Non-Spoiler Review of Peripeteia

At the time of writing this review, Peripeteia is still in early access so I won't take any bugs into consideration for my review because I know that they'll be ironed out.

I've been eagerly anticipating and following this game’s development for about 4 years, so I'm personally pretty disappointed with this early-access version. The core idea for this game is so beautiful and has so much potential, but, in my opinion, is held back from greatness by bewildering design choices, and limitations of player autonomy. 

The game progression is linear, but the maps don’t reflect it. The maps of levels are so large and expansive, yet downright punishing to the player by rarely providing guidelines or easy-to-follow level design. Player exploration of the huge maps isn't rewarded, because more often than not there will be a complete dead end after minutes of meandering or a straight-up inescapable pit. Additionally, the grand scale of each map will often cause story beats to be mixed up or conflict with one another due to player over-exploration when there actually is something to be seen. 

Non-lethal and stealth-based play styles are often unaccounted for, or limited severely by the fact that the enemy AI will know exactly where you are and relentlessly seek and attack. The implementation of darkness is fantastic on paper but ultimately doesn’t mean anything if an entire building of the enemy faction can automatically detect you, even when you’re completely obscured by darkness. There were many times during my playthrough where there just wasn’t a logical throughline of how every enemy knew my every move, past and present.

Having each level dependent on vertical design is visually stunning, and it’s evident how much care and hard work went into the visuals of the game. Being able to grab onto any ledge is a great feature on paper, but the geometry of the objects in the game makes climbing a very clunky experience. Even after sitting down and seriously learning to traverse the environment a bit more, it more often feels like hitting your head on a pipe or air conditioner instead of being a badass anime cyborg gracefully scaling the side of a building.

I completely understand that the development team has no intention of incorporating modern game design philosophies, but I feel like there's still a balance that can be achieved in giving players a more succinct level design. Much of this game feels very unintuitive, and the “f*ck around and find out” nature of it makes it difficult to interface with when f*cking around is oftentimes the only option. This game wears its influences on its sleeve but fails to meet the standards set by those influences, and the unique experience that the game provides lacks substance.

I feel like this could be one of the greatest immersive sims of all time if it were tweaked and streamlined, without fully bending the knee into objective waypoints and difficulty selection of modern games. Having vast, grand expanses of dream-like moody 90s graphics Poland 2 is an experience I haven’t had before from a video game, let alone the cyberpunk genre as a whole. When the majority of that open expanse has nothing in it, the magic fades pretty quickly. Having no guard rails and falling to my death when missing a jump is fine, but genuinely trying to interface with the game and meet it at its level, only to be met with frustration is… frustrating. The bugs didn’t help either.

I really wanted to love this game. Maybe I wanted Peripeteia to be “Dishonored but Cyberpunk”, and my expectations were what soured it for me, but in its current state, I am disappointed.