The Council - Episode 1: The Mad Ones Reviews
I lapped up all the skulking, whispering skullduggery and a few of the plot twists caught me by surprise. I can't wait for more.
The Council gets off to an excellent start thanks to its brilliant characters, clever gameplay, unique RPG elements and the threat of long-lasting consequences, which ensured that I was captivated from start to finish. Twice.
Occasionally rough around the edges, The Council's first episode is a surprisingly entertaining combination of Telltale's episodic adventure games and tabletop RPG elements.
The Council, just going by the first episode, is a very good attempt to evolve the choose-your-own adventure game style, going far beyond what Telltale have attempted.
The Council: The Mad Ones is a good start. Adding RPG elements in a classic adventure game is a very good idea, but there's something wrong in the reactions. Also, the graphics are outdated.
Review in Italian | Read full review
In many ways The Council is a brave step forward for narrative adventures; offering a multitude of ways to mold your character; more so than any effort in the genre before it.
The Mad Ones is one of the strongest openers in episodic gaming to date.
The Council - Episode 1: The Mad Ones perfectly sets the tone for the remaining episodes, crafting an enthralling narrative with a colorful cast of characters. The inclusion of the RPG elements helps dynamically influence conversations and how you perceive other characters. Using your skills instead of focusing on win or lose quick time events is a nice change of pace for the genre. Finding manuscripts/books while you are exploring yield free skill points during each quest, rewarding players that thoroughly search the environments, not to mention pieces of amber that extends the number of available effort points. Although there were slight visual irregularities, and minor hiccups on panning camera shots, The Council performs rather well but doesn't have added support for PlayStation 4 Pro or Xbox One X.
The Council provides some much needed zing to a stale genre. It has many issues, but there is plenty here to keep you intrigued about the next episode.
A very promising start to a series with an intriguing story, interesting setting, and a unique spin on choice-based narratives.
More than enough new ideas have been thrown at The Council to make it stand out from the crowd, and, while flaws are clearly evident in the three hours that you will spend with this first episode, it makes for a promising start for what is left to come.
This first episode takes its time to introduce the plot of the Council as well as the RPG mechanics. They suit very well to the narrative genre, allowing the player to follow its own path through the choices of the game.
Review in French | Read full review
The Council's first episode is a promising start. The Mad Ones builds the framework for what can be a wild narrative ride, but it's not clear yet how far this game will go in terms of its branching paths, or if the narrative will remain interesting throughout. I'm excited to learn more about the deceptive world of The Council and what Louis will uncover in upcoming episodes.
If you can get past the slow start and some of the glaring technical problems of The Mad Ones, then you will find the most innovative episodic adventure games to come from a studio other than Telltale. I can see The Council becoming a standout title within its genre when it's finished, but as it stands The Mad Ones has enough problems to where everyone may not be on board just yet.
Aside from the stilted voice acting and ugly visuals, The Council gets off to an excellent start with The Mad Ones. The over-arching plot is sufficiently intriguing, while the light RPG mechanics gives the narrative adventure genre the kick in the pants it has needed.
Despite my frustrations with its shortcomings, I want to see where The Council leads me, and if it manages to deliver a narrative payoff in spite of itself.
The Council is a good attempt to refresh the narrative adventure genre, that starts to feel a little bit too repetitive these days. Although it's not based on a popular intelectual property, it does offer a story full of mystery and some interesting characters.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
While missing some of the polish other games might have, The Council feels like it could be the next step in the genre thanks to branching narratives that feel much weightier than before and a mystery you can't help but be drawn into.
The Council has impressive ambitions – even if its execution is not up to scratch. You'll already know whether its alternate history backdrop appeals to you, but it's the RPG elements that threaten to disrupt the narrative genre. We already like what this series is doing, but the writing and voice acting leaves a little to be desired. That said, this is a solid start, even if it is a bit too early to come to any conclusions about the overall story just yet.