagen

Geneforge 1 – Mutagen is the remaster of the old-school CRPG Geneforge 1 from 2001. Compared to the original, the UI and graphics look much better now. A few skills and mechanics were changed (mostly for the better), and the story was slightly expanded. However, you can’t change your character’s appearance anymore, which I find a bit disappointing.
Maybe I'm biased, but I’ve never played a Spiderweb Software game I didn’t like. This one has all the things I expect and love in a CRPG: strategic combat, exploration, an interesting world with a good story, and steady character progression.
The story/lore is a big part of why it works for me. There’s no classic “good vs evil“ here. Every faction has its reasons and often solid arguments for being the way they are. Choosing a side never feels clear-cut. Of course, you can just ignore everyone and do your own thing. The game doesn’t punish you for that, apart from missing some good items. Every NPC can die, even important ones and quest givers, though they’re harder to kill. And if fighting isn’t your thing, you can finish the whole game with stealth and diplomacy as long as you avoid the more enemy-heavy zones. Quests in general can often be solved in different ways. Higher difficulties like Veteran and Torment are there if you want them. (Side note: The Geneforge Saga would also make for a good book)
At the start you choose between three classes. The Guardian is melee-focused, the Agent leans toward stealth, and the Shaper summons creatures. I enjoyed playing the Shaper the most. You can build a small group/army of creatures (up to eight, if I remember correctly) and each one has different skills and spells. It‘s important (especially on higher difficulties) to learn about enemies’ weaknesses and use the right creatures to counter them.
The game starts in a small enclosed zone on a barred island. Each zone can have up to four exits at its edges, marked by blue ground. Walking onto one of them brings you to the world map. The direction you leave from determines which new zone gets unlocked. There are roughly eighty in total, and you’ll revisit many of them while doing quests. Fast travel is only available after a path has been cleared, which can happen in different ways: simply passing through, killing all hostile creatures or a boss, or finishing a quest. On the world map, cleared areas show up in green and uncleared ones in red. Hovering over them also tells you if a quest is there.
You can move around a zone freely, but once an enemy sees you, the game switches to a grid and shifts into turn-based combat. At the start of each round you get a set amount of action points, so you have to carefully plan where to move and what attack to use. Fighting requires a lot of strategy. Enemies can flank or ambush you (or leap straight at your weak caster). There are many spells, weapons, potions, and buffs to work with, so fights rarely feel the same.
The inventory system is simple but clever. You only have one character with an inventory (your creatures can't carry stuff), so it fills up fast. But you have a junk bag where you can put everything you want (unlimited). You can only take stuff out of it when you're in a friendly village though, so be careful what you put in there. You can also sell everything in the junk bag at once at a vendor instead of selling items one by one.
The save system deserves a short mention. You can save (normal+quicksave) whenever you want outside of combat, but the game also creates an autosave every time you enter a new zone. That actually saved me several times from soft-locking myself. There are zones where new enemies respawn constantly, so I found myself low on health and couldn't leave the zone to travel back to a town to heal (health, essence, and mana get refilled when entering a friendly town).
If you don’t mind (A LOT of) reading and the graphics don’t bother you, this is a solid RPG with plenty to do. The game looks rough and a little old and janky, but it’s not as bad or hard as it first seems. A bit of planning helps, especially with buffs, combat positioning, and using enemies’ weaknesses against them.
I’m looking forward to the next part of the series and hope that Geneforge 3-5 get a remaster too.

What would happen if Mary Shelley and Jules Verne had a grand-grandson who was an old-school C-programmer with a knack for game development? This might as well be Jeff Vogel who has been running Spiderweb Software game studio for some 30 odd years.
Geneforge is equal parts sci-fantasy book and tactical CRPG. If you like both those art forms and don't mind a somewhat retro look in a game (though Geneforge Mutagen looks very pretty if you can look past its retro roots), you don't want to miss this title. In fact, all series by this studio are amazing in this regard - just be careful to not buy older versions of the games, as those definitely show their age. I appreciate that they are still listed here, but for anyone not performing game archeology, there's no reason to reach for those older titles when much prettier modernized remakes are available. They all go on discounts periodically, so the bang-for-the-buck is truly stupendous - if reading long, original, high quality fantasy stories in exploration-driven tactical RPG game form is your bang, that is. Make no mistake, these aren't VNs, they are pure bred RPGs, but the amount of story content dwarfs even some long VNs, especially considering that most of these series run 3 titles long, and one, Avernum runs 6! (Avernum remakes are up to 4 at this point, but I'm sure we'll get all of them in due time).
Now excuse me, I have to read just one more page of this game before bed... I mean, I need to have one more fight in this book... oh chucks.

Don't be dissuaded by the old school graphics, it's an excellent CRPG with a compelling story and a fairly fun and unique setting.

Unlike the Avernum re-remakes I think all the gameplay changes in this one are generally agreed to be improvements over the original. Widescreen support is great too. I think the designs/sprites for a lot of the shaper creations were better in the original, but that's a minor quibble.
Remake specific stuff aside, this is a *fantastic* rpg with a really good story, highly recommended.

I played through the original Geneforge 1 several times years ago and first played through Mutagen on Epic after the giveaway. I've always considered Geneforge Spiderweb's weakest series, behind Avernum, Queen's Wish, and Avadon (in that order). I find managing groups of generic creations tedious compared to working with fully fleshed out parties, the map system of clearing discrete node by discrete node is less interesting to me than the more open worlds of the others, and the way you get force railroaded right from the start into one of three very sharply defined factions I find off putting from a story perspective. They're still good games (well, at least the first three, I'm not sure if I ever finished 4 and 5 all the way to the end) but not great games like Avernum or Queen's Wish or very good games like Avadon.

That said, I was surprised on my latest (I think fifth time including original and remake) playthrough of Geneforge 1 to have my best experience with the series doing a Torment, solo, pacifist run to pick up three achievements that didn't immediately unlock when I launched the Steam version and it read in my Epic saves. I thought I'd give that a shot and in all likelihood find it too hard and tedious to stick with, but it was actually surprisingly the most engaging way I've found to play the game. The earlier sections in particular are engrossing when you have to be very strategic and careful in what regions you can clear to green status, which areas within which regions you safely enter, where you can lure monsters back to friendly characters to have them do the killing, where and how the game lets you completely bypass combat by heavily pumping up leadership and mechanics, where you can revisit areas after getting more stealth to move further into previously effectively blocked off areas -- all a lot of fun.

Surprisingly, once you get into mid to late game and you're aligned with the Takers and have 11 leadership, 14 mechanics, and 12-15 stealth (and that's all you need; I had a bunch of unspent skill points when I finished the game) a Torment, solo, pacifist approach becomes probably the easiest time I've had in any Spiderweb game at any difficulty level, cakewalk rush through the entire NW and NE sections of the map containing Trajkov, the Geneforge itself, and Goettsch.

I love the Geneforge series and I'm so glad they decided to modernize the first game. I got hooked on the demos when I was young - something about the branching story and the magic of shaping creatures just enthralls me. 80 hours later, I have explored the world of Geneforge 1 and finished all achievements. If you're on the fence about trying a Spiderweb Software RPG, I recommend giving this a try!

Tedious inventory management and repetitive encounters due to a crude ruleset, but the setting, the worldbuilding, the story, its moral ambiguity, and the writing are honestly surprisingly interesting and original for a one man game. Just make sure you have a playlist to be played in background since the game has no music at all