Sovereign Syndicate Review

Sovereign Syndicate is a narrative-heavy RPG in the same vein as Disco Elysium. It features an illusionist minotaur to play as, a dark, steampunk version of London that’s full of fantasy creatures and, of course, tonnes of dialogue. It certainly ticks a few boxes that I didn’t know I had.

Our illusionist minotaur, Atticus Daley, wakes up after a pretty heavy night of drinking. More unusual, he’s in the street surrounded by his own stuff, and finds himself talking to a masked stranger. Atticus is an orphan, an alcoholic, and walks with a cane. Additionally, as an illusionist he can use magic to change his form into a human, so he doesn’t stick out as much.

Atticus will spend a little time trying to escape the mysterious stranger, before inevitably having to speak to him. This highlights an immediate issue I’ve had with the game. It’s hard to tell for sure, but the options you’re presented with often feel like an illusion of choice. It feels like you’re given a little bit of wiggle room in an otherwise straightforward story and, as a result, it doesn’t feel like anything you do matters too much.

For example, I decided I would clean Atticus up a bit. I started using self discipline, ignored any alcohol and tried to avoid taking and drugs, only for him to be forced to take a drug. Okay, fine, I guess that one time was important in a contrived sort of way, but then later he’s forced to have a drink at a bar. He doesn’t even make a big deal about it, just casually drinks whilst ignoring the alcoholic elephant in the room. The game specifically mentions that he should stop drinking earlier, I chose to do it, and it undercut that without so much of a mention of it.

You’ll spend a little time getting to know Atticus before you get to chapter two and the other characters. There are, in fact, three characters to play as in the game. It makes the opening drag quite a bit because, once you’ve just gotten familiar with Atticus and become invested with his tale, you have to do it again with another character. Clara Reed is a human courtesan who is looking to escape London, but inevitably events and unscrupulous people are getting in the way. She also wears a dress that doesn’t cover her crotch if the game’s art is to be believed, which is surprising even for a courtesan. Then there’s the monster hunter Theodore Redgrave. He has a mechanical arm, little robot buddy called Otto to help him in his monster hunting duties, and lives in a clocktower that’s being repossessed.

These three characters are interesting in their own right, but switching between them chapter to chapter only diminishes the game as a whole. First, it slows the beginning of the game down drastically as, once it gets going, you have to switch to another character and begin again, eventually returning to the original and thinking “uh, what was I doing again?” Second, they don’t have their own areas to search, they share the same city and same maps, so you’ll search through and talk to everyone with one character only to have to do it again with another. And you do have to, because each character has their own strengths and weaknesses and they’ll have different conversations with the same NPCs.

Another issue there is that the different areas of the city can be quite large, but there’s no map. There’s a fast travel map to get around the city itself quickly, but no local one to show you where things are, making whenever you look for a location time consuming and frustrating. One area in particular is very large and a chore to make your way through, especially with how slow you are when running.

As an RPG, Sovereign Syndicate uses its own unique stat system. Of course as there are pre-made characters only here, you won’t be picking them out yourself, which is a real shame – replaying Disco Elysium with different stats is a joy as it’s shocking how much the game can change based on which ones you choose, but here you’ll have the same characters each time.

Rather than using dice, there’s a tarot card system that is used to determine your rolls which is, in practice, functionally identical to using dice. As it’s so similar it works just fine. I did have six critical failures during the first hour, but I’m sure that was just bad luck. A bigger issue is the trait system. Certain options in dialogue require you to have a certain trait, but there have been multiple times where I had two options, one required a trait, the other actually gave me that trait – in the conversation, both options were the same result, just the last one also added the trait that the first one needed. I’ve also been given dialogue options before I even had an opportunity to get the trait.

As you use dialogues that require a trait, it will slowly level up that trait to be more effective and make skill checks easier. This seemed interesting at first but ended up with me always choosing the one that was strongest, because I’d fail more otherwise, and because that also made it stronger I just stuck with it as much as possible. You don’t level up or assign stats or anything like that, so this is the sum total of all the character options available in the game. It’s just roleplay, and even that will be tossed to the side when the game decides the character should do something that contradicts what you chose earlier.

The game also has a hope system where, depending on how hopeful a character is, different dialogue options may become available. As in, someone with low hope might comment on how dreadful things are, whilst high would look on the brighter side. I mostly found this to be superfluous, especially since a lot of the interactive elements in the environment seemed to be there just for this system and, after one or two, became incredibly transparent. So transparent that the options may as well have become “increase hope” or “decrease hope.” The ones that aren’t transparent, such as staring into a fireplace, are only frustrating due to how nebulous they are. Why does staring at a fireplace decrease my hope, then increase it again if I do it again? What’s the point? Eating a lollipop increased my hope, but the option to “Take another” not only ate another rather than putting it in my inventory, which is what I assumed “take” meant, but removed the hope. How was I to know this beforehand? Sometimes it’s just a guessing game, I guess. This is absolute nonsense from a mechanical perspective.

Outside of this, graphically the game appears quite dated, though aesthetically you have to admire it a little bit for having a minotaur with a cane in it. There is no voice acting whatsoever, so you are going to be reading a lot whilst the initially fine music quickly becomes repetitive. The writing is a bright point, but it doesn’t match up with its influences, and switching between characters makes keeping track of everything needlessly messy. In particular, the world is rich with detail and a steampunk fantasy London is an excellent setting, it’s just a shame that the game set within it doesn’t live up to its potential.