Sovereign Syndicate

With its emphasis on roleplay rather than combat and borrowings from Disco Elysium, Sovereign Syndicate feels like another step forward for the CRPG.

It mostly whiffs on its greatest ambitions, but the world is intriguing enough that I'd like to see more of it.

I think ultimately that Sovereign Syndicate should have focused on one character, or allowed me to choose one and have the others become part of their storyline. Then you could re-experience the game from the other characters' perspectives. As it is, the pacing just doesn't do the game any justice. There is stuff to like here, the world is deep, the story is interesting, and it's releasing at a budget-friendly price, but I have to say that a game set in a steampunk London with minotaurs, centaurs, and dwarves roaming around really seems like it could have been much more than this.

Fun Victorian steampunk RPG with tarot cards instead of dice

Successful application of the Disco Elysium recipe in an atmospheric setting. The story's conclusion should have been less rushed and more cohesive to provide a more complete experience.

Sovereign Syndicate is a decent first attempt from Crimson Herring Studios. The setting and characters alone make it worth playing, especially considering the price. The game would have benefited from a tighter narrative and a more fleshed-out Tarot card system. Here’s hoping that the game does well enough so that the devs can implement partial voice acting (at least) and learn from its shortcomings to make an improved sequel.

If you're looking for a game that follows in the footsteps of Disco Elysium, Sovereign Syndicate is a good choice. With its steampunk London, colourful characters and intriguing story, it is a good book, I mean, game.

Sovereign Syndicate does something impossible: it makes the notion of an urban fantasy Victorian England with Jack The Ripper boring and tedious. Visually impressive, narratively godawful, this is one tour through Whitechapel you can safely skip.

Sovereign Syndicate provides a detailed, colourful, and visually redolent tableau of the Dockyards of London’s East End, where tenements are under siege by industrial expansion, women and children go missing in the dark of night, soot covers all and the cobblestones run wet with alcohol, fresh or recycled. It makes for a lovely take on the gaslamp fantasy genre, with the plot to back up the appearance.

There’s a lot I like about Sovereign Syndicate. I like how it steers away from combat in favour of dialogue and decisions. I like its characters and its world. But there are chunks of the game that don’t quite work for me, from the levelling and skill checks which feel disconnected from everything else, to the final chapters of the story that struggle to bring our heroes together in a satisfying way. When it’s all working right, the story is absorbing and the world is fascinating. When it isn’t working right, the text becomes hard to parse and the sensation that Sovereign Syndicate is more like a book with mild interaction floats back to the surface.