The Last Show of Mr. Chardish

An unpleasant and poorly designed experience.

First, there are technical issues. I had lots of crashes, essentially every 15 minutes or so in some levels. Equally annoying is that the game insists on opening a web page to share my "online status". No thank you. And there is no way to disable this "feature"; it happens on every launch if you refuse it. Finally, the game has HDR support, but it really shouldn't, as it looks possibly worse in HDR. Did the devs actually test this or just turn on a checkbox in Unreal Engine?

The story concept is interesting: An actor, playwright, and theater owner is looking back on his career and relationships through the lens of his art and craft. But it is poorly realized. You find letters, documents, and voiceover triggers, but they are all fragmentary, disjointed, and are often incoherent psychobabble. Worse, they are available to you as collectibles, many of which are easy to miss. That means that most players will not find them all. This is a story-centric game, so why would you hide story elements from players? It's a baffling design decision.

And then there's the awful gameplay. This game would have been fine as a straightforward "walking sim", but instead the devs decided to include diverse gameplay elements into the various levels. They are pretty much all pointless and frustrating obstacles to getting to the story tidbits, which as noted are themselves rarely illuminating or rewarding.

I wish I could at least praise the presentation, but even that is meh. The main "hub" area looks quite nice, realistic and nostalgic, but the "levels" are stylized with crude geometry and bland textures. If it's supposed to make us feel like we're going back in time, well, it succeeds but likely not in the intended way.

I did not much like this game and cannot recommend it.