The Council has some good things going for it that it does well to go with some things that it could have done better. It has a great story that got more and more interesting as it got towards the end. I think the end itself was a little rushed and weak but the last 20 minutes of a game shouldn’t tarnish what came before. The game is divided really into two parts: conversations you have with others and puzzles that you encounter. The conversation system is fantastic. You can upgrade different skill sets such as science; manipulation; politics; agility; and many more by gaining XP and finding texts to study. Each character you converse with will have immunities and vulnerabilities that tie into your skills. So if you are strong in psychology and the person you’re talking with has a vulnerability to that then you will have dialogue options that you otherwise wouldn’t to convince them of what you’re saying or to have extra insight into what they’re saying. If however they’re immune to say etiquette then you can’t use that trait to try to lie or manipulate them because they see right through it. You can find out these traits for characters through conversation; by finding out from others or by means such as searching their rooms for clues. The other half of the game was the puzzles and they were a real mixed bag. Some of them I didn’t mind but others required constant reading one clue that points to another clue which points you back to the previous clue to get a different piece of data to proceed to another clue. Some of them were just convoluted. It wasn’t so much I didn’t understand what the game wanted from me as I simply didn’t enjoy it enough to care. The map system was another sore spot as it wasn’t very good. I found the game didn’t always give me a good idea of where I needed to go. If for instance I had to find a specific character and they weren’t in their room I was walking all over the mansion trying to find where they may be. The map was poorly labelled as well. I wish that I could have just turn on a radar system telling me where to go sometimes. I don’t like those kind of aids but it would have saved some frustration. The voice acting was overall very good. I thought that the voice of Jacques Peru and Louis de Richet who were supposed to be French characters had distinct North American accents. Everyone else had appropriate accents for their homeland but those two stood out. The graphics were fairly good overall. The world detail in the mansion was well done as was the lighting; clothing and facial detail. The hair was a mixed bag that ranged from decent to poor though. Two things I found strange was the ability to pick the locks of peoples belongings right in front of them and they didn’t seem to care as well as after being physically deformed due to one of my choices almost no one seems to notice or act differently. If someone I knew to be fine and healthy a few hours ago suddenly shows up missing a limb I may ask if everything is alright. I am not bothered by those two issues, I just was amused by them.
I played The Council on Linux using Proton. It never crashed on me. It did have an error about a crash every time I closed the game but it never impacted save data and never happened during game play. It really was a nothing issue that I just closed each time. I played version 0.9.5_6359 of the game. It had an auto save system not a manual but luckily it saved often so it wasn’t a big deal. You can’t rebind keys but there are only a handful of keys to use. It has options for Vsync and 2 other graphics options. The game uses the Unreal engine. Alt-Tab didn’t work. The game supported refresh rates above 60 even though there wasn’t an official setting for it. The game ran really well. I had the settings at highest with Vsync on at 1080P and it was very smooth, never dropping below 60 FPS.
Disk Space Used: 22.77GB
VRAM Usage (MB) : 3778-4511
CPU Usage (%): 17-28
RAM Usage (GB): 3.5-4.5
GPU Usage (%): 6-99
Frame Rate (FPS): 61-130
I recommend The Council to those who enjoy dialogue heavy games that have a robust choice system. The conversation system and the plot was more than enough to entertain me and outweigh the puzzles I didn’t care for. I finished the game in 12 hours 30 minutes and paid $10.99 CAD for it. That is more than a fair price; I would have paid $25 for it.
My Score: 8/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 5700 XT 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 19.3.5 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 19.0.2 | Mate 1.24 | Kernel 5.5.13-1-MANJARO | Proton 5.0-5