The Council - Episode 1: The Mad Ones Reviews
Episode 1 of the Council AKA The Mad Ones sets out to subvert the status quo of narrative based adventures but stumbles on some of the basics.
The Council is a beautiful, diverse and complex game. although fundamentally it can be categorized as an interactive adventure game, its use of other complex mechanics and Role-playing elements make it stand out among its peers. the mysterious story that takes place during the French revolution and involves a fascinating story about a secret council manages to convey a truly joyful atmosphere.
Review in Persian | Read full review
The Council Episode One: The Mad Ones is an interesting interactive adventure, which bringing fresh ideas to a stagnant genre. It could've been better without plot holes and outdated character models. Still, it's a great start.
Review in Russian | Read full review
If Cyanide Studios can smooth out the creases and keep delivering the narrative goods, I could see The Council becoming the next big narrative-driven franchise. It's up to Episode Two to keep the momentum going.
The Council - Episode 1: The Mad Ones is an excellent game. It can put elements of various game styles together and they all match in a perfect way. If you seek narrative, investigation and the feeling of being a detective from the 18th century, The Council is for you. The biggest problem here is in the end of the first episode, because the desire to play the next one is going to be strong.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
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 features a compelling mix of iterative mechanics and narrative-driven gameplay to create a truly unique experience. Its first episode, The Mad Ones, has its shining moments, but something feels missing from the final product.
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
If you can ride out the clunky voice overs, The Mad Ones is a decent introduction into the world of The Council. The novel mechanics and engaging plot are ripe for further exploration over the other upcoming four 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.
This first episode of The Council is a promising new twist in the genre of narrative adventure, in which your choices and the development of your character really matter.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
I am hugely excited about the promise of The Council and can’t wait for the next four episodes. I hope it continues to surprise and intrigue me as much as The Mad Ones has, and the hints delivered so far begin to ramp up to a great conclusion.
The Council is probably the best example of how to do a narrative, choice-based story which actually changes based on your actions and personality. The implementation of an experience system which allows for you to pick and choose which traits to obtain and upgrade offers a lot of depth and originality into a genre which has become stale with the 'interactive storybook' titles out there. The story is interesting, the events that happen will keep you questioning and the promise of finding out new things based on playing the game differently each time really adds to the replayability of this masterpiece. Don't be put off by the issue with the lipsyncing or the lacklustre accents, the narrative is great, the atmosphere is perfect and the mystery and suspense is up there with the best of games!
A strong start for the latest in a long wave of episodic narrative adventure games, The Council sets its stall out from the beginning as something unique, inventive and deserving of your attention.
Episode 1 of The Council offers just the first taste of an intriguing narrative, wonderfully tied with an original approach to the narrative-adventure genre.
The first episode of The Council shows some interesting ideas that could change the way future adventures will entertain fan of this particular genre. We hope that the guys at Big Bad Wolf could keep the freshness of these ideas during the whole season, and we can't wait to try the second chapter in the coming weeks.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The Council is the next evolution of episodic storytelling and you will struggle to look at its competitors the same way after it.
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.
If they can deliver a worthwhile story over the remaining four episodes, The Council may go down as the new benchmark for narrative adventure games.
The first episode of The Council presents a promising world and perhaps some very dynamic experiences.