15.2 hours played
Written 1 month and 4 days ago
Overall: 5/10
Story:
When I first started The Council, I was genuinely intrigued. The setting was unique, the atmosphere was dense with mystery, and the cast of characters, many of whom were drawn from actual history, gave it a compelling hook. Episodes 1 and 2 actually had me pretty engaged. The political intrigue mixed with occult undertones was refreshing, and the choices felt like they had weight. Yet, by Episode 3, it all started to fall apart.
The biggest issue I had with the narrative wasn't even the sudden turn toward [spoiler]demonic/fantasy elements;[/spoiler] I could have gotten down with that, if it had been handled well. The real problem is that the story just becomes a complete mess the longer you play. The pacing goes off the rails, largely due to long, tedious puzzles that just aren’t interesting or fun to solve. A large part of episode 3 in particular felt like an endless fetch quest, ending in a puzzle that was really just a drawn-out religious history lesson wearing the skin of gameplay.
What’s worse is the amount of backtracking required, which further kills any narrative momentum this game tries to build. There's a lot of slow-jogging around the same areas of the manor, and while it looks visually pleasing as a backdrop, the setting pretty much remain consistent. Not much changes in any area each time you pass through it, so all the running around really just feels like unintended story filler rather than good opportunities for exploration. By the time you reach the last two episodes, things clearly feel very rushed and underdeveloped. Plot threads are resolved with so little payoff that it’s hard to care, and it honestly got to the point where I wasn’t intrigued anymore, I just wanted it to be over.
The illusion of choice also breaks down slightly as you progress. The biggest example of this is how you can antagonize a character in one scene, and by the next line of dialogue they’re treating you like nothing happened.
Finally, there’s the whole situation with Louis' mother. After spending half the game looking for her, [spoiler]she finally shows up missing an arm, screaming nonsense, insisting she has no time to explain, but that you absolutely MUST help her stop Mortimer's plan.[/spoiler] That moment encapsulates the entire problem with The Council: it’s confused, it’s convoluted, and it expects you to go along with increasingly absurd leaps in logic without any deep, satisfying explanation.
By the end, I was completely uninvested. I was just relieved to be done.
Gameplay:
The gameplay was also very interesting at first, with its dialogue-based RPG mechanics. The idea of shaping conversations through chosen skills and uncovering secrets by using specialized knowledge genuinely felt fresh and engaging, and to be fair, your choices and your character build CAN genuinely affect the outcome of certain situations, but just not always in the most meaningful ways.
Unfortunately though, the more I played, the more surface-level these systems started to feel. The role-playing aspect doesn't evolve much, and after a few episodes, it became clear that the same dialogue structure and tactics repeated themselves, removing a lot of the initial excitement.
Additionally, the puzzles, which are a recurring part of the game, range from mildly tolerable to incredibly tedious. By the time I hit episode 3, the experience hit a low point. One puzzle in particular was so annoying and drawn-out that I seriously found the scene of [spoiler]Louis failing the puzzle and losing his hand[/spoiler] more satisfying than pushing through to find the real solution.
Lastly, one of the most baffling oversights in the gameplay design is that there’s no option to skip dialogue. Ever. If you accidentally select a prompt you’ve already heard, you're forced to sit through the entire conversation again. It really slows down the pacing because it WILL happen more than once, and only adds to the overall sense of fatigue as the game begins to wear on you.
World:
The majority of this game takes place within of Lord Mortimer's manor, and from the moment you step into its halls, the dedication to historical authenticity is clear. The interiors are detailed full of period-accurate furniture, artwork, and architectural details that immerse you into the setting. It’s obvious that a great deal of intent went into crafting a convincing atmosphere that not only supports the story but also anchors it in a richly textured world.
That said, while the manor is undeniably pleasant to look at, its level design often feels more like a museum than a fluid game space. Navigating the manor can become disorienting, especially when the game only provides a map in the pause menu, and with minimal guidance on where to go. As a result, I found myself wandering aimlessly more than once, which FURTHER disrupted the pacing and diluted the impact of potentially tense narrative moments.
Furthermore, although the manor features a range of unique rooms, each with its own layout and thematic elements, the sense of exploration begins to wane after the first two episodes. This game reuses many of the same spaces repeatedly, often requiring backtracking for clues or character interactions. This repetition, paired with the slow movement speed and lack of fast travel or meaningful shortcuts, makes what could have been a dynamic investigative experience just feel like a big chore.
Visuals:
At its core, The Council doesn’t look bad. In fact, most of the environments are often immersive and richly detailed. The historical setting is atmospheric, the lighting is usually on point, and many of the textures hold up well enough, even today. There’s a solid artistic foundation here that clearly had some thought behind it. Despite this, though, I have to be honest: I HATED pretty much every character design in this game.
I get that there's a specific art style at play, but for me, it just did not work. The character models have this awkward, almost waxy appearance that veers into the uncanny valley far too often, and facial expressions range from mildly unsettling to outright distracting.
Then there’s the technical side of things, which is just a mess. This game runs like absolute trash on NVIDIA GPUs. However, this isn't a new issue. It doesn't take much searching online to realize that this is a well-documented problem that’s been in the game since launch. There's multiple forum threads of people describing the exact same problem YEARS ago. The crazy part? The fix is ridiculously simple: open the NVIDIA Control Panel, go to "Manage 3D settings" > "Program Settings" > select The Council > then set VSync to fast. That’s it.
The fact that this WELL-KNOWN issue was NEVER officially addressed by the developers is unacceptable. I played through the entire first episode with the game constantly stuttering, thinking it was just horribly unoptimized, only to find out later that there was a fix buried in my GPU control panel. How has this not been patched out or even acknowledged properly?
Music/Sound Design:
The music is serviceable enough, sometimes even very engaging, but more often than not, it feels a little too dramatic for its own good, and ends up hurting the tension rather than helping. That same overly theatrical tone carries over into the voice acting, which is wildly inconsistent. Some characters are passable, but others are just plain bad.
Unfortunately, the worst offender is Louis. His voice acting is flat-out awful: awkward, unnatural, and at times genuinely irritating. If he were a side character, like George Washington or some other historical cameo, it’d be easier to overlook. But since you're stuck with him for the whole game, it really gets old.
To make matters worse, the accents are all over the place. You’ve got so-called French characters speaking in full-blown American accents, while others, like Napoleon, actually sound convincingly French. It’s a strange mix that really hurts immersion.
