Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Oct 26, 2022

  Consider this more of a "meh" review. If you like the first two, you will probably enjoy this game. If you are new to the series however, please play either of the first two. This game is a step up in some ways, but a step down in all the important ways. First, let's talk about the improvements. Pros/Improvements: +More choices/impact, but barely +More video and audio (although the video quality is a bit scuffed, but hey it's an indie game) +Decent puzzles. A bit on the easy side, but so where the first two games. Cons/Downgrades: -This is subjective of course, but man do I dislike the story. Some *minor* spoilers ahead (for all three games): The story is about a ghost. TECHNICALLY, it's a simulacra, but not like the previous games. It's more traditional horror, and less tech based like the previous games. The entire gimmick is the game is on the phone, and revolving it around a ghost just doesn't work here. -I don't vibe with the characters. Again, this is subjective but I find both Paul and Ruby to be much less interesting then literally ANY of the other characters from the previous games. I can't really put it into words, they just aren't interesting. -I personally didn't find the mystery as compelling as the first two. Probably because of the same issue I pointed out in my first con. TL;DR: If this is interesting to you, play the first two games. If you are a fan of the series, $10 is a pretty cheap price for a still pretty decent game, even if it is worse then the first two.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 26, 2022

  I just finished my first playthrough. An amazing edition to the series. Personally I like these people a lot more then the ones in Simulacra 2. More realistic rather then the self absorbed influencers we had in the last game. Ruby was career driven and stubborn but she still feels bad when she messes up. Paul was trying to fix everything going on but admits how he helped this thing grow stronger. They have flaws but are still likeable. The art is also beautiful. The Beldam was interesting and it kept me guessing what would happen. I'm usually pretty good at predicting villain plots and what they'll end up doing. Can't wait to play the other endings. This may even end up being my favorite of the series and I already LOVE the first game. 9/10. There is a weird cut delay between dialogue clips but I still had fun. For some reason all the game achievements are in a different language, so no idea what's left to unlock, may be steam freaking out though. But still, I recommend playing it.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 26, 2022

  I have mixed feeling about this game. Overall, the story itself is intriguing and I enjoyed the new mechanics. I have one large gripe, and spoilers ahead for all Simulacra games including Simulacra 3. The monster in this game is only a Simulacra by name alone. As far as I saw, the monster in this game was 100% just a ghost/demon that ended up being called a Simulacra. Previous games featured a possessed phone with the Sim's origins being from a specific app (Spark, Kimera, Flapee Bird). From the way the Sim in this game behaves, there is no specific apps and it seems to be able to manifest itself wherever it wants to and to whomever it chooses regardless of how much that person interacts with the internet. Sim games also had us investigating a victim who we got to know extremely well by the end of the game. This sort of happened through Paul, but not really. If you really want a game that is 100% faithful to the previous entries in the series, I'm sorry to say that this game is not for you. However, it is a very good mystery/puzzle game. I personally enjoyed it.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 26, 2022

  The game feels unfinished. I went into this game with high hopes. Starts off like 1 and 2, you get a phone under weird circumstances. This one however is different. There is a lot of mechanics they teach you along the way. That they just use 1 time. There is a perfect sequence to use the trace mechanic, instead they chose to use a "Dark Mode" mechanic out of no where, that had no tutorial. (this took me 30 minutes to figure out) The phone experience is just weird on 3. No real personality to the phone. Even after you unlock the texts, feels bland, doesn't feel like a phone that any human had used ever. The story is fine, build up is weird and the pacing is odd. I would give it a try, but 3 is just not as suspenseful as the first 2 entries in the series.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 26, 2022

  After enjoying the first two games, I thought I was in for a treat. Compared to Simulacra 2, there are less characters and the ones present lack personality and development. The bland story feels removed from its predecessors and could have easily been its own new entry instead of a third game in the series. Here, it feels like the Simulacra was tacked on at the end for marketing purposes. The interactive video segment (yes, singular, there is only ONE segment) suffers from technical issues. The audio mixing is very different in volume and the videos cut abruptly between the "interactive" parts and the video parts. At first I thought I didn't understand the puzzle correctly. But no. There is no puzzle. It's so mind-numbingly simple it's disappointing. It makes this whole segment feel like a test, an experiment, NOT a fully fledged feature. As for the "Follow the trail" feature on the city map? It is used twice in the whole game. Once at the very beginning to serve as a tutorial, then once at the very end. Simulacra 3 is a husk. It feels boring, uninspired, empty and soulless. An extreme disappointment.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 26, 2022

  I wish there was a neutral option for reviewing, but I am leaning towards not recommending it. If you see this and never played a game in the Simulacra series before, play SIMULACRA 1&2, even SIMULACRA: Pipe Dreams, they are WAY better. This one just felt really empty to me. Just a shell of what a good SIMULACRA entry would be like.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 27, 2022

  Loved the first two games and was very excited to start the third. The prospect of a new setting---getting away from depraved online influencers and into a rural area---seemed neat. And we might even be working against a new threat, be it a new mutation of the Simulacra or perhaps a different monster altogether. In the previous two games, you get engaged right away. Game 1 starts with the phone glitching out, emitting eerie sounds the second you touch it. Then, as though haunted, it forcibly opens one video among a dozen corrupted files, showing a brief yet shocking video that teases the main mystery: what happened to Anna and is this phone haunted? The video is fragmented and ambiguous but the victim’s distress is very clear. Her final words? “Don’t come looking for me.” Its immediately intriguing. In the second game you're a junior detective at the local precinct. It starts with a meeting between you and the chief, where he confides to you the existence of a secret division within the police department, one which handles unnatural phenomena. He hands you stolen evidence: a phone, from the recently deceased Maya, who's strange death frightened the PD regulars into closing her case prematurely. In light of their unwillingness to discover the truth, the chief tasks you personally with spelunking through the phone to unearth clues. He needs your help because he's an older fellow who's not technologically inclined, while you're the young whippersnapper who's hip with the youths and does the iphones. Right away there's a sense of urgency. The department is looking for the stolen evidence, you’re breaking the rules just by having this conversation with the chief, and this secret division desperately needs to furnish some results or risk being shut down by the higher ups. And it’s all up to you. Like the first installment, there’s some spooky phone glitches which show us something is terribly wrong but doesn’t show us exactly what, baiting the mystery. To help you along, the chief sets you up with cutting edge, AI based software to help you log clues, disseminate evidence, remote hack the victim’s laptop and restore corrupted files. It was developed to help law enforcement conduct investigations which, in our modern world, are increasingly linked to social technology and personal communications. So it’s at least believable. And it imparts a cool-factor, being given access to exclusive, law enforcement tech. In game three, you’re just some indistinguishable f*ck from the neighborhood watch group. You’re met with a normal phone and some flat, uninteresting dialogue from Ruby, who decides that the best gambit to enlist your assistance is to belittle you, calling you out as the office coffee b*tch and saying “you might know me, I’m the one who’s always ordering the double tall macchiato” or whatever. As if to imply that you, you loathsome, lowly creature, are so far beneath her station that you could only recognize her by the coffees she sends you to fetch like the obedient mud worm you are. Then, after nailing down just how useless you are, she inexplicably puts her entire case in your hands. And by “inexplicably,” I mean there’s no reason whatsoever for her to need you or trust you at all. She just heedlessly unloads her project—a project that could very easily get her fired—onto you, who she has just thoroughly disrespected. You get another scanning tool but unlike the WARDEN app from Simulacra 2, this one feels… shoehorned. It was made by some b*tchless basement dweller named Paul, who looks and acts like a sock puppet, who’s tied his unusual app to the GPS. For reasons. Like its predecessors, you still get to see a creepy video but its overly long and boring. And entirely too blatant. You get to see the cheesy shadow monster, what’s called “the Beldam” (a dumber name I could not fathom) without any preamble or creativity or teasing. Not only that but you stumble across it like it’s just another YouTube video in the shuffle queue. No spooky glitch, no nameless entity forcing you to look at it. Just.. “oh hey neat.” Somehow, despite the obviousness of the monster video, when you send it to Ruby she instantly decides to go for a stroll in the very same haunted hallway, alone. Which was so unbelievably obtuse it completely shattered any immersion I’d forced myself to conjure just to make it this far. To make matters even less interesting, everyone in town already seems to know about the Beldam. It’s on their social media, it’s in their photo reels, one @$$hole even talks about seeing its shape in his latte foam. Seriously, wtf? So there’s nothing special about you discovering its existence. Instead of engaging your morbid curiosity and imagination, it just makes you feel like you’re reading hokey bullcrap about bigfoot in a lowbrow tabloid. The real nail in this games’ coffin is: instead of giving us one victim to focus on, who’s distress we can directly witness and care about, we’re hit with a list of missing randos who’s peril is entirely unknown to us. They’re just “missing” y’know… kind of like the plot. The only threat it draws our attention to, is that a comically greedy mayor wants to pave over the local farmers market and build a mall. Wow. Call in the national guard. Nothing gets me quaking in my boots like the threat of a shopping mall. And even then, it’s just plain text. No video, no room for interpretation or imagination. They just black-and-white spell it out for you. “MaYOr bAd, mAke fARmErs sAD.” This game completely lacks any of the inspiration and vision that made the prequels special. Feels like a cheap cash grab. Uninstalled.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 28, 2022

  A major downgrade from the first 2 games. Paul's phone has no personality whatever. Atlas is just a bad app compared to what we've seen in the previous 2 games, like Spark, Kimera, and Jabbr. Those games had fleshed out personalities and were funny (especially Rex in S2). This game was bland and boring. Kaigan needs to go back to making games about love-to-hate influencers.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 28, 2022

  I absolutely hated stupid save system in Simulacra 2. You know, those invisible checkpoints, you never knew when the game actually saved so when you needed to quit, you lost a lot of progress. Which is why I gave it negative review and the reason for not recommending the sequel is exactly the same. Why authors of Simulacra games keep doing save mechanics in such amazingly inconvenient way is a mystery to me, but I am not losing another single second with this nonsense. It woud suffice if they simply added time lapse from the last save when quitting but no, it is much better to just rob player of his time and make him play whole sections of the game again and again.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 28, 2022

  For some, the story was not as engaging as its predecessors. Personally, I liked the change of the setting - this time, we get to discover the small city of Stonecreek, its history, and its people; the puzzles were more challenging and the acting was much more convincing. Is it as good as their other games? No. There weren't any scary moments, and going through Paul's phone isn't as exciting, it feels a little bit too straightforward at times. There were also a few bugs that I encountered during the first gameplay. But is it still fun to play? Absolutely. As cheesy as those stories can get, you still get satisfaction for going through with them, Kaigan Games' products have their own unique charm, and few companies can compete with that. From Sara Is Missing to Simulacra 3, I look forward to their next game.