Masquerada: Songs and Shadows

This is actually high art - the visuals, the music and sound design, the voice acting, the writing, how the gameplay mechanics all tie together. I cannot say this about most games.

This game is a must have. The battle system is like Dragon Age, except the field of view is from above. Together with and incredible story line, interesting characters with intriguing different stories (none woke for what I've seen), and perfect music, this game has the perfect combination for a thrilling experience.

omg the title is very underrated. Basic combat system but well written and enjoyable. Waiting for a sequel (if there is)

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Text Review:
-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. Some 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!

Practical Applications:
-Great Value for money (R1.30/ $0.20/ £0.16 per hour for me)
-Fairly big at 11.03 Gb
-Almost easy to run (Can play on the warhorse well enough at decreased graphical settings)

it was fun, good story too

Short linear simplex great.

I'll give this a positive review but with some caveats. First of all, you have to go in knowing this is more a visual novel with strategic fight elements rather than a roleplaying game; in fact it is so trainlined that I think calling it a roleplaying game would be a massive stretch as you can't but play the role assigned to.
So knowing it is a visual novel with some extras, what are those extras like? Unfortunately, not that great but also not terrible. The fighting is simplistic and easy but there is definitely some strategy. You can customize your toons via different masks, inks and engravings however the difference these make is negligible and you could completely ignore these if you wanted.
The game was definitely made with love however seems to fall over itself in the final acts as things become less polished. For example: random bits of lore that you need to collect will tell you about some part of the world, however it will be found halfway down a random hallway with no thematic relevance for it being there. Where as earlier in the game lore spots would make sense: it in a library, next to a storyteller, etc.
If you go in to it knowing this is a visual novel that will lose its polish a little in the later acts. It can still be quite enjoyable. I'll give it a 7/10 for what it is.