Game Review: ‘Seven: Enhanced Edition’

Probably the game that comes closest to this in terms of gameplay in my experience is the very old Neverwinter Nights which I remember playing as a child until I came across a dragon boss that I supposedly had to beat to advance the story, but kept being killed in one hit. I’ve been meaning to go back to it sometime just to experience the full length of the story but like many other avid PC gamers I have a large backlog of Steam games (all with their own interesting stories, no doubt!).

Seven: Enhanced Edition is a top-down, open-world, isometric, stealth & action role playing game (RPG) where one plays a master thief named Teriel who winds up on an island called Peh. As a result of these circumstances Teriel winds up on an epic quest (with many interesting side quests and stories) through a long but satisfying story, with many humorous quips along the way.

Verdict

For the most part I enjoyed it and there was enough challenges in there to make me want to try without any kind of severe frustration or excessive googling. It was definitely worth its while and filled me with sufficient nostalgia for Neverwinter Nights. It also struck a nice balance between reality & fantasy, as well as combat vs. stealth, with distinct personalities & appropriate banter for the main character and his ‘sidekick’.

Completion Time: 43 hours (story + DLC, missing a few side quests)

Should you play it?

• If you’re new to this type of game genre, this is a solid entry to the genre and is worth getting on sale.
• If you’re someone used to a bit more action-y combat RPGs such as Darksiders Genesis, Torchlight, Diablo III, and don’t appreciate the stealth factor as much, this is not the game for you.
• If you’re familiar with the game genre from having played similar games (e.g. Neverwinter Nights, possibly Divinity Original Sin), it really depends if you want more of the same or not. This game ticks all the boxes, but in my opinion doesn’t have its own significant enough voice/style for me to say ‘Hey, this game does something different enough worth checking out!’
• If you’re someone who prefers pure stealth games (e.g. Styx, possibly the Thief series), this is definitely not on your list. There are instances where you have to engage in combat.

What this game does well

Writing (both story & character interactions)

I’m a sucker for a good, long and engaging story with reasonably fleshed out plotlines even for side-quests, and what made the game better was events triggering permanent changes to certain areas which helped ‘refresh’ the area and gave the player opportunities to revisit it.

In terms of character interactions, the main character and his ‘sidekick’ both don’t quite get along with each other and are occasionally snarky towards each other. As a result you get a good feel for their personalities and can make story choices that don’t impact on Teriel’s personality. Other characters are noticeably distinct (but are sometimes still 1-dimensional caricatures to the experienced gamer).

Balance between combat and stealth

In my opinion this game strikes a good balance between combat and stealth for the most part, where you can definitely take on enemies 1v1, but will struggle against a group. As someone who enjoys some stealth it was nice to have the option to sneak around and still achieve objectives as opposed to always having to mow down a bunch of people.
Once, however, you’re equipped with good gear, skills and passives towards the end (and this’ll be the case for people like me who has a tendency to want to complete every side quest) it does become noticeably easier to engage in combat rather than spend the additional effort sneaking around.

What this game could have done better

Voice acting variety

After a while it’s easy for anyone with trained ears to pick up on the sameness of most voices & accents and while I haven’t researched the studio, I completely understand if it was a small indie studio who left variety of voice acting lower on the priority list. There were about 3-4 instances (out of no doubt, 300+) where the voice lines didn’t match up with the written text/subtitles. That said, I doubt this would be noticable to most people, so don’t let this dissuade you!

‘Smarter’ AI with respect to stealth mechanics

In general it’s hard to get stealth mechanics right in the sense of what the ‘enemy’ does in the game as opposed to what they realistically should do. I was hoping for something a bit more advanced in terms of “Oh I can just run away and wait a minute or two and they’ll forget that something even happened”, and thus the game becomes a little immersion breaking when it’s not realistic enough. That said I don’t blame the developers for this one, more because my understanding is that it’s not an area that’s really focused much upon, so any developments/advancements would’ve been fairly slow.

---

I’m not sure what I’m going to play next, but as usual will be randomly trying various games until one hooks me in. Nonetheless it’s nice to write about games again 😁