NobleGamer The Alters Review

I recommend the Alters to anyone who enjoys narrative driven survival with some base building, and is comfy with emotion management of young adult clones confronted with the reality & morality of their existence: Created by the sole survivor of a ship crashed on a planet so that he can survive his mission.  This is the spiritual successor to This War of Mine (TWOM) from the same dev studio, so fans of that game are likely to love this one, like I did.  It also seems functionally similar to Death Stranding in terms of exploration and dealing with sci-fi threats, though the Alters' exploration is less tedious without balancing-as-you-walk mechanics. Here is what you need to know, after my first playthrough: +The game has visually stunning sci-fi landscapes and decent visual detail thanks to the latest version of Unreal Engine. +There are multiple layers of story: What is happening on earth, what is happening on your planet, what is happening with you & the base, and what your alters are dealing with. Alters deal with their memories, personality, and their current situation. ?Most dialog is an over the shoulder perspective, focused on whoever the player is talking to. Most of the time it is talking to your clones (called Alters), so I get theres no point in seeing the same person's face twice, especially when you are supposed to pay attention to the emotions of Alters. Some mouth movement for spech could be better, but isn't distracting. +Emotion management is simple, if you accept that Alters have their own personality struggles, and do what you can to try to make them comfortable & happier - Better food, build a gym, play beer pong, watch a movie, etc. "Do what you can" means accepting that there are some emotions that you can't do much about. +Survival exploration and base building are made more meaningful by the story, circumstances, and the sci-fi. +Various choices matter, especially starting in the mid game, when affect the later parts and the ending. I wouldn't call it a branching story. I think it is enough to at least play near the end of the game more than once, if not playing from earlier, in order to see the story & ending play out differently. - The game only saves when you wake up to a new day, but any prior day's auto save can be accessed at anytime as opposed to one single auto save like TWOM has. Rare "game over" conditions do not nuke your prior saves like TWOM did. I would still make a copy of your save folder, which the game provides a very easy way to open. Given that each day's save is retained, I think allowing one save mid day or when night radiation starts would be acceptable to the game's intended experience. -Some English subtitles have very rare minor typos. When the game was released, <1% of dialog subtitles, in this case foreign translations, had errors and sometimes part of an AI prompt. The studio made a statement about the circumstances where this was a stop gap until translation partner could take care of it, and they are now correcting this. The only other reference to AI in game was a prompt in a tiny part of an in-game computer in the background, which in my opinion was a plausible use of characters' using in-game tech (AI) in the base's futuristic sci-fi setting.