CONSCRIPT – An Immersive but Flawed Journey Through the Horrors of War

“It is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them.” – Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

Pros

• Superb art direction, paired with excellent sound design. The brutality of WW1 is transposed without cutting corners.
• Solid puzzles, which involve logical thinking and intuition to be overcome, but aren’t too frustrating or obscure.
• High-stakes, punishing combat against brutal enemies, that forces you to use the environment and conserve resources.
• Compelling exploration, that rewards the keen-eyed with an abundance of secrets and optional locations.
• Well-written story and accessory lore, which are faithful to the historical setting and interesting.

Cons

• Disgusting amounts of forced backtracking, especially for completionists, due to bad map design and tiny inventory space.
• Inconsistent combat mechanics, especially with ranged weapons. You’ll miss a lot of shots for no reason other than the aiming system is crap.
• The rat mechanic (details below) feels unnecessary and becomes terribly annoying with how much backtracking you need to do.
• With melee weapons’ miserable durability and most guns being underpowered until late-game, combat becomes a challenging, but depressing affair.
• Tremendously bugged and inconsistent enemy line-of-sight, with them being able to spot you through objects in many cases.

Bugs & Issues

• In rare cases, rat enemies can become invincible until you leave the area.

Machine Specs

•  i9 13980HX
• 64GB RAM DDR5
• RTX 4090
• NvME SSD
• 3840×2160

Content & Replay Value

It took me around 30 hours of total playtime, and an in-game clock of 14 hours, to complete CONSCRIPT on Veteran (hardest) difficulty, taking extra time to explore everything and clear all optional stuff. Despite multiple endings and NG+, everything stays linear, so I don’t see a reason to replay.

Is It Worth Buying?

No. Even if you’re a fan of survival horrors, there are a lot of better ones out there. The price may be fair for this amount of content, but the issues prevent it from being worth your time.

Verdict

A survival horror that does a lot of things well, but does even more terribly. Crippling design decisions demolish what is ultimately a good foundation, and result in a bothersome experience.

CONSCRIPT – In-Depth Analysis

Writing & Worldbuilding

In CONSCRIPT, the main story will not only encompass Poilu’s struggle to find his brother, but also recap his past via flashbacks, portraying the pain many families suffered in seeing their sons sent to war, with little chance of them coming back at all, or unchanged by the horrors they witnessed. A good assortment of accessory lore and characters tells the tales of other characters who had their lives ruined by the tragedy of conflict. All of them are well-written, plausible, and seldom have a happy ending.

CONSCRIPT’s setting is bleak, greyscale and desolate, as it should be. War crimes, mutilated soldiers gasping for their last breath, reckless carnage and piles of mangled bodies will be common sights, as will be people driven to madness by the unspeakable things they were forced to do in order to survive. From a historical standpoint, barring gameplay-related choices, it’s an accurate setting from uniforms to weapons to locations – that, compounded with a solid sound design, ensures tension and immersion for the whole experience.

Exploration & Secrets

You’ll explore all places on foot, with a handy map marking doors, points of interest and utility NPCs (such as the trader) automatically, as long as you interact with them once. Later on, fast travel becomes available in the widest locations, however, this is limited, and you’ll have to do most of the work yourself regardless. There are supplies such as ammo and medicine, other than valuables such as cigarettes and jewels, hidden everywhere – the keen explorer will be greatly rewarded for the extra time put into looting; it is mandatory to have enough supplies on the harder difficulties. Maps are convoluted, with many optional and hidden zones for you to discover; they may also change after specific events, new paths open and old ones become inaccessible. Certain areas require puzzles to be solved, requiring you to collect multiple items and make sense of how to use them.

The biggest issue of CONSCRIPT is backtracking: you’ll be forced to run back and forth from your stash hundreds of times if you want to gather all the resources or items (and you’ll need them) due to the extremely limited inventory space, which can be expanded a bit, but not anytime soon. This becomes a chore, made even more crippling by the Rats, an enemy endlessly respawning from corpses, capable of poisoning and damaging you – they can be removed from some areas using finite resources, such as fuel or grenades, but there aren’t enough for all of them. I probably spent 50% of all playtime just backtracking to deposit items – that’s not fun, and this isn’t Death Stranding.

Combat System

Combat plays out using either ranged or melee weapons, the latter having durability while the former uses ammunition. Until late-game, ammo is rather scarce and should only be used in the harder fights, while backstabbing enemies stealthily or avoiding them are more viable choices. However, with how unreliable stealth is, you’ll have to ‘reset’ an area many times by changing location, and spawn rats in the process (they ignore enemies and only attack you), before you can successfully kill all foes without using tons of ammo. It’s satisfying to hit them, as there’s good weight and feel behind each shot or blow; however, the inaccuracy of ranged weapons – compounded with the fact Poilu will become more shell-shocked and shaky as the game progresses – makes landing precision shots a pain. You may choose to skip the biggest battles by hiding, but this will heavily impact the story’s finale.

The main issue with combat resides in how flat it feels. Most enemies have the same archetypes, no special skills or unique quirks, just stronger versions of something seen before. Essentially, each fight is a kiting game where Poilu will have to find someplace to run in a circle, and shoot enemies while backpedaling until they’re all dead, or use the dodge-roll to go through them if he gets cornered. No weak spots, no unique mechanics to defeat any enemy, and no bosses – it’s the same exact fight from the beginning to the end, just against stronger, more numerous foes.

Progression, Trading & Upgrades

The mysterious Trader will be a pillar for your success, trading resources to craft ammo or medicine, weapons, special items and upgrades for cigarettes, the only currency. He’ll also accept valuables and pay you. In almost all safe rooms, he’ll be there, along with your bottomless stash and a save point, offering different stock based on the Chapter you’re in, and also allowing you to upgrade weapons to make them deadlier. Some items, such as Morphine, will grant Poilu permanent upgrades to his stats, however, these are rare – there’s no other form of progression. Until much later, the Trader’s prices will be too high, so you should only resort to him when things are dire. The in-game economy is fine, but becomes far too forgiving in late-game, especially if you explore everything.

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