The Mercury Man

Умеете же, могёте. Шедевром не назову, но хорошая игра получилась. В высшей мере уважаемо.

How on earth is this game reviewed well? 80% of your time is spent staring at a GPS! The story is OK, the grammar and dialog are not great. The "gun-play" is atrocious. Awful movement with stutter steps to try and get a shot off. What were they thinking?

I like the gritty cyberpunk atmosphere of this one, reminds me of the 90s cyberpunk adventure game "Dreamweb" somehow.
Storyline and the soundtrack are also great, I like the Russian characteristics here too, that's not something I've seen before in a cyberpunk game.
English translation isn't terrible either, although I will admit the syntax of some of the sentences can be a bit odd at times

The gunplay in this game is hard though, and the gunsmith's missions are even harder.

Two complaints-
1:- The driving component of the game just feels like unnecessary and time-consuming filler, the player should be able fast travel to a destination once they get in the car and have set their GPS destination
2:- No option to manually save game if you need to quit the game suddenly and do something in real-life, the game auto-saves, but only when/if you finish a game chapter

Still, for the very reasonable discounted sale price of $1.19(AUD), these are design flaws I am willing to work around to enjoy a decent cyberpunk game story

The art and music are good, but the action part of the game sucks horribly and the English translation is pretty bad too. The game quickly becomes more frustrating than fun.

- Great noir cyberpunk story, very gritty but also can be funny in a dark way.
- My only gripe with it is the driving mechanic, which is not fun at all. Going from one point to the next feels like a chore, but it is what it is.
- Combat ain't fun, but just smoke some cigarrettes and buy a good gun, and you're perfect.
- Low budget. High passion.
- Soundtrack is exactly what I like to hear: Synthed, smooth and wavy.

Although it was created by Maddyson, The Great, I highly do not recommend you this game, if only you like to suffer in russian reality.

The athmosphere of the game is 12 outta 10, it's perfect.
But the combat... I doubt if you can do it worse. 40 minutes for the first mission in Chapter 1 and no result? Yes, please.

If you like to suffer, this game is your choice, but I'd say it's 6 outta 10 and I won't play it more.

Great visual novel with a great soundtrack and art style but with terrible mechanics. I wish a big game developer would pick this up and make it into a bigger and better game like Disco Elysium.

The game gets better with time, try not to be put off with the driving and always max out on cigarettes!

7/10

I read here the story is good, but honestly, the little I saw from it was clumsy and badly written (though probably because of the translation). The controls are horribly stiff, making the game far from being enjoyable. Not recommended.

This game has got the music, story, and the aesthetics to make a good cyberpunk game.
Sadly though, Mercury Man is weighed down by bad english translation and the worst isometric shooter combat i've ever seen in my life. If you can stomach a game with a badly translated english dialogue and a piss-poor shooting combat gameplay, you can MAYBE try it out on sale. Other than that, i would say that the game is absolutely not worth your time and or money.

While the pixel art is beautiful (the small ones), this game is not easy to enjoy. The pointless and boring driving, the nonsensical character development and sudden changes of heart, the honestly repetitive and annoying combat system of finding a place to reload and running circles, the HORRIBLE decision to write file reports to earn money which is basically watching paint dry... it drained me to play this.

I didn't progress too much in the story because I couldn't take it. The title was ominous and I expected a great twist somewhere in the middle that would make it all worth it, but I didn't have the willpower to bore myself over and over again by driving someplace for the 100th time when there is literally no point to it.

Sometimes less is more. If this game could have had an option to skip all the annoying and awful parts, it might have been worth a shot to try and finish it.

It's a really captivating concept! With some beautiful graphic design!

But... the translation is really rough. The story is interesting, but feels a lot more like a novel than a video game. I wish there was some more interactive features and more of a world to explore. Maybe I'm looking for a different game.

Initial Impressions Review:

The Mercury Man is a game much more about its tone and its setting -if you are into sleuthy / detective / dystopian fare, its soundtrack of synthwave / retrowave (along with some of its visual presentation) hit those marks well. Unfortunately, the games insipid, rambling dialog (at times) nullifies any player investment into the overbaked storyline during the game's opening act. i.e. While I can immediately get on board with its dark, silhouetted, stark visuals and synthy soundtrack at the main menu when queueing up a New Game do I really have to immediately encounter a scene of seeing 5-10 pages of dialog with the immediate, generic "Wife" character (that is really her name. lol..) on her deathbed shoved down my throat??? While a later scene shortly afterward is more evocative of genuine reflection, the incessant rambling of the main character about how much he boozes comes off as very trite and perhaps just bad translation.

The cutscenes text are all presented in a massive wall o text with no paragraph breaks which makes for a tiring (at times, detached) read from the player. Where the Mercury Man seems to rely on about 50/50 of these moments of text / background story vs moments of isometric gameplay, the writing being a bit strange-feeling in ENG is unfortunate.

The minigame of driving cab fare around was a nice surprise.

I enjoy what the game is doing and will play more of it, but I have already found myself clicking through tons of dialog to just get to the next scene. I hope it becomes more complex with some combat.

I encountered a bug in the very first room of the game, with its awkward movement throughout the isometric sections. The door to exit the room wasn't activating. In the next scene, where you have to enter your car (to begin the cab fare mini game) also seemed to not register me as having arrived at the car door. So - for what it's worth, I can see why this game has Mixed reviews. For me, I'm willing to slog through the at-times jilted dialog and clunky isometric interface as I enjoy the game's overall dark detective theme although its writing fluctuates wildly between good to horrible.

Sorry guys, I tried with this one. I really did. The english translation (I'm assuming this was originally Russian) is unintelligible and the walls of text exposition aren't a great way to tell a story in any case.

The gameplay seems to take all the worst bits of 80's gaming with long drawn out driving and a character that plods along at a snails pace. There's also not a whole lot of feedback on clicking various things and whether they're actually part of the game or not.

I like the art style and some of it does hit my nostalgia buttons like the gun shop missions with their operation wolf style but it's just not enough to keep me playing.

Wouldn't recommend it as it stands for an English speaking person.

I had a choice what to buy: Detroit: Become Human or Mercury man.

And you know what? I don't regret.

Beautiful visual novel with hardcore gameplay elements, awesome soundtrack, heartstopping story and a ton of easter eggs.
May be a little repetitive at start, but story kicks in after two hours, and ending are interesting.
Definitely check this game.

In the vein of 90s isometric shooters e.g. Crusader: No Remorse. Great game for USD $7, well done Mehsoft.

Good
- Mood & atmosphere
- Artwork
- Music
- Bad English translation (in a good way)

Bad
- Driving (e.g. parked car changes direction when you exit the location, can't perform u-turn)

a really fun game made by a really awesome community. as soon as i opened the game and heard the music i was hooked. i love the art style of the game too and the games sense of humour. the story is interesting and leaves me with a lot of moral choices to make. the combat system is decent with a difficulty that makes you feel the challenge of the game as you climb through stages.

i would really recommend the game to others. 10/10!

Pretty good game. Fine graphics and music. But driving is a bit annoying.

The game is cool and much better than the previous one. The best part of the game is the atmosphere, music+art+dialogs do a great job. I see that some people criticise the gameplay, but I would say that it is satisfying, yes, it`s pretty hard but playable, you will need max 3 tries to complete the hardest lvls. And it`s a perfect proportion between challenge and enjoyment.
The driving and radiowaves give pleasure but become quite annoying at the end of the game. It will be great, if developers add some new music to radio.
The game has some interesting gameplay decisions and special emphasis is placed on cosiness and relaxation. It is not a game for action, explosions and COD lovers, the best way to play this game is to open a bottle of your favourite beer in the quiet evening and chill watching this noir story and listening to beautiful soundtracks.
Absolutely recommend!

Right to the point - I love this game.
I'd like to write some stuff that this game has and hasn't.
This game has:
- A lot of well-written text
- Cyberpunk story
- Noir atmosphere
- Dark humor
- Good soundtrack
- Nice artwork
This game has not:
- Big budget and all that comes along with it

Summary: If you like reading well-written cyberpunk noir stuff - this game is for you. If you're searching for engaging combat system - better pass on this one.

This game is not for everyone. I will just write down pros & cons.

+ Well-written dialogues
+ Great soundtrack
+ Excellent game design

? Story (i don't know what to say because i didn't finish this game)

- Combat system

This combat system is terrible. Probably it's playable but not for me. If you would like to combine isometric combat system from classic Fallout and top-down shooter in real time - go ahead and buy this game. But you should be ready to take part in probably the slowest gunfires ever, get damage during reloading, miss many shots and die a lot of times. Maybe it's developers' idea to make this game hard but I expected to play mostly adventure game with interesting world and characters, not shooter with broken combat system.

Early game trailer showed action-levels in the first person. Then they moved all action to the isometric world with turn-based combat system. On the release we got kinda broken Hotline Miami.

Developers said that they will fix all bugs (i didn't find anything in one hour, that's good i think) in first week after release. But I don't think that they will change combat system.