About this game
You know how some games have that sleek finish, right? This one doesn't. It's got this rough, almost placeholder look in some spots, the animations can be janky, and honestly I kept waiting for it to just break loading the next screen. Yet I didn't close the tab. That's the weird hold Eldmere has. My kid's been acting strange so I'm checking these things, you understand, and I just slid from concerned parent to... engaged. There's a scene early on with a noblewoman, Lady Verana or something, where she's just talking, her dress barely clinging, and the game makes you choose how to respond to her little insults. The wrong choice, she laughs and dismisses you. The right one... well, she pulls that gown aside so slowly while the camera just sits on her chest, these big, ridiculously round breasts with that glossy 3D skin. You're supposed to feel powerful but you're just frozen watching her.
The whole place is built on this idea that you train creatures, I think? Or is it people? I lost the thread after the third teasing encounter with a shadowy mistress type who kept talking about chains while doing absolutely nothing but posing. There's a lot of that, actually. It's all promise and silk and a hand on your cheek but then fade to black. Maddening. But the character models, when they're not clipping through their own capes, have this weight to them, a real presence. The big ass on the redhead who runs the stables, I mean, it's just absurd, physics that make no sense but you can't look away. Gameplay is just clicking through text and the occasional choice that seems to lead back to the same sort of heavy-lidded stare from a woman with power over you. I wish there was more to actually do with that power you're supposedly learning. They give you a mansion at one point and I thought, oh here we go, but it's just more conversations.
The sound design is all off, by the way. Like someone recorded sighs in a tin can. But then a scene will hit, a quiet moment where the protagonist, this orphan boy who somehow knows exactly what to say, gets a real answer from someone and you see the writing underneath isn't half bad. It's buried under all the jank and the waiting and the clothes that never quite fall off until they do and it's overwhelming.