Does Mother Know Best? The Council begs to Differ

By: GeekyGamerGirl87

Developed by Big Bad Wolf and published by Focus Home Interactive, The Council is a five-part indie episodic adventure game, that grabs you and pulls you into it’s game. The thing about me and episodic games is I don’t look at it as a game (like some others might) or look at myself as simply the player. If the story can pull me in; I like to look at them as a movie and I was lucky enough to be selected as the director. I love playing games that are story driven and offer the ability to make choices that effect the game’s outcome. If you enjoy games like Life is Strange, and L.A. Noire this is a game that’s going to be right up your alley. From the moment I started The Council I had a hard time stopping myself from going back to finish the game. Currently, there are only three episodes out for the game. So, for this review I am going to cover each episode up to episode three. I would also like to take the time to thank Big Bad Wolf and Focus Home Interactive for providing me with a free copy of the Steam version of The Council, so that I could write the review. Also, to keep from giving away spoilers to the game. I am just going to tell you the main part of the story. I strongly believe that The Council is a story you must experience for yourself, and out of respect to the developers and publishers I will not share anymore of the story pass covering what I have covered in Episode 1: The Mad Ones.

Episode 1: The Mad One’s

The story begins with you playing as Louis de Richet the son of Sarah de Richet, an aristocrat and leader of the Golden Order; a secret society who excels in the occult.  You and Sarah find yourself in a predicament as you encounter a fellow who is dealing with art. You are then bestowed with your first decision on whether you want to trust mommy dearest or act. Whichever you do you come out alive and unscathed from the incident. Then Sarah informs you that she is going away on a business trip and tells you not to follow her. Being the good son that you are, you oblige until you receive a letter from Lord Mortimer, (whom you now know your mother has gone to visit) informing you that your mother has been missing for two weeks and asking for you to come to his island/manor so that you all can find your mother.

Upon arriving on the wharf, you are introduced to some of the characters in the game. You are introduced to Giuseppe Piaggi a man of the cloth and Emily Hillsborrow, a Duchess from England. Before going up to  Lord Mortimer’s manor, Louis is hit with a vision in which he sees that his Mother is going to shoot The Duchess. Afterwards, The Duchess cares for Louis and then they make their way up to Lord Mortimer’s Manor.

However, before going up to the manor The Duchess will ask you what career you have chosen for yourself. This then prompts you to select from three different classes which each has its own sets of skills. The classes you can choose from are:

Diplomat with the skill set of: Etiquette, Conviction, Politics, Diversion, and Linguistics.

Occultist with the skill set of: Subterfuges, Science, Erudition, Occultism, Manipulation.

Detective with the skill set of: Questioning, Vigilance, Psychology, Logic, Agility

You may only select one class so choose wisely. For myself, I personally chose the Detective class. Afterwards you speak with The Duchess telling her of your career, and then you and she are ready to head up to Lord Mortimer’s manor. However, before that the game starts back up and walks you through the brief tutorial.

When it comes to the controls you can use both gamepad and mouse and keyboard. As I have played games like this with a keyboard and mouse, I choose to play with the keyboard and mouse. The game then goes over more basics of the game.  Explaining to you each aspect of the game. There are 4 different consumables in the game, in which you can carry no more than five at one time. The consumables in the game are:

Royal Jelly which restores two of your effort points.

Devil’s Thorn which grants you an exalted state giving to you; the temporary power to see immunities/vulnerabilities effecting dialogue choice in a conversation.

Golden Elixir which cures you of all negative alterations.

Carmelite Water which gives you the focused state next skill use cost no effect.

There is also a collectible that is introduced to you called an Amber Fragment which collecting four increases your effort points by one.

You then go into the manor in which you meet more of the characters such as George Washington, Sir Gregory Holms, Elizabeth Adams just to name a few.

Inside the manor you discover there are even more collectibles such as coins and manuscripts. The manuscripts that you collect are something you can read while on your adventure (you don’t literally read them, you just simply carry them around with you.) Once they have been read, you will then gain that said skill point. Some of them are full books others you must find the pages to them and when you equip those it helps you out in three different skills

The coins as far as  I can see are just simply a collectible. I am not sure on how many coins there are in total. I will admit that I would love to see how many coins there are. Therefore, I would love if in future episodes if the developers could add  a counter showing how many coins I have out of how many coins there are in total. Mainly because in my heart of hearts, I know this is probably an achievement and that is going to haunt me if I don’t get all the coins.

This episode does what it is supposed to do. It introduces you to the characters of the game and gets you acquainted with the game. Again, this is a story that is unfolding so you do have to choose between different dialogue, the better your skills the more the dialogue options that open. Also, depending on your level of skill you may have to use Effort Points to select certain dialogues, but again that depends only if you have that necessary skill.

There is also another big point to the game which is Opportunities, which again if you have the said skill point you will have a moment in which you can  get a little more about the character. Each Character also has their own immunities and vulnerabilities.  Which you discover through interaction with the character. These are all then kept in the journal for you to access at any time via the menu, that means you can even access them in the middle of an interaction as well.

Then there is “The Confrontation.” Ideally you want to get as many good choices as possible. The main reason is because with “The Confrontation” it has a direct outcome with the story itself. You can make up to a few blunders  which if you make a blunder it doesn’t go away, it remains as an X on your blunder unless you consume a Golden Elixir . However,  there is a last step in “The Confrontation” that is called the  final step. Just like it says; it is the last step in “The Confrontation.” However, if you get it wrong the game will give you another chance to get it right. If you again get it wrong, then it will stick and will change the outcome of the game. Keep in mind that if you are not one hundred percent sure about a character’s immunity or vulnerability you can consult your journal, and you have consumables that can help you in a pinch.  There is also another thing I should mention  about “The Confrontation”.  Some of the confrontations are an “Only Chance” confrontation, meaning that if you select the wrong answer it will have grave consequences.

There is a total of five chapters included in the first episode which are:

*. Prologue
1. Off the Coast of England
2.  Night Stroll
3. Wines and Cannons
4. Gorgon

At the end of each chapter you are offer  four more skill points that you can put towards your skills. At the start of each chapter you can then equip a manuscript that will give you an additional skill usually from one of the other classes, or even your own if you so choose. I did find some of the puzzles to be clever, but it’s clear that episode one was to get you into the story of the game as there appear to be more decision making then puzzle solving. I really enjoyed the ending  a lot because it left on a good cliffhanger that made me say I want to play episode 2. Overall, if you are one who does want to look at the time to complete it took me approximately four hours to complete Episode 1.

Episode 2: Hide and Seek

Episode 2 starts off by giving you a very short cliff note of what happened in the first episode and picks up right where the game left off (again as a reminder to avoid spoilers I won’t go further into detail about the story.) Before you start the game you now may equip an additional manuscript bringing your total of manuscripts up to two.

In this episode You are however, introduced to more of our characters such as Lord Mortimer, Duke Manuel Godoy, and even Napoleon Bonaparte himself. I will say that although there is some dialogue that occurs ; it is more so focused on the difficulty of the puzzles. I found this episode’s  puzzles to be a little more difficult then that of the first episode.

For this Episode it only consists of three chapters which are:

5. Where is  My Mother?
6. The Nightmare
7. The Maze

My biggest issue with this episode is that it was extremely short. To make sure I had an accurate amount of time for how long the episodes were; I began to use a timer to time myself as I played the game. I ended up finishing Episode 2 in 2 hours and 41 minutes. So, although the puzzles were difficult, I would have liked a little more content for the episode. The story still did keep me entertained. Like episode 1 it also ends on a good cliffhanger, that made me say oh man I can’t wait to play Episode 3.

Episode 3: Ripples

Episode 3 like the previous  episode starts you off with another short cliff note recap of what occurred in the last episode and it picks right up from the cliffhanger. In addition to the two manuscripts you could equip in episode 2, you can now equip an additional one bringing that total up to three different manuscripts that Louis can have equipped at a time now.

For me personally it felt like Episode 3 was the calm before the storm. I say this because it felt like it was really missing something. Now this could  have also been due to the way I played the game and the choices that I selected that made it seem like the spark had died. However, it did feel like the passion and fire I felt from the first two episodes just wasn’t here with this episode for me.  The first two episodes pulled me into the game and made me want to keep going, but because the story in episode 3 started to slow down, it made me a little weary. Again, I am aware that this is the third episode and like any story it must have a beginning, a middle and an end. It just to me it really felt like it slowed down the game a lot for me.

You had more dialogue than puzzles in this one, which don’t get me wrong again I love the story it just felt a little slow and a little predictable at times. Also, the ending  to this episode was kind of bland. I was expecting a big finish with an exciting cliff hanger like the other two had, but the way it ended makes me hope the Episode 4 picks the story back up and that Episode 5 takes the story home with a satisfying ending(s). Ideally, I know that some of these episodic games might hit a snag or one episode might not be as good as the rest, and for The Council I can honestly say that for it to end the way it did on episode three it makes me wonder did they intentionally end the episode that way or if they ran out of ideas. I even came up with a better cliffhanger then the one that was provided. Although, again maybe if I did things differently I could have gotten a better cliffhanger, but for my series of events the ending of the episode was uneventful.

There is a total of three chapters in episode 3:

8:The Conclave
9. Face to Face
10. The Trial of Faith

Although, there were three chapters in this episode; I will say I was happier to see that the episode was a lot longer then episode 2, and I did enjoy the puzzle for the last chapter of episode 3. Again, I just wish the story could have been a little more exciting and that the cliff hanger could have been a little better, like the other two episodes. For this episode it took me 4 hours and 31 seconds to complete it.

Overall, I thought that The Council as a whole was a fantastic game thus far. The game pulled me in from the beginning with it’s graphics and it’s story telling. I love how the facial capture for some of the characters were done. I was able to get more into the game, because of how well it was done. I also really enjoyed that the game was set in the 1700’s and enjoyed all of the historical characters that were used in the game.  However, there were a few things that did bother me. The biggest thing that bother me was some of the voice acting. I thought everyone was really good, with the exception of Louis and Jacques Peru. Louis and Jacques Peru were suppose to be french, but to me Louis sounded straight up american. In fact, Louis’ voiceover sounds a lot like that guy who does all the training videos for companies.  Although, I will have to admit that his voice annoyed me because I was looking for it to have a little more of a french accent to it; it wasn’t enough to steer me away from the game. As far as Jacques  Peru’s  voice a lot of the time I felt like he was a little overselling it, which again was good at some parts but other parts, it was kind of like I wanted him to dial it back a bit.

Also, there are sometimes where the game did glitch and left me a little confused. I say this because one of the glitches I encountered was the answer to the puzzle. However, simply exiting the game and restarting it did fix it for me. There was another part in episode 1 Chapter 4: Gorgon where the game glitches and there is no collision, so Louis runs through the wall. This was later fixed in the other episodes, but it was still a little funny to run into it.

Another big thing that bothered me was, the fact that everyone kept calling Louis, Louie. I know what some of you may say, “But Louie, is a nick name for Louis.” And yes, you are correct. However, to watch the subtitle show Louis and keep hearing Louie drove me a little crazy. It was then brought to my attention that this is how Louis is said in other countries, and after awhile I just got use to him being called Louie even though the subtitles kept showing Louis.

Another thing that should be mention is in episode 3 the subtitle and the dialogue don’t match at a crucial point in the game. This is the only time I will give you a spoiler because without it being spoiled you will end up lost. In the last chapter of Episode 3. Louis must go and recover some items to solve a puzzle. The voiceovers say you must find six items, however, the subtitle says that you must find five items. I will let  you know now that you only must find five items. I say this because if you are not watching with subtitles you may be running around looking for six items. There reason I think that it was originally going to be six items but was brought down to five items is simple. It is simply because one of the items you can acquire in two different ways. So, I hypothesize that the one item you were going to have to have two of, but then the developers decided to drop it to one and instead of re-recording the voiceovers, they left them saying six and the sub-titled saying 5. There is a list that comes up too, that show you the five items as well.

I will go on to say that the game does have forty-two achievements that you can collect for the game. They come easy depending on what you do in the game. I am already at 62% for the achievements for this game. If you are one that collects  trading cards, you will be happy to know that The Council  has 11 trading cards that you can collect for the game.

However, I do highly recommend The Council, especially if you are into strong narrative games. Again, I am looking forward to playing both episode 4 and episode 5, because I am really invested into the story. I more so want to see if episode 4 can pick the story back up and if episode 5 ends the game on a high note. If you would like to experience The Council for yourself, you can do so by purchasing it on  Steam, Humble Bundle, Fanatical, PS4, XBONE, for $29.99 USD. In addition, if you’re still not sold on console you can purchase the first episode for $6.99 USD and then purchase the season pass for $24.99 USD.