Dustborn

If you like character-focused story games and are an elder gen Z, you will probably like this game. I've done one full playthrough with Ok Buddy Theo, way of fist Sai, maybe someday Noams and laughed a lot from their banter. Highlight scene for me was the last day of roadtrip sappy tipsy scene before the final mission. Gave all the nostalgia from past roadtrips days. Definitely recommend! The game has a lot of reactivity to your companion codas so I plan to replay it

I can see how this may not be for some but I honestly thought it was a great little wholesome game with no shortage of representation. Plays similar to the Life is Strange series (multiple freeroam segments broken up by plot development and choices) but also features a beatmap-ish minigame for playing songs throughout. A lot of different styles of art are featured along with a crew of characters that I came to really enjoy!

This game truly has to be seen to be believed. I saw clips from the first hour or so of gameplay and I had to complete it for myself. I can honestly say there is a very very small group of people to whom I would recommend this game: people who can enjoy this type of story ironically (you'll know based on the trailers). I bought the game on sale for about half-off and that was worth it for me, but I wouldn't recommend paying $30 just to laugh at this game. Everyone else, stow your wallets. Let me break it down for you:

The Gameplay:

The game gets a few brownie points off the bat for running well enough on my system and having few enough glitches that none of them really bothered me. Aside from that the gameplay is vestigial, an assortment of random mechanics intermittently scattered between large story sections. Most of your time in the game will be spent trying to unlock whatever door the story needs you to and exchanging dialogue with teammates. There are occasional rhythm game mechanics, occasional combat, one rpg style level, and one arcade minigame. All of these mechanics are half-baked. The combat is hardly competitive; you can skip fights on lower difficulties. On hard mode I often found myself running from enemies and throwing my bat at them until they died. Even on the hardest difficulty combat was pretty easy. The rhythm gameplay is passable, but like the combat you don't have to worry about honing any skills; there seem to be limited consequences for doing better or worse on the song performances. I'd probably give the gameplay a very bland 3/10, it's got merits but not enough for me to want to pick it up over a thousand other games. Worst of all it commits a cardinal sin: it wastes so much time without offering the player anything mechanically.

The Story/ Characters:

HOO BOY - this is the reason why I played this game start to finish. The story is so insane; it's like if Neil Breen and Alex Kurtzman adapted a screenplay by a college freshman who just finished writing 101. We're constantly told throughout the game that our characters, because of their vox powers, are on the run from Justice and the Puritans so they can find Freedom in Nova Scotia. The game does little to show this to you; the characters start the game relaxing in a nice apartment, all clean and well dressed. Even when you're on the run in the republic this doesn't really change. Their dislike of the JUSTICE organization is undercut by the fact that they never threaten you significantly throughout the game. During one level the officers have you trapped and they just release you 10 minutes later. That's right, and outside force attacks and they don't even bother transporting you somewhere else, they just free you. During one scene a character says "Death to Justice" in a bar right towards a group of officers, and they're chill. They don't even get a little bit mad. Later one justice officer rounds out their character arc by helping you run away at the very end of the game. Everybody loves fighting authoritarian military police in videogames, but you gotta make them a little bit scarier. Even in the case of Sai we learn that the Republic was threatening her family after the threat has already been dealt with.
The entire world is bizarre. First of all, this fascist regime started when JFK survived his assassination? That's about all the info we're given, but how odd. This story is clearly trying to say something about modern social issues, misinformation, and immigration, so why JFK? Unless I'm missing something, it would've made a lot more sense to use Johnson, Bush Jr., Jackson, Nixon, maybe Mckinley? Choosing JFK as the guy who started the totalitarian regime seems completely disconnected thematically. It's like they picked the first US historical event they knew about and went "Let's use that!"
Beyond the crews rebellion against the government (and the puritans, who only show up a couple times to give you boss battles) the story devolves into complete sci-fi slop. vague powers connected to a vague ancient language connected to a tower transmitting information connected to a bunch of red spirits that can only be controlled by a random child or a gameboy. How does all this connect to Pax, the puritans' mysterious child, and the grand tree? I have no idea, it's a ten hour game that's trying to be a novel. I love me some ambiguity in my sci-fi, but it has to be balanced out with other concrete story elements understood by the player.
The world is insane, but don't expect much more from the characters. The lead character, Pax, regularly uses her vocal powers to deceive and coerce her "friends" into doing whatever she wants. The writers put a lot of arguing in the script for the purpose of arbitrary drama, but the characters subsequently come off as hostile and psychopathic.
This whole game is just so bizarre, I had to ramble about it. It's the type of game that will make you put on a white button up and some glasses, crack open a rolling rock, shake your head and say "What were they thinking?!"

The game is supposed to be a cautionary tale about the (mis)use of language. The message of the game is supposed to "listen, and have empathy for each other". But this core message is relegated to a single sentence at the end of the game. Blink and you'll miss it. It's too little, too late.

Because the message is so buried, one would be forgiven for thinking that this game endorses the bad actions the characters take in the game. Especially, there is a lack of negative consequences or any kind of harsh condemnation for how the protagonist uses her powers on her friends and others to get her way. It's as if the writers were too scared to even criticize the protagonist, and by extension, those who resort to 'triggering', 'bullying', 'cancelling', 'gaslighting', 'hoaxing' and causing 'discord' online. All of those are powers in the game, by the way, and never once are they condemned as being a bad thing for people to do in the game.

The most egregious example is when Pax, the protagonist, uses "bully" on Theo, her boss, to force him to do something he doesn't want to do. She is never called out for doing this. The consequences of her actions are never thrust in her face and she is never made to feel responsible for what happens afterward. She basically gets away with it.

The protagonist also has no character arc. She doesn't learn or grow or become a better person during the course of the game. She just has epiphany at the final moment of the game where she says the single sentence about the importance of empathy, which in my opinion, comes out of nowhere.

The writing is bad, and so is the combat.

So good! Thematically awesome, never played a game quite like it.

It is stunning. I love everything, from storyline to every intonation in dialogues, graphics and colors, battles and guitar hero parts along with the general choices matter line. Absolutely adore all characters. And the soundtrack is amazing. Hope there will be more!!!

I picked up Dustborn during one of the 2024 holiday sales, I love The Longest Journey and respect Ragnar Tørnquist as a creator. I started it and was bombarded by a bunch of buzzwords, got to a song where they're like "We're the Dustborn/We're the new porn" and I was like what is this trash and put it on the backlog.

Fast forward only a few weeks later and my government is trying to scrub out trans people and seriously discussing occupying the Gaza Strip. I was talking to a close friend about the 1984ness of it all and they replied "1984 had some good ideas I think all of the advancements of the 20th century are bad". I needed a break from "conservative" American politics badly and Dustborn sounded like it would be a warm and welcoming echo chamber, regardless of whether I agree with it.

But it's not warm or welcoming. Dustborn is bumbling and confused. Parts of the game feel like it's really trying to say something important, but it's less a call to action or a plea to understand and more like a long Twitter rant that collapses under its own frivolity.

Certain ideas are thrown into your face but the writers didn't know what to do with them? One of the weirdest is the party's reaction to the character Girl. There's a minute long discussion about how presumptuous it is to call the character Girl because we don't know what this eight year old's gender identity is. They resign to calling her Girl even though they could just as easily name her Kid or Hope or something that would actually mean something instead of wasting my time with stupid gibberish that they don't even follow up on.

This is basically the entirety of Dustborn, one big self-effacing discussion with no real purpose. The game is a long collection of conversations between various "diverse" people with serviceable 3D beat-'em-up sections and a couple simple puzzles. Like if you're going to make it this bombastic "left-leaning" game, why not follow through and make everyone strong and sure of themselves? They're all so insecure and weird about their own beliefs from start to finish.

I guess in some ways it's trying to be realistic with it's depiction of the different minorities and identities it's trying to portray? They have a very tangible goal of great importance, but they're constantly hiding things and losing focus and pissing each other off. Am I supposed to believe that endlessly disagreeing is human nature when all the American republicans seem to be in pretty good agreement that they think there should only be two genders? I was hoping Dustborn would create it's own liberal way of seeing, but it refuses. Maybe it's afraid to offend someone, but the fate of the future is in these character's hands and all they do is process emotions.

I identify as trans and I get a lot of flack locally because I'll wear dresses and skirts and everything but I don't close shave my face. Now I get the average idiot telling me I'm gay like it's an insult or people saying they hate me or whatever, but the thing that actually cuts deep now is that I get a larger amount of negative comments from, I guess "conventional" trans people who don't like that I'm not trying to pass hard enough? One of my best friends is openly gay for twenty years and he's received a lot of hate from people for not falling into stereotypical mannerisms like you would have seen on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy back then.

So is that the message here? We're all too busy talking and arguing over dumb crap to ever actually accomplish much at all? The game asserts words are power and have the ability to control or hurt or heal people, it spends nine chapters building up these colorful and likable characters and then abruptly rushes to a conclusion that feels so half baked. They're just still arguing about what options will change anything, whether its running around protesting or trying to manipulate the entire world into just aligning with these wacky mutant people.

My absolute least favorite part is that the average non-mutant population of the Republic is being infested with weird ghosts (the idea of echoes from our cultural past infesting people's minds is totally classic and appreciated by the way) that make them believe conspiracies, but then the main characters unravel a government conspiracy. So we're both trivializing conspiracies and making them very real. The devs really needed to pick one. It would have been fine if the "rightwing" conspiracies weren't the only thing the echoes were repeating, but no, "I'M AFRAID OF ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT" is presented constantly. It just gives this "my free speech is better than yours" vibe which is everywhere now.

So yeah, I went into Dustborn looking for a little bit of hope and instead it took a dump and left a stain on my brain that will probably wash away in a week. Maybe if the conclusion didn't feel so rushed after all the glacial campfire discussions there could have been a stronger narrative here. Whoever this game was made for represents a very, VERY small amount of probably very, VERY loud Twitter X whatever users that weren't going to spend $30 on this.

I'm going to make this review positive because I want more weird games like this to be made and nobody's going to read this anyway. Thank you for making a weird game, I didn't like it.

I have a feeling a lot of content was cut and that's why almost every scene ends in fade to black. Also there's a lot of jumping around between timelines. There was so much build up to Nova Scotia and we don't even get to see it. Who are those mysterious employers?

Game doesn't have manual save only autosafe and it's very sparse. Also half the time games saves before pre-battle cutscene. I don't want to listen to it 3 times in a row. When not in battle game saves every 15-20 minutes which makes achievement hunting near impossible. No opportunity to copy paste saves

Why no one asks people pronouns? Having character screen is cool but how do we know Eli uses he/him? It seems they made an assumption based on how he looks.

I liked the combat but all the shouts are pretty much the same. And most damage is dealt by taunts anyway. On Hard the most effective strategy is to taunt, run around until it recharges and taunt again. And every time the game stops to tutorial me on new shout in the most obnoxious way possible I am like: "Shut up, I am not using it anyway". 😭 Also by halfway point I've already unlocked all of them so there's no point in hunting echoes.

I gave this game a solid shot, gritted through its glaring flaws, and tried to appreciate what was there. A very compelling dialogue system, a genuinely interesting take on an alternate history North America, and an ever-growing cast of misfits that really grew on me. However, this was all let down by the final two chapters, in which it becomes quite clear the devs had no time to truly create the vision they had in mind. They basically cram what seems to be another 6+ hours of content into an hourlong chapter that rushes to tie up loose ends and bring the story to a close. It does this with very little grace or regard for pacing. It introduces two new characters in the last two chapters that get zero development at all. Like they made zero effort to at least hide the fact that there's 3 or 4 cut chapters at the end of the game. And while I do really love the middle of the game, the real meat of it, to be let down so hard in the final act was truly heartbreaking.

This is the kind of game you either hate or love.

I am team love.

There is a lot to love as long as you are willing to like it. The characters are the embodiment of the word "hipster" and if thats your stlye, like me a "woke" trans person, you will adore them by chapter 3. The mechanics are simple but fitting the world and story. The design are good but nothing to write home about, which is kinda the fault of the world struggling to be both modern realistic and zany at the same time, but if you are willing to accept some bland design compromise here and there you won't go bored.

This is the greatest game I've ever played. It's writing is akin to that of the first and second godfather films. A truly timeless piece of perfectly executed media that offers cutting and direct social commentary. Also made me freaking stain my jorts with how funny it is. Probably my new favorite video game of all time, and it's NOT close. Please use your hard earned, capitalist scum dollars and purchase this experience <3

You better off just throwing your 30$ in the trash, it will be better spent than buying whatever this is

I say yes with caveats. I have played other games by this publisher: Detroit: Becoming Human, Two Souls, and Black Rain and I really did enjoy them. If you like a good story then this one fits in with the others., but the quality is just not there. Like those, it has a really bad interface, but the game isn't about action, its about the story. A few pointers: turn off combat in settings. Wish you could do that for the music lessons. Just take a break and let it run by itself for a few minutes. It may affect the game, but not in a big way. I did enjoy the mini-game of capturing echos. I also like the video game of fighting the puritans in a group recall moment. If you are not a fan of story adventures, then skip this one. For those of you who do like story adventures, if you can overcome the interface, you will like it.

Great game. Has some flaws but overall a fantastic experience.

Play this game if you like Visual novels or adventure style games. If you like Telltale or Disco Elysium then this might be up your alley.

Pros:
-Interesting and diverse cast of characters, filled with nuance and humanity. By the middle of the game I loved all the cast as if they were my friends. I especially loved Sai, Theo, Eli and Sol.
-Cool post apocalypse/alternative history setting. Rich for sequels or spin off games.
-Time sensitive dialogue system is fantastic. It makes conversations feel natural and chaotic. A lot of times Pax is provided bad conversation prompts that have negative effects on the party, kind of like how intrusive bad thoughts makes us say things that put a foot in our mouth. It's only by patiently listening and thinking of the effect of one's words, does more rational prompts come up. It's a great system, if you are game designer interested in dialogue systems, this something you cannot miss.
-Plenty of room for literary and philosophical analysis. The game is all about how words affect the world, a interesting premise.

The cons.
- Combat really hurts the game. Gameplay wise it's serviceable and what I expect from a game that focuses on dialogue. That said Pax's gang of misfits handly trouncing armed and trained officers of the two hegemonic groups of the world, really undermines how dangerous said groups are. I get that Pax and friends have Anomal powers, but Justice and the Puritans should have been trained to combat such powers. Considering how amazing the dialogue system is, it's a bit of let down that the approach to armed characters is a Saturday morning cartoon fight. Also for a game that is about empathy and fighting disinformation, these martial brawls feel out of place.
-Lyrics to songs and Echoe exorcism feel a bit on the nose on the themes of the game. This was especially noticeable in Chicago where immediately after exorcising the echos off of characters, they would say the exact opposite of what they were saying a moment a ago. More subtlely would have been nice.
-Way too many characters. Maybe it's to set up for a sequel, however it took away from the drama of the main cast. NaeNae felt like she was there for a cheap gag.

Glad I gave this game a chance. Considering how it was buried in misinformation, made its themes of empathy and listening to others resonate alot more.

I loved this game, the characters were interesting and I loved spending time in the universe. Would love to have spent even more time in the game.
I knew a Red Thread game was always going to be a safe bet for me, Longest Journey is one of my all time favourites, and Dustborn didn't disappoint. I hope one day we'll get to spend more time in Pax's world.

This game has its flaws but overall I enjoyed it. I thought the world and story was interesting, and I love the art style. The combat feels rough but is easy. The dialog could use some work, they mainly just talk too much, even during fighting, I would end up interrupting people but not on purpose. The first chapter or two were the weakest I think, it picks up more after that. But overall I enjoyed my time with this game, it was mostly chill and I could just watch a story unfold, make some choices along the way. If you like those kinds of games and this world seems interesting to you then you might like it. But dont buy it for the combat, this game isn't about that.

Let me start off by saying that this game is an exercise in maximalism. Everything this game does, it does a lot of it. What people say on the internet is true. There’s so much “representation” that it feels like it was just randomly assigned to characters. So much so that I’m not entirely sure if there’s a single person in the world who can 1:1 relate to much of the cast. With that said, the game succeeds on several fronts:

-Soundtrack that sets up many cinematic moments
-Script is mostly charming and entertaining. There are some heavy handed moments, but across the game’s playtime, they’re far and few in-between.
-Some of the character designs are visually appealing (there are definitely some that look like there’s too much going on)
-The story is interesting—it throws every possible plot twist imaginable at you. On the basis of maximalism, it doesn’t let you get bored. Whether this makes a good story is up for your interpretation
-A lot of diversity of gameplay that breaks up any monotony of doing any one thing for too long
-The assessment of player choice at the end of each chapter is fun and interesting
-Sol and Noam are show-stealers for me (after completing the game, Sai)
-I loved the turn-based rpg segment

Shortcomings:
-Songs for the rhythm section were pretty on-the-nose—arguably by design, but I think those were the main parts that ever got an “oh brother—we get it” out of me
-The game would benefit from a dedicated sprint button at times as walking can feel like you’re wasting time at moments
-Some character designs feel like they were designed by the most overstimulated person in the pillbox
-Combat is a little clunky, but the combat encounters are brief and breezy enough that it hardly matters
-A few moments where I felt like I was railroaded into decisions I didn’t want to make
-The conflict resolution with the mysterious child felt a little rushed

Overall, I think the overall charm of the game has outweighed any gripes I have with it

I really love this game! I was quite surprised to read Reviews that were basically saying the game is no good.

You can judge a game on different criteria and I understand that this genre might not be for everyone, but the least you can do is think about all the games aspects and acknowledge the parts such as Music (not necessarily My taste but grew onto me) and the cool Artstyle! (Something new and creative!)
And the idea to recap the story with comics! The diverse set of characters are a blessing! The complex story that teaches us that there is not only black and white in the world… it puts you in difficult situations… but if you don’t feel playing these games, and are not invested these are not your games.

You enjoy playing if you can empathise with the characters.

There were fun elements too and overall I liked the experience! I have recommended this game to many friends. It feels like a wholesome interesting thoughtful adventure heist Movie.

🍿

I genuinely can't tell if this game is a parody or not

(Seriously do not buy this game, even as a joke, even if it goes free to play, just avoid this thing at all costs)

I had the unfortunate displeasure of putting over 15 hours into this thing over the course of 3 playing sessions (10 hours of which were yesterday) and where do you even start with this game?

The character designs just feel like they spun a wheel or had a dart board with various quotas they needed filled and after landing on a couple of options that's how they decided to "diversify" their cast. With the obvious being "All white men evil and Black woman needs to be the lead because this is the most important minority"

I have no problem with a diverse cast or tackling social issues in a game when it feels organic. If you want an example of this done well, look towards a game like Night in the Woods, because this game does nothing but spoon feed you political talking points with writing that feels like its at a 3rd grade reading level where they occasionally pulled out a thesaurus to make the characters sound as smug and condescending towards the player as possible.

The biggest offender is Pax, the protagonist of the game. Pax is the most insufferable awful person I've had the misfortune of taking control of in a video game in my life. She's rude, a bully, does nothing to develop as a person throughout this game's painful 15 hour run time and everyone just makes excuses for her awful behavior. She hates robots, but not because they're robots, but because she can't use her superpowers to manipulate them. There's a whole segment about how she was an abusive older sister and the game just kind of brushes it off as, "Kids being kids am I right? LMAO"

The plot of the game revolves around a group of "quirky" friends and Theo (the most likable of the cast) travelling from California (I mean because come on, of course these characters are from California, where else would you find characters this good) which has become its own country after vague lore the game doesn't really go into so if the game doesn't feel its worth your time to explain it, I'll put about as much effort as the writers of this game did. But the TL;DR, JFK survived the assassination attempt and his wife dies instead making JFK evil (A democrat btw, if they really wanted to hammer home their "Republicans are evil" messaging Ronald Reagan is right there 2 decades later) and this game also has an awkward hate boner towards Marilyn Monroe because she became his new wife or something, but I guess it wouldn't be a Feminist game if we didn't spend half the run time bashing women we disagree with.

Besides the obvious expected mainstream far left unsubtle propaganda you'd expect from a game like this, Dustborn's gameplay really boils down to 3 things:

1. Telltale but bad
2. Combat that makes The Quiet Man look like a 10/10 game
3. Awful Rhythm minigame with some of the worst music you'll ever hear with songs you'll hear over and over again like playing Haruka's chapter in Yakuza 5, but instead of the constantly repeated song being good, you have a selection of 5 songs none of which you wanna hear once, let alone several times throughout the course of this game

The majority of the game's run time is spent being a watered down sad attempt at being a Telltale game. Much like the writing in other questionable games like The Last of Us 2, the writers assume you like these people (which besides not even a handful of characters in this game, 95% of the cast in this game sucks) they're vulgar, rude, manipulative, condescending, smug, every quality you can think of from an insufferable person you hate, that's the flavor of character you'll be getting in this game. This game also presents the story in a way like your choices matter, since whenever you interact with characters that matter, they'll go towards 1 of 3 possible paths based on what you say to them, but ultimately none of this matters and the game will end more or less the same whether you attempt to be kind to these people or if you're doing as the devs seem to want and make Pax the rudest person possible and talk down to literally everyone that isn't her. I'm gonna spoil it because let's face it, most of the people reading the reviews for this game didn't buy the game anyways, but basically if there's a character that's even remotely likable, they just die. The robot character (who ironically has more personality than most of the human characters) saves Pax from being run over by a train and has like 5 seconds before the train will hit them, but because even the robot couldn't stand being in Dustborn any longer, they just decide to give a thumbs up and end it all as they get demolished by a train. The other fortunate character that unfortunately had to be designed for this game, Theo, gets the most anti-climatic unavoidable death in the entire game when some small bald white kid just removes him from existence. Honestly my theory at this point is that they just wanted a "shocking" death at the end of the game, but the writers were like, "Oh no, which of these minorities is the most expendable? Well there's only 2 men and 1 of them is black so Theo, as the Hispanic man of the group, you're fired!" And then the final boss is a quick time event because that's how all the good games end :)

The combat in this game is so bad, literally any time a fight starts a screen wide box appears that says, "Hey, we couldn't be bothered, you should probably skip the combat" and this includes all bosses in the game as well. The only attack button is X (Xbox controller controls) then Y does a "Taunt" attack which to be honest usually just out right misses, B is a useless block, and A is your dodge button. You can also throw Pax's bat like Kratos's axe with LT and X, though locking on is really awkward and barely works, so I usually just throw at what ever the auto aim decides the target will be. You can also use your VOX (the superpowers the characters have) which effects combat in various ways, depending on who is in your party (this is random by the way, the game decides who joins you in combat in each section) you can do a combo by using one of your VOXs and then another character will do a follow up attack. Though as graphically undemanding as this game is, it tends to stutter frequently out of nowhere, just jumping from 144 FPS to 40 FPS and back for seemingly no reason. Honestly I'm probably putting more effort into discussing this game's combat than it's worth seeing as the devs literally just let you skip all of it, but final thoughts on it, the combat is really funny. Not because the characters constantly talking is funny, but because they constantly interrupt each other and constantly repeat themselves, while the physics engine has a stroke and ragdolls enemies all over the screen, it's genuinely hilarious how bad it is, and if you find yourself in the unfortunate circumstance of playing Dustborn, don't skip the combat because laughing at how bad it is is some of the only enjoyment you'll get from this game.

Now what this game is probably most known for, the music. It's dribble trash and calling it "Punk Rock" is an insult to Punk Rock, hard to take your anti government message seriously when this game was funded by tax dollars, hard to be punk when you're literally the establishment. The lyrics are awful and honestly inappropriate considering you spend half the game with a mute child the gang just decides to kidnap and they're all just kind of okay with it. Anyways, music. The rhythm minigame is about what you'd expect, it's just Yakuza Karaoke minus the good music; however, if you decide to not engage with it, Pax has some of the most unintentionally hilarious line delivery as she screws up the songs.

I'd add more but I've reached the character limit so final score: 1/10 this game is probably the worst thing I've had the misfortune of experiencing. DO NOT BUY.

If this game were long it would be in contention for my game of the year, and if I had a nickle for every time a queer woman in a beanie who's powers are yelling at people became one of my favourite protagonists of all time I would have 2 nickles but its weird that it happened twice.

while this game is good for a laugh for how insane the writing is (like calling two bar bouncers nazis for not letting you in) its also poorly optimized, boring combat that you can spam the basic attack to win most of the time, and extremely shallow characters make it a choir to play most of the time.

overall if it wasnt for the fact i only paid $10 and played this for a charity stream i would feel ripped off. glad im not European or i would be pissed my taxes helped fund this.

the story's pretty good once it gets going, combat not so great.

**THIS GAME IS NOT MADE FOR PEOPLE WITH LOW ATTENTION SPANS** (pls do try it tho 🙏)

Dustborn is great!! The tags don't lie one bit when it says this game is story-rich.
If you like interacting with NPCs, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you play Dustborn.
The story of this game lies within the interactions with its characters, so, it will feel A BIT bland if you skip through the dialogue.

The characters feel real af (pleasantly natural flow of conversation + characters all have their own silly little personalities, the combat system is unique and enjoyable, and did I mention the easter eggs??)

BUT THE LORE, OMG
As you play through the game, all these little details all of a sudden have SO MUCH meaning, and it literally feels like a spiderweb (of plot points - yk, like when detectives in movies attach red threads to different pieces of info on a board??) is ACTIVELY FORMING as you play.

Again, I HIGHLY recommend you play this game - especially my ladies in the crowd.

Authors of the Longest Journey made this.
Disappointment.

Looked cool, got it on sale, might as well.
This game is peak I swear to god. Sometimes the writing might be too over the top for some, but I believe that's part of the charm. Well worth it even at full price.

tried to give game a chance, i seriously cant keep going...

the lack of passion,
terrible writing,
awfully designed characters with unlikable personalities,
and worst of all, seeing just absolute hatred and even bigotry in the design and writing choices makes me wanna puke.

unless youre a 30 year old female twitter user, dont buy this game

I'll purchase any game from Red Thread Games. Best games ever: "The Longest Journey" and "Dreamfall"!

The first hour playing "Dustborn", I got triggered by the "wokeness": He/him, she/her, female mechanics, low testosterone of the only guy in the heros' team, you know the drill. But as always, Red Thread Games has created a magical gaming experience. I totally love the game now.

By the way, we Danes invented the Norwegians.

update:
I have now played the game half way. It is so amazing. I would have payed 10X for this EPIC game. Yes it is woke, but it's so cool.

One of the best games I have ever played.

Not for everyone. If you prefer 90% action with almost no dialog and story. This game will bore you to death.

Typically this is where I would put a spoiler warning. However if you know what this game is about and you aren't interested, you aren't going to care. If you know what this "game" is about and are still interested, you're probably going to ignore this review anyway. This review is for those who don't know about this "game" and a genuinely curious about it, for those individuals I have one word for you.

Run.

TL;DR - This game is hot dogshit.

I put 25 hours into this "game," got 2/3rds of the achievements on the first (and only) run. I gave this "game" every chance to wow me, and it failed miserably.

Now for a Pros and Cons section.

Pros:

There was a raccoon wearing a sweater in this "game."

Cons:

Story

I want to start off by saying that there are elements here that could make a good story. A scrappy band of rebels using their voices to activate superpowers that aid them in accomplishing their goal of escaping an authoritarian government. The problem is that this "game" drops the ball so hard that it embeds itself in the earth's mantle. This "game" made me want to immerse myself... in a vat of acid.
The overall story itself is about a group of individuals that steal data from one authoritarian government and have to travel through the territory of another authoritarian government to seek refuge in Canada (go figure) where they imagine themselves safe and secure while being lauded as heroes. Along the way, they have to visit secret libraries that stock literature that is banned by said authoritarian governments in order to deliver supplies. I think they're supposed to be delivering books, but the "game" doesn't really go into detail about... well, anything really. Along the way they are accosted by both governments, biker gangs, robots, and their own hypocrisy.
Let's talk about the "heroes" of this particular piece of media. They are in no way relatable, or should I say they weren't relatable to any sane person. A bunch of he/she/they/them/xirs who's morality was sketchy at best and downright reprehensible most of the time. They speak of the governments trying to control what people think and then turn around in the next sentence and and use their powers to control what people think.
The interactions between characters were trite and annoying, like the characters themselves, and every bit of dialogue made me want to hammer nails into my skull to relieve the pain. The characters act like whiny children most of the time, all acting on emotion while giving nothing any reasonable consideration. One of the scenes that I CAN remember (my brain has gone to great lengths to forget this "game" in it's entirety) is where Sai gets angry at Pax for wanting to keep another character with them. Rather than talking it out like reasonable adults, Sai throws a fit like a three year old and storms out of the house that they were staying in. This is just one example I can think of, but I remember having to pause the game on numerous occasions because the interplay between characters was giving me a headache.
Now let's talk about why I keep putting the word "game" in quotes. It's because this is not a "game," it's a state funded propaganda piece. Literally, your tax dollars went toward making this dumpster fire. This game is packed with wokeisms, DEI, and general leftist talking points. The world itself has been hit by "climate change" (fake) which has eaten away at the coastline and nearly wiped out Florida (again, go figure), all the characters have their stupid af preferred pronouns, and the characters introduced later in the "game" get more and more "intersectional" as it drags on.
There are these things in the "game" called echoes that infect people and make them have "bad thoughts." At some point in the game you get this thing called, I shit you not, a MEME that let's you capture these echoes and turn them into new powers. While you are capturing these echoes you can hear them say things and the things that are being said are exactly what a wokey would think a right wing conspiracy theorist would say. Shit about them trying to groom the kids and the like, becuase that's never happened. So, you're using a MEME to remove "right wing conspiracy theories" from people's minds. You are literally removing thoughts from people's heads to do what you want them to do. You are literally controlling what people think, the thing this "game" is constantly railing against. I'd also like to point out how you're using a MEME to fight "misinformation" when in reality the average woke meme is longer than this review.
Now the main cast is truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive. Not a white man in the lot. The main character Pax is a black female criminal (🤔) who uses her powers to control people and make them do what she wants, Noam the + in this alphabet mafia cast who also has mind control powers, Sai the Indian muslim with vitiligo because we need to check every box in the diversity checklist, and Theo who is probably the closest to being "normal" in the main cast. Other characters get introduced to the crew and they don't get any less diverse.
The story itself makes no sense whatsoever. There are points in the "game" that will leave you completely dumbfounded on what exactly is going on because it feels like there should be more context that you would need to understand things but the "game" never gives it to you. There is actually one point near the end where the crew is sitting in a diner and eating and then it cuts to a couple of the characters running through a forest trying to escape from something that is chasing them. It feels like an entire chunk of the "game" is just missing completely. There are details about the world that are never really explained and by the end of it all I was just sitting there going "what in the fuck just happened?" Echoes, Squids, "Axiom," all things that are apparently integral to the story but are just glossed over.

Gameplay

What gameplay?
Seriously, the gameplay in this "game" is game journo easy. The combat is basic and boring af. I was playing on easy for a bit then jacked it up to hard and there is almost no difference whatsoever, but hey that doesn't matter because if you die you instantly revive on the spot at full health (at least BEORE the first update). Buggy as hell too, I once beat a boss by knocking them out of bounds, then just threw my magic bat at them over and over until they went down. The rhythm sections are beyond dumb and completely useless, you can fail them intentionally and not have it effect the story in any meaningful way. The echo catching and wordsmithing is pointless. The minigame that I had the most fun with in this "game" was Pong. Fucking Pong.

Graphics and Animations

One of the people who watched me stream this "game" noticed a little something. It uses stock Unity animations. The devs were so lazy that they didn't bother animating a good chunk of this "game." Lip syncing was nonexistent, half the times a character would stop talking and their lips would still be moving or they would be talking and their lips wouldn't be moving. I'm actually streaming the writing of this review and one of my viewers said "This game is two steps short of an asset flip" and I honestly couldn't agree more. The graphics are crap, I'm absolutely convinced that they went with the comic book motif so they didn't have to work on the graphics themselves. The whole thing is just hard on the eyes.

Sound and Music Design

ChatGPT wrote the songs for this "game" and you cannot convince me otherwise and I'm pretty sure most of the sound effect are stock unity assets as well.

There are not enough words in the english language to properly describe my loathing for this "game," but I hope this review came close. If you treasure you sanity, do not play this lazily made garbage propaganda.

This isn't my usual type of game. I honestly don't touch many story driven games, but I liked the designs when Dustborn was announced and figured "Why not?" I treated it like streaming a tv series mixed with an interactive novel. Very punk rock, anti-establishment storytelling that you may or may not like in the way of choosing a book in the linrary. The story and world seem heavily inspired by things like Marvel Runaways, Book of Eli, Misfits and X-Men. Not joking when I say X-Men, you and your travel mates have their own set of powers, ranging from hypnotic suggestion to turning their limbs into stone and using them as weapons.

The characters are interesting and have their own secrets and allude to history they have with Pax, the main character. All of which are free to be explored and worth it to add some weight to an already heavy story. Choices matter and will effect the ending and how each individual member of your motley crew's life at the end of your journey.

The weakest part of the game is unfortunately the combat and the rhythm sections. Both feel like they were tacked on for the sake of adding more interaction to break up what may have been perceived as monotony of progressing through the story. I made the mistake and chose the option after I initial combat to experience more combat throughout the game. A bit of a mistake in hindsight. Turned into a monkey's paw moment when my PC went belly up and had to restart on console, but I made the right choice of picking less combat the second time around. Felt like the previous choice artificially padded out the game.

The combat isn't bad, it's just jank, in the way that you'd expect from a developer that specializes in one genre trying to incorporate game mechanics from another without the experience. The music sections aren't as bad, they just don't do anything to stand out from games built around rythm gameplay. You could carve out these sections and still have a good experience. They only exist but don't affect the overall experience of Dustborn.

Wish the game was marketed more. There's a lot of potential and the overall world is very interesting. If more story driven games are like this, I'll probably stop ignoring the genre.

7/10 - Ignore the game's forum.

Relatable characters, fun writing, interesting setting. Shoddy combat, fortunately it can be switched off completely.

I like it. Think of it as a visual novel that wears its politics on its sleeve. I like the worldbuilding.

Though the Demo felt a bit disjointed, I decided to give this game a chance, and I did not regret it. It's a road trip of discovery of friendship and mystery along with a wide range of characters that grow on you.

A fun chose your own adventure story in visual novel format. Tons of voice acting so a lot less reading but sometimes moments require the ability to read pretty quickly but maybe not fully understand the prompts. Really enjoyed my time with the game and the story progression pacing helped me overlook continuity issues I had with comprehension.

This is a satisfying narrative adventure with fleshed-out characters and a fleshed-out world that feels like a novel and keeps you thinking about it for a long time. As in almost every work ever written, the characters are SUPPOSED to be flawed for the viewer to make their own interpretations about. This does not mean that the writers endorse gaslighting your friends. In fact, it's not even a training sim to take up arms against the police (as cool as it would be to have such a game) as the mouth-frothing mob claims. It's just a story about a group of people trying to escape to a better life. I would actually encourage one to read some of the meth-fueled reviews or commentary to see how out of touch they are with the reality of this game (not saying there aren't genuine downvote reviews as well, because there are).

I particularly appreciated how in a lot of ways this game seems deliberately designed to be as triggering as possible to the crowd that would use the word "woke" or think it means anything at all. There is a lot of diversity in this game, as in our own world (written simply because they were the characters the writers wanted to include, not to check boxes for any imaginary organization), and they sing songs about how "we will eclipse you, your kind won't last." You get to beat enemies up while shouting things like "You've been cancelled" at them. You get to literally exorcise people who are possessed by echoes that sound like American conservative talk radio. Come on, all of that is hilarious. It's camp humor.

The comic book art style is really fun, and the soundtrack is great (I believe the composer won an award for Draugen). I would definitely recommend Dustborn to anyone.

great story and awesome and diverse characters

Pretty cute game, seeing the main tags makes it quite obvious where some of its bad reviews come by.
At some times it feels like they made a story-driven game and tried to mash in some guitar hero gameplay and yakuza-style fights, which may sound weird at first but works anstonishingly well.

Would recommend this if you like story-driven games with a bit more stuff to it than classic walking simulators.

I started with the Dustborn demo game, liked it and, completed it. So it's not hard to see why I ended up buying the full game. Must say the real game has many things in it that make it much better than the demo. I somewhat saddened 😞 at the fact that Dustborn has been singled out by some of the worst people this country has to offer for a great deal of racist and sexist harassment. If someone does NOT like the people in the game or the people making the game (Non-whites, Women and, LGBTQ+) , then find something else that you like. Life is simply way too short to spend it being miserable around something you don't like and, making the lives of people who do like it miserable too❗ Yes this game does have a message and, it does a very good job at making their point. It's NOT like there hasn't been a well established historical precedent of unpopular minority groups being singled out for some very violent oppression, with their artworks living on as a testimonial to their existence in enduring unjust suffering and eventual triumph in overcoming it. Dustborn is a work of this very nature.

It's a politically charged action adventure game with a focus on quick time events and dialogue choices in the vein of David Cage games like Detroit become Human(Quantic Dream is involved in the publishing of this game).

Dustborn also reminds me of Beyond good And Evil through its characters and melee focused combat(basically BGE with less player movement freedom and more branching narrative. Judging it as a game I appreciate that there are no microtransactions or DRM. The art style is absolutely stunning. I also encountered very few bugs and glitches. Overall I think the game is harmless fun if you are not put off by progressive politics. I never had so many moments where I burst out laughing while playing a video game.

The main character is basically an antihero who has psychological manipulation abilities and uses them against her enemies, neutral characters and occasionally her own crew who also have different abilities that they use during conversations, combat and exploration. On a roadtrip across the United States she meets and recruits new crew members as the story goes on who also have different powers that are collectively called "Vox" in the world of the game.

I genuinely see an X-men game being made in this same way and being well received. With much more subtle political overtones of course(New Mutants perhaps). If not that then maybe Ubisoft will hire this studio to finish their Beyond Good and Evil sequel for them.

The price is also not that bad though I recommend to get it on a sale if you like the interactive story games of Quantic Dream and David Cage.

The game is fine, I like the characters for the most part, just some situations, when the game forces me to do a thing I really don't want to... Forcing me to use Pax's power to bully people..
The story is fine, nothing groundbreaking and I suck at the rythm game so much and would love to have an option to skip those, same as it let's me skip combat, if I don't want it.
Personally I don't mind the combat, yea it's rather barebones, but this is not a FIghting Game, I am not expecting an Soulslike Combat System or anything, for what it is, it is perfectly fine.

Worst part about this game, by far, is the Anti-Woke mob it attracts to review bomb the game; and that is clearly not the games fault, now is it.

Wholesome story driven game but with a bit more to give in the gameplay section than a telltale or walking simulator style game, Excellent characters and underlying political themes tie everything together for me.

Story wasn't that interesting

This game is incredible! Where do I even start? Amazing story, dynamic characters, and significant choices that deeply affect the game. The soundtrack is great and all parts of gameplay feel amazing. Seriously, if you like games with good story and character development, this one is for you. Not only that, there's rhythm mechanics and combat as well! Cannot recommend enough. Absolutely loved it.

It's not that bad.

Now please disregard the next several paragraphs. If you just wanted my opinion, you got it. So move on to the next review, otherwise you're gonna be stuck with reading some bizarre fan fiction, where I try and justify why "It's not that bad."

Oh, you're actually considering reading the rest of this? Well alright, if you insist. I'm gonna count down from 3 though, just to give you another chance to back out. Ready?...

3

Let's begin!
So it all started when Concord... you know, kicked the bucket. The discourse surrounding this game's discussion forum was hilarious. I mean, you had people from all over the world, unified, just to clown on this game. Barely anyone played it, and people still don't even know what it is, despite it making headlines all over the place. Huge shoutout to the main defender's at the time, $CRWD.... and that's about it. There were others, but none made as much of an impact as he did. Eventually, solely reading the comments started to make me curious about the game itself. Like, Dustborn can't seriously be this bad, can it? Either way, I caved in, and decided to get it... along with the DLC. (Yes, I got the DLC. No, it's not worth it. I'll explain why later.)

Going into the game, I wanted to keep an open mind. Yes, I did read a lot of... 'spicy' comments in regards to it, but I still wanted to judge the game on it's own merits. Not what some biased Youtuber told me. In the beginning, things were... ok. The writing made it feel like the 'adults' were just teenagers in disguise, not a total game killer for me, but certainly a point that kept coming up during the 'meaningful' moments. However, some of the lines are just terribly delivered, in a 'so bad they're good' kinda way. A few early examples of this are: The scene I got with Sai in the bathroom, "Yeah, I was spiraling!" The scene where Pax talks to 'the robot' in the first campgrounds, "The problem isn't you specifically. The problem is you're a robot." As well as my personal favorite line in the 2009 flashback, "Is that my meme, you thief!" I really like that last one, makes for good clip material.

Now, after slowly crawling my way through, I reached chapter 4... This is where the fun things happened. This is also where I think the open mindedness started to break away and I was beginning to form an... 'opinion'. So the main problem isn't really this chapter specifically, but I think everything leading up to this point pushed me over the edge. Sai says some very... interesting things in this chapter, as well as the other characters having very interesting comments about religion later on. Now it's worth mentioning, a lot of the political things this game offers just goes right over head. I have barely any knowledge on politics so I'm not immediately put off by the characters appearances and the overall 'wokeness' of the game. However, I do take an issue with religion, specifically in regards to something I have a background in thanks to my parents. After chapter 4, I was like "This is the most insane [Redacted] I've ever heard, surely this wasn't the dev's intention." I was a little tilted, and thanks to someone I met here on the Dustborn Discussion forums, he set me up with a thread to talk about it, (thanks Xacova). Which led to the Devs/Dev account directly getting involved. It resulted in possibly one of the best threads I've ever been apart of. If you wish to read the events of what transpired, then check this out: https://steamcommunity.com/app/721180/discussions/0/4702413158524966782/

After that whole thing went down, I learned a few things. So, the devs did actually take a lot of things into consideration when making Dustborn. (Yes, I'm going to take them at their word as I have no reason to distrust them, even if it is a PR guy, they clearly know a lot about the development, so it's a safe bet that the responses in that thread were genuine.) The main thing that got me thinking was the potential for 'cut content'. The dev account made it seem like Red Thread was under time constraints to finish the game quickly. Doesn't that sound odd? A lot of the things I've read before jumping into the game, was that Red Thread had as much time/money that they needed in order to produce Dustborn, so why make cuts? Also, more specifically, cuts to the character interaction/dialogue as an effort to focus on the main story? Were they given a deadline? If so, I wonder why. The game itself is also more than enough evidence to support this theory. The first half of the game has pretty long chapters, like easily 2-4 hours per chapter. But then after the halfway point, the chapters start becoming an hour or less, with the comic summary only being 1 page. It's very interesting to think about. Not to mention the last chapter basically rushing the entire finale. Oh, also there was the 'ME-EM' issue too. Like how the wave runner minigame got totally forgotten about. (Special shoutout to the Dev who fixed that and re-implemented the UI, I really appreciate it.) I'm guessing the UI was originally meant to be black and white, like the 'Pong' minigame on there, but was changed to a gameboy colour scheme at the last minute. While the Pong minigame remains in the old colour style.

Time constraints aside. It was divulged to me, that some of my other issues with Dustborn would be answered if I just kept playing the game. Now I'm not a fan of this kind of story telling. Where an issue gets raised but doesn't get answered for many... many hours later. "Like trust me bro, it gets good after the 14th season... Just play for another 40 hours... I swear bro, I swear it gets good." Meanwhile chuffing copium like Thomas the tank engine. This is mainly in regards to Noam. So you've probably heard about the 'gaslighting' character, yeah? Everyone has. If you haven't heard of them, well now you have. A good case can be made towards them for being extremely toxic and manipulative, as their Vox is basically just 'brainwashing'/'mind control'. It makes Noam out the be the least trustworthy member of the entire group, and no one says anything about it, or even questions it.... until...

Spoilers (Avoid this section if you don't want to hear my issue with Noam) I was told in another thread by the dev account, that Noam's questionable behavior does get addressed. Which it does.... on the second last chapter of the game! That's pretty freaking close to the end of the game. But it does happen. Pax is able to confront Noam about their use of Vox and how it's manipulative. My only wish for this scene... (Aside from it happening earlier in the game) was that is lasted longer. This is a pretty huge issue and you only get a few lines and then it's time to escape the bar. Which isn't really enough to let this point sink in. Something I found interesting about this though. Remember how I talked about those time constraints? As well as the cut content? There's no campsite scene at the end of this chapter, which is odd. Seems like the perfect time to give a good scolding for everyone's immature behavior, and also talk to Noam more about their Vox. But there's no resolution, it's straight off to Chapter 9, then straight from 9 into 10. Kinda got a bit blue balled from that chapter 8 ending.

While talking about Vox, let me talk about Pax's Vox, as this is another huge issue I see get talked about a lot, and I myself don't like either. People keep saying: "Oh you have the choice to be bad." or "You don't have to use Vox." or "Using Vox gives you the bad ending." This is all [Redacted] by the way. There's a handful of scenes where you are forced to use Vox, no choice at all. What the game fails to do is explain 'why' you are forced to use Vox. Thankfully the Dev account cleared this up for me, because I got pretty tilted at this stuff too.

Oh, it seems like I'll need to continue this in the comment section. Didn't know there was a limit on long winded fan fiction writing...

Beat this game maybe two weeks ago and forgot to write my review. The story was enjoyable, a bit over the top in some of its dialogue and Vox names, but hey you're litteraly creating a comic book about your adventure so it works. For me I loved the dialogue and character interactions. My only real gripes would be I want more lore and some questions answered and I wish that how you chose to play Pax affected how her Vox worked in combat. Overall money well spent. Hopefully they'll give us a sequel or cross media content, I'd buy a comic or compendium.

Too much unpolished and cringy stuff, and the ending is too unfinished I think. And why the hell would they do that to Theo. But overall I like the crew, and the setting. Bring Theo back!

I really loved this game. It was exactly what I needed now, when everything else around is so depressing and uncertain. I think characters were greatly made with personalities, that fit to them and were relatable. Also being flawed.
I love political play in this game and how libraries are the big change for the world.
Maybe the most annoying part for me was protagonist's storyline (iykyk).
I cried in the end and now feel so empty, because loved how long I could spend in this game and collect fun stuff and make choices and play mini puzzles. Graphics were smooth and pretty. Love the art style. I got attach to characters and their own stories.
Big crush on Noam <3

I love this game and don't have much to add to the previous positive reviews that emphasize the story, the characters, the dialog, and the music. I originally played it on a different platform and bought it on Steam after I noticed the ongoing review bombing (not meaning negative reviews in general, but those that consist of a single word or a single corny joke).

One thing worth pointing out is that the game has a great feeling for small, precious moments. In one of them, we have a sincere conversation with our sister while sitting on the swings of an underground playground within a creepy subterranean building complex. In another, we are taking a scenic drive over a bridge close to the ocean, allowing us to observe the massiveness of the landscape that is sprinkled with buildings from a near-future, yet in-decay civilization.

Le robot est non binaire. * Mind Blowing *

many feature in this game that I would had love to see in every interractive movie game, I've played...

Kinda feels like an interactive Marvel tv-show, balancing the line of serious and goofy.

Dustborn is a whole mix of games - a little bit visual novel, a bit adventure - a little bit point and click - a bunch of mechanics that for the most part never get in the way of the story - which is most definitely the best part of the game.

Really loved the core decision making system, already making me want to play the game from the start but doing A instead of B..

I will not play this game because I identify as 'non-BUY-nary.