Beautiful Desolation

 PC
User Score
6.9

Mixed or average reviews- based on 41 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 41
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 41
  3. Negative: 6 out of 41

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  1. iseeall
    Sep 20, 2020
    5
    I played Fallout 1 and 2 as well as Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Planescape Tourment, even Arcanum, so this one feels familiar. However, Beautiful Isolation's main problem is that's just just an "impenetrable" game. It's unclear what's going on. So much that in the very first location I couldn't even understand what genre it is or what I'm supposed to be doing. It doesn't get better later on.I played Fallout 1 and 2 as well as Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Planescape Tourment, even Arcanum, so this one feels familiar. However, Beautiful Isolation's main problem is that's just just an "impenetrable" game. It's unclear what's going on. So much that in the very first location I couldn't even understand what genre it is or what I'm supposed to be doing. It doesn't get better later on. Got stuck after the crashed troop transport, with no desire to continue.
    Sad, especially with so much great art wasted here. There are tiny little environmental animations everyone, and animated 3D dialogs with voice-overs. Gee, so much work for a boring point-and-click adventure or whatever this is.. You should fire your game designer. It's just criminal to waste artists' work like this.    … Expand
  2. PublicNuisance
    Aug 11, 2021
    5
    I have one major issue with Beautiful Desolation and that is I find the objectives to be overly vague. Everything else has the makings of a good game. There is a screen that lists your overall quests but every one has many layers to it and different things that you have to do in order to complete it and it never updates. Couple with that the fact that the game gives little to no indicationI have one major issue with Beautiful Desolation and that is I find the objectives to be overly vague. Everything else has the makings of a good game. There is a screen that lists your overall quests but every one has many layers to it and different things that you have to do in order to complete it and it never updates. Couple with that the fact that the game gives little to no indication of what it wants you to do or where to go. I can understand and appreciate a game not wanting to hold your hand but on that spectrum hand holding is on one end and this game is on the complete opposite where somewhere in the middle would have been preferable. To give some examples there is one objective that states “help don”. Well to help Don first you have to find him which means repairing a ship; talking to a specific character that happens to give you a location he may be at; finding a first aid kit; finding Don and then using the first aid kit on him. The only way I was able to figure this sequence of events out was to talk to every person I saw and visit every location I could until I stumbled onto the info I needed. Another example is a mission where I need to find an offering of “flesh and bone” to appease a group but that is another multi layered objective requiring going to many places that you are given no hint of. I prefer more structure and less chaos in my game play. A better game would have dropped a few hints in some way to give me some semblance of an idea on what I need to do. Even having a marker on the map of what area an objective could be found in would have helped. There was an option for a “quest marker” but even with that on I never saw one anywhere. The graphics had a nice art style to them and I will single out the water as being very well done. The game may have taken place in a desert area but it had a good use of color that made it pop. The dialogue was fantastic as was the voice acting. I was really starting to enjoy the characters in the game if I could have enjoyed the game play. The story could have used more of an intro and explanation of the etch and people but maybe the game would have delved into things further. I will also say that I found some invisible walls scattered throughout, I would have preferred something blocking those ways such as a building as it looks better than an invisible wall.

    I played Beautiful Desolation on Linux. It had some technical issues as it froze once and crashed three times in my short time playing. There were 3 AA settings; a V-Sync toggle; and 8 other graphics options to tweak. Alt-tab didn’t work. You can manually save outside of cut scenes and dialogue windows. The game does auto save at various points if you want to use that. Performance was great although my GPU usage was often pegged at 100% despite the graphical detail not warranting it in my view. The game does have a built in toggle to display your frame rate, which is nice, but it also displays several other bits of info such as total RAM and VRAM. It would have been nice to just choose the frame rate to be displayed as I have software to monitor the others and it clutters up the game screen.

    Game Engine: Unity
    Game Version Played: 1.0.5.5
    Save System: Manual and Auto

    Settings Used: AA Extreme; V-Sync System Managed; all others at Extreme or On; 1920x1080
    GPU Usage: 25-100 %
    VRAM Usage: 1450-2346 MB
    CPU Usage: 8-25 %
    RAM Usage: 2.4-3.1 GB
    Frame Rate: 94-144 FPS

    Overall many parts of Beautiful Desolation were solid or great but figuring out where the game wanted me to go was a chore that got annoying fast and ended up making me quit the game after 3 hours and 35 minutes. There is a demo up for the game now but back when I bought the game it either wasn’t available or I didn’t notice it. I would suggest checking it out first before buying.

    My Score: 5/10

    My System:

    AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 21.1.3 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Solus 4.3 | Mate 1.24.3 | Kernel 5.13.8-190.current | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz    … Expand
  3. Vasot
    May 26, 2021
    4
    WARNING THIS IS NOT AN RPG except from a similar post-apocalyptic world this game has nothing to do with Fallout games. This game is mainly a boring adventure game made for casuals the gameplay is about solving stupid puzzles and reading texts very disappointing got bored with it and uninstalled it
  4. bancandrei
    Apr 11, 2021
    5
    While the backgrounds are beautiful and the atmosphere is novel, I don't feel it works well as an adventure game. And the mechanical limitations (I can't even figure out where I can walk) make the moment to moment gameplay completely unsatisfactory. Also I cannot understand why they copied the interface from fallout (imperfectly). It can only lead to dissatisfaction and unfavourable comparisons.
  5. TwoEars
    Oct 25, 2020
    9
    You know that feeling you got when you watched Star Wars IV: A New Hope for the first time and they walked into that bar? That feeling of something new, unexplored and unexpected? Well, here's more or less and entire game which feels like that. I've been playing adventure and role-playing games for +20 years and this has to be one of the most original and unique games I've come across in aYou know that feeling you got when you watched Star Wars IV: A New Hope for the first time and they walked into that bar? That feeling of something new, unexplored and unexpected? Well, here's more or less and entire game which feels like that. I've been playing adventure and role-playing games for +20 years and this has to be one of the most original and unique games I've come across in a long, long time.

    If you're tired of the gaming industry churning out generic copies of the last title that sold +20 million, if you want to experience something truly unique, if you want something which feels like "taking the red pill", if you've been around for a while and miss the raw edge that some older games had.. then Beautiful Desolation is for you. It's a world brimming with originality, strife, passion and memorable characters and it's a journey you won't soon forget.

    It's not perfect though. The puzzles can be vague and hard to complete, if you manage to complete this game without a guide.. you're a better player than me. Some of the big solutions are also very binary it feels like, choose either this big thing here or that big thing over there. Many of the conflicts in the game lack a middle-ground or truly diplomatic or pacifist solution. Which can be frustrating since these are fairly big and world altering choices to make with relatively limited information. Perhaps our role in this universe as "kingmaker" is a little too strong, we might have too much say.

    And while the game isn't completely linear it's mostly linear. You'll have to complete objectives x and y to open up area z and so forth, speak to person x and y then speak to z etc. This is hidden decently well while playing but in hindsight it becomes clear that this isn't an open-world game with free and dynamic choices, so don't expect Fallout 2 for instance. Approach it like an adventure game rather than an open-world RPG and you'll be fine.

    The story is also very ambitious, and intriguing, maybe too ambitious and intriguing. Because when the time for the big finale comes they don't really know how to tie it all together. The game has massive amounts of lore, mystique and build-up but the ending seems a little tacked on and doesn't really fit the rest of the game if I'm honest. It's not that the ending was unexpected, it was hinted at and is logical. But it doesn't really explain or resolve the bigger questions, we're mostly just left hanging.

    Some positive and negative points:

    + Gorgeous graphics
    + Great music (Mick Gordon!)
    + For me very fitting and passionate voice acting
    + Very ambitious world-building and lore
    + Truly original story and fantastic characters
    + Classic RPG and adventure game feel
    - Binary choices, maybe too binary
    - Unresolved ending, more questions than answers
    - Pretty oblique puzzles spread out over a big world
    - Lack of questlog or in-world hint system, if you're stuck you're stuck

    I think as a pure puzzle adventure game this would probably be a 7, the puzzles are only so good and can be pretty unintuitive in places. And if was to give it a completely straight score, all things considered, this would probably be an 8. But I feel that just for sheer originality and creativity I have to give this a 9. It's not often these days you stumble across something which is so unique and has a flavor all of its own, and for that alone I think it's well worth your time. If you're a jaded gamer, bored with the majority of mindless mainstream games, then Beautiful Desolation might be the red pill you need.    … Expand
  6. EvgeniLinuxUser
    Jun 21, 2020
    10
    A classic isometric postapocalypse quest with a stunning poisonous-rusty colored graphics. The game should be used as a guide "How to make a true ending". Works perfect on Ubuntu 18.04 (AMD Ryzen 7 2700X + Nvidia GTX 1080 with driver version 440.82 + QHD + 32 GB + Intel SSD).
  7. Tuxs
    Jul 25, 2020
    10
    This game so good and thanks for supporting Turkish language. I recommend this game.
  8. Awanka
    Oct 7, 2021
    4
    This is a tough game to rate. Let's start with the bad. If we're talking purely from the perspective of puzzle-based gameplay, it's wretched. Being an open world puzzle game is actually a terrible idea because it multiplies exponentially the number of possibilities that exist for combinations and triggers, which are the keys to solving most puzzles. Combine that with bizarre NintendoThis is a tough game to rate. Let's start with the bad. If we're talking purely from the perspective of puzzle-based gameplay, it's wretched. Being an open world puzzle game is actually a terrible idea because it multiplies exponentially the number of possibilities that exist for combinations and triggers, which are the keys to solving most puzzles. Combine that with bizarre Nintendo logic and items with weird names that you can't intuit the relationship between, and you're in for a bad time. This is a big step back from Stasis' logical puzzles that made sense. It's sometimes so difficult to figure out what you're supposed to do in the game. Chains of events you have to trigger to progress are so cryptic that it feels like you have to randomly stumble upon them. This pairs poorly with the large number of different locations. Using a guide is almost a necessity. The game engine is also clunky and outdated by about a decade.

    On the plus side, this is one of the most original world settings I've ever seen. It is extreme sci-fi that reminds me of the Dying Earth genre of fiction set in an future apocalyptic Africa. It's a good RPG in the sense that the choices that you make, and how you treat your companions actually matters. The ending was pretty cool.

    2/10 puzzle game with +1 for originality and +1 for a good RPG ending.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
76

Generally favorable reviews - based on 14 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 14
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 14
  3. Negative: 0 out of 14
  1. PLAY! Zine
    Sep 5, 2020
    80
    Beautiful Desolation is a gorgeous game, with unique Afro-futuristic world waiting for you to explore it.
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  2. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Jul 22, 2020
    60
    Beautiful isometric adventure game with interesting story and characters. If you love Fallout and Die Antwoord is your blood type, Beautiful Desolation is a game for you. [Issue#302]
  3. Riot Pixels
    Jul 19, 2020
    82
    If you manage to power through the dull first third of the game and let some of the design limitations slide, Beautiful Desolation will reward you with one of the best post-apocalyptic worlds ever created.
    Read full review
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