This game popped up as part of an Xbox Live Gold sale for $9.99 CAD and since I enjoy story-driven, choice and consequence style games, I figured picking it up was a no-brainer.
Along with it being a story-centric game, The Council also has some RPG elements as well, which allow you to add skill points to the main character as a Diplomat, Occultist and Detective. Each of those threeThis game popped up as part of an Xbox Live Gold sale for $9.99 CAD and since I enjoy story-driven, choice and consequence style games, I figured picking it up was a no-brainer.
Along with it being a story-centric game, The Council also has some RPG elements as well, which allow you to add skill points to the main character as a Diplomat, Occultist and Detective. Each of those three main categories have sub categories that you can add skill points to as well. Increasing your skills in these sub categories allow the main character to access locked off dialogue options, study and obtain certain clues relating to solving puzzles etc.
The first two episodes of the game start off rather well, there are some interesting dialogue and story options available as well as some interesting character interactions. Episode three is mostly filler and is honestly, rather forgettable. Episode four and five is where the game loses faith in itself, giving you the illusion of making some rather significant choices that could take the story in vastly different directions, only to have the game nullify those choices and railroad you down a much more linear path. The game has two endings and they're both kind of lame and cliched, ending the story rather abruptly.
The games voice acting is absolutely terrible; the voices don't seem to fit their character models at all. Two of the main characters are of French origins, but are clearly voiced by North American actors. There are also lip sync issues that occur later in game, specifically during episodes four and five. That kind of breaks the immersion for me.
There a number of times where the frame rate chugs concrete, dropping to like 21 FPS. This would happen as I'm running down a narrow corridor in a game that doesn't exactly live in a massive, open world.
Overall, The Council starts off as an encouraging game, but definitely loses confidence in itself by the end. Couple that with the terrible voice acting, merely okay story and technical issues and I can really only recommend The Council at a deep discount and for curious fans of the story/narrative driven genre.… Expand
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