Third Crisis Review Summary

Exceptional art and an engaging story with multiple endings are marred by buggy combat, severe machine translation issues, and a generally unfinished feel.

Exceptional art and visuals: Players consistently praise the game's artwork, visuals, and art style. Many describe the art as fantastic, stunning, and unique, with a well-executed style that suits their tastes.

Engaging and well-written story: The story receives high praise for being surprisingly good, well-written, and gripping with a powerful narrative. It is noted as a key highlight that keeps players invested.

Multiple meaningful endings: The game offers multiple endings, including a bad ending, adding variety and depth. Players value that choices matter and lead to different, meaningful outcomes.

Fun and entertaining gameplay: Overall gameplay is described as fun, entertaining, and amazing. Players find the game enjoyable and engaging to play from start to finish.

Abundant game content: Players highlight the enormous amount of content, including plenty of scenes and replayability. The game is praised for its depth and the surprising volume of things to explore.

Combat is buggy and unenjoyable: Multiple reviews report that combat suffers from bugs, clunkiness, repetition, and boring mechanics. Issues include invincible enemies, UI disappearing, and tedious boss fights with repetitive gimmicks.

Machine translation problems are severe: The game contains poor machine translations, particularly in Russian and Chinese, that cause confusion and UI issues like unclickable buttons. Translation quality is often incomprehensible due to slang and missing text.

Bugs present but not game-breaking: A significant number of reports mention bugs, though most are not game-breaking. These are often fixed by reloading or are limited to combat, visual glitches, and scene loading issues.

Game feels unfinished and rushed: Many critics note that the game appears incomplete, with content still in early access, rushed endings, and unfinished content including the corruption ending. This gives an overall unpolished feel.

Gameplay is bland and dull: Players find the overall gameplay uninteresting, lackluster, and acting as filler. It fails to engage and leaves much to be desired, contributing to a dull experience.

Turn-based tactical combat: The game features XCOM-style turn-based tactical combat with action points for movement and attacks, set on arenas with RPG progression. This is the most frequently mentioned feature, indicating a core gameplay focus.

Adult RPG with erotic elements: The game is described as an adult RPG with nuanced narrative, visual novel elements, quests, combat, and exploration. It includes erotic content integrated into the RPG framework.

Multiple story paths and endings: Players highlight branching narrative paths that lead to multiple endings, including meaningful choices and a pure path. This suggests strong replayability and narrative depth.

Corruption mechanics and themes: The game features a corruption-based system with dynamic reactions based on character state, integrated with gameplay outcomes. This thematic element influences story and interactions.

Minigames including cocktail making: The game includes interactive minigames such as a cocktail mixing minigame with recipes and a tavern minigame, providing varied gameplay beyond combat.

Game crashes and freezes: Frequent crashes and freezes are reported across various scenarios, including on exit, during area loading (e.g., Forest Outskirts), and general gameplay. A specific user experienced 4 crashes and 7 freezes, highlighting stability concerns.

Performance and optimization issues: Multiple reports describe FPS drops, stuttering, and lag, often occurring after 15 minutes of play or due to memory leaks. These performance problems severely impact gameplay, with some users experiencing mouse unresponsiveness and extreme lag.

Long loading times: Loading screens are often described as long, with one user noting 30 seconds on HDD and 20 seconds on SSD. This, combined with general optimization complaints, points to inefficient asset or level loading.

UI and visual bugs: Bugs include visual glitches, black screens on loading, UI errors, and scene load failures. These issues disrupt the user experience and indicate insufficient testing or rendering problems.

Steam Deck compatibility issues: While the game works on Steam Deck, controls are only partially functional, requiring touch screen for inventory and combat. This limits playability on the platform.

Highly recommended overall: Many reviewers strongly recommend the game, praising it as one of the best in its genre and worth full price, with a 10/10 or 5/5 rating.

Worth it on sale: Many reviewers suggest waiting for a sale, as the game is worth purchasing at a discount of around 20% off, though some say it is worth full price.

Do not recommend: Some reviewers advise against buying the game, citing issues like bugs, incomplete content, or personal distaste, and recommend hiding it or skipping it.

Recommended for story and adult content: The game is frequently recommended for players seeking a good story combined with adult content, especially for fans of eroge and corruption-themed RPGs.

Strong recommendation with buy calls: Some reviewers give strong endorsements like 'Just buy it', 'Play this game!', and encourage purchasing to support developers.

Community fair range: $10.00 - $16.00.

Game completion: 82.0h.

Story completion: 35.0h.

Session length: 2.0h.

The game initially feels shallow and has tedious combat, but after the first hour or post-tutorial it opens up with more activities, changed combat, and deeper progression, making it more enjoyable for many players.

Friction: shallow early content; tedious turn-based combat; clunky UI; controller issues; limited early activities; boring combat.

Unlock drivers: tutorial completion; combat system changes; more activities unlock; corruption progression; new party members; game opens up.

Corruption Transformation Enthusiast: Deliberately chooses corrupt or pure paths to see different outcomes. Motivation: Exploring the corruption system and its impact on story and adult content. Stance: sale.

Tactical Retro Strategist: Focuses on tactical combat, may skip non-essential fights if boring. Motivation: Enjoying strategic battles and retro-inspired design. Stance: buy.

Technical Issue Victim: Unable to play due to crashes and freezes. Motivation: Obtaining a stable, playable experience. Stance: no buy.

Steam Deck: The game is playable on Steam Deck but suffers from poor controller support, requiring touchscreen for inventory management, and combat is often described as a nightmare, though some tutorial segments function acceptably.

Linux and Proton: The only available user review indicates the game is playable on Steam Deck (Linux/Proton) with 'just ok' quality, suggesting minor issues but overall functional Proton compatibility. No evidence of crashes, required tweaks, or anti-cheat problems is present.