A fascinating cyberpunk science fantasy
is the backdrop for E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy, Streum on studio's first
commercial release. The setting is an unusual mix of cyberpunk and
space opera, the player is a psychic cybernetic space Templar
belonging to Secreta Secretorum, an organization devoted to fighting
the Metastreumonic-force(a malevolent psychic force that spawns
monsters that are hostile to humanity), whom awakes with amnesia in a
cave; he is plunged into a convoluted power struggle between the
stellar federation and the Secreta and within the Secreta itself. The
plot is hard to make out due to a bizzare translation, but
considering the voices are speaking gibberish based on real languages
and how distant and strange the setting is the flawed translation
actually contributes to the mood.
The art direction is classic cyberpunk,
dark megacities with tacky billboards pasted everywhere, and everyone
is dressed in paramilitary garb or an improvised combat outfit of
some sort. The color scheme of the game is dark near monochrome and
helps build the desolate mood, but is also a good example of why not
to have a dark near monochrome color scheme; far too often I asked
myself “is that the floor or a pit,” or “Is that an enemy
there? There's a street light there and I can't even tell.” The
player has a flashlight that they can use, but it has the power of a
candle, and it fails to be terribly useful. Generally a “dark
future” shouldn't be taken to mean that the future has bad
lighting.
Character growth is limited by two
factors, experience and money. Experience levels up the character,
which gives three skill points for the player to invest in their
character's stats, and money that can be used to buy new weapons,
psychic powers, cybernetic implants(which add new abilites), improve
the character's cybernetic argumentations(which can add to stats or
reduce energy costs for various implants among other things), or
research new technologies(which is passively done once paid for) to
unlock new upgrades powers or abilities. Research is hampered by the
requirement of items to be found for fundamental research; these
items drop randomly with uneven frequency of drops, many
players(including myself) could play through to the games true
end(which requires at lest three playthroughs of the game) and have a
number of avenues of research not performed due to several missing
research items. The drop system for research items while interesting
is terribly implemented; it might have better idea to simply allow
the player to research whatever they wished from the start due to the
amount of time that it takes to research and the scarcity of many of
the items being rediculous. Higher level cybernetic argumentations
are also exorbitantly expensive, a level four(out of ten, higher
levels require research in various technologies) of a cheaper ability
can cost as much as a powerful psychic ability or cybernetic add-on.
The payouts for missions and slaying enemies are paltry for paying
for the more expensive research and argumentation upgrades; playing
higher difficulties is encouraged somewhat by having higher payouts,
though difficulty rapidly becomes absurd when trying for a decent
payout.
The variety of options available to the
player is immense, allowing for much customization of a character.
The game has “classes” which are actually titles given depending
on how one invests their character's stats. Other than being an
interesting thing to have, there is little use for this. The
developer established interest in making special abilities for the
different classes, but this seems to have been abandoned. While there
are many options available, unless the player has the correct set of
abilities or sufficient knowledge of what to do, the player may fail
to progress in a mission. Level design is severely hampered by the
color scheme; for example on the mars mission I found myself unable
to navigate toward any of the objectives at first, and took several
hours trying to bypass the interceptor airships while not getting
lost in the first canyon. Most of that time was spent building my
stats by doing side missions, not realizing that there was a higher
ledge that I could climb and use to bypass the interceptors because I
could not make it out. A first run character will likely end up
following the “equilibrium fist”/”Equilibrium Lord”/”Gray
Master” class path as they will try to adapt their character to
whatever objectives they can actually locate. However once the player
knows the layouts of the maps in the game, they will be able to more
successfully build a character to one specialty or another as they
can actually locate the paths for their chosen specialty. Not finding
the objective is normally an acceptable thing to befall the player if
they fail due to their own lack of ability, but if it is due to the
game construction being inadvertently obtuse then this is
inexcusable.
The game in very well thought out with
good ideas behind it. The only real source of problems if that the
game suffers from some balancing issues; though this is easily
explained by the small team the developer Streum has; and the color
scheme, while very atmospheric detracts from the player's ability to
understand the environment. That may be intentional obstructionism by
the developers, but the added difficulty in seeing the environment is
excessive. I often cursed the game for being far too dark to actually
see what was going on. Despite these flaws the developers executed a
very ambitious and interesting game. Character progression is
enjoyable, fundamental art direction(save monochrome dark palette) is
excellent, and the game structure is fitted to the story in a way
that is fascinating and makes playing the game over far more
enjoyable. My final wishes are that we could have more of the game;
more maps, more character options, more enemies, and perhaps even
some bosses to fight. Once I found myself at a high level, I found
myself pining for something new to try my character on; I would have
liked to see a psychopomp boss at the true end area to fight, though
there was no such thing, I would expect that the team had
insufficient resources or the desire for that(if ever there was to
put in some immense baroque multi-staged boss in a FPS in a
completely justified manner, it was then and there). From the quality
of the efforts put into this game, I hope Streum manages to make more
quality inventive games like this in the future. I don't see any
activity on their website indicating any current game projects and
EYE was put out several years ago, but I remain hopeful that they are
at work on something worthwile.
EYE wiki for reference. It's a little sparse on essential information on the game though.
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