QCF: Republique-Episode 2: Metamorphosis

 This Review was Frelanced by Rob Rich; you can find his other work here.

 few months have passed since Hope first began her desperate escape from implied brainwashing at the hands of her rather nefarious captors. Or are they her protectors? Nothing is entirely clear or as it seems in the world of Republique, and Episode 2: Metamorphosis keeps things just as confusing.

This new episode takes Hope through The Library as she attempts to get in touch with the one person she’s relatively sure she can trust in this lavish prison. But can she get to him in time? Well, that’s for you to find out.

Right off the bat there are some noticeable tweaks in Metamorphosis aside from simply the change of scenery. New armored Prizrak patrol The Library’s ornate stacks, making random patrol patterns and always keeping you on your toes. Things run a bit smoother as well, despite the new area’s size. Then there are new OMNI abilities for you to play around with, such as seeing Prizrak through walls, but in all honesty I never bothered to unlock most of them. It was a combination of not needing to and it taking too long for me to save up enough points in the first place.

It was also surprising that, despite The Library’s overall scale and grandeur, it didn’t take all that long to get through it. Metomorphosis just isn’t as long or involved as the first episode was, which makes sense for games broken down into this sort of structure when you really think about it but it’s disappointing all the same. Before I knew it I was helping Hope to sneak into an elevator that supposedly lead to the surface, and then “Oh look, another cliffhanger ending that isn’t much of a cliffhanger.” That’s not to say that the voice actors and the story weren’t doing a good job of holding my interest (although the story does peter out a bit), but it just seemed like there was a lot less to go around this time. I will say, though, that the puzzles are much more interesting this time around. They aren’t mind-blowing, but they’re a lot better than that portrait-flipping thing from Episode 1: Exordium.

And so help me, that ridiculously obnoxious thing where the cameras continually jump back to Hope whether you want them to or not is still present. I can’t stress enough just how irritating it is to be in the middle of using a camera to keep an eye on some guards, only to have the view pop back over to Hope simply because she moved past some invisible trigger point. This is a stealth game. Being able to monitor enemies and plan ahead is kind of important. I can’t do that effectively if I’m wrestling with the camera - in about as literal a sense as you can get in a digital medium - every five seconds.

I still have high hopes (no pun intended) for Republique, despite some of the missteps in Metamorphosis. It’s certainly not a terrible way to bridge the gap between larger story segments but ultimately it just sort of feels like filler. Very pretty filler with some cool stealth stuff to do, but filler all the same.