User blog:T L Mazemaker/Ship or Skip Episode 1 : Across The Void

Hello Everyone and welcome to a new segment on my Blog, Ship or Skip. A series where I give a book my review based on its pros and cons and I'll give them points depending on how good or bad an aspect is. At the end of the day, I'll be tallying the points and see what the result is.

= Rules and How to play = Here are the rules :


 * 1) I have to start from the good side first then the bad side.
 * 2) If I judge a character, it has to be his/her/their personality and not the looks because looks are subjective.
 * 3) Everything that I point out in this list is My opinion, it's no one else's, so if you disagree then it's not my fault.

How to play :

I'll be judging the book's aspects based on points, the points are scaled between 1 - 4. Here are the points descriptions :

= The Book / Series of this month to review = This month I will analyze a book that seems to be a bit bittersweet to many players. Yep, it's none other than Across the Void, I must say this book received a lot of negative reviews by many people and I feel like because majority of people felt the same, PB basically has to put this book on a break and changed the story.

Soooo... Was this book really as bad as people say it was? Time for my share of opinions.

= Ship (The Good) = For a book that's supposed to be a spacetime love story, this book isn't really that misleading I gotta say. Playing in a human-free universe is... brilliant actually, I like playing as an alien for once and playing in an environment where everybody are advanced biotech and Cyborgs which has their own abilities, it adds more to the visual elements and overall experience. (+4)

The art scenes are f-ing gorgeous, from the preview of the civil war right when you start the story until the environments of the Atlas and many planets, it really brings the Sci-Fi aspect and that is always appreciated. (+2)

I.... like playing as the siblings (fight me), I don't find their behavior tolerable like everyone else's (more on that on the bad), but playing as multiple characters is something that I came to enjoy because the spotlight can't always be to the MC and it allows me to see things from different perspective. Playing as Jura allows me to see things from the Jura perspective and playing as Eos allows me to see things from the Vanguard perspective, this little switch-e-roo is something that I crave from a Choices story unlike some books that have this feature but failed miserably. (Yeah I'm looking at you MTFL) (+3)

The LIs are nice, at least some of them. PB really keep me intrigued when it comes to having all playable characters their own LIs. We have Zekei, which is the MC's childhood friend and also Eos's partner. Sol who is our Dynamas First Officer, Titania the Apri pilot, Meridian the Romly medic and Kepler the Lektra security officer. For Pax we have Holmes the Sygog navigator and Zaniah the Thol senior engineer. As for Eos we have Zekei as mentioned earlier, Lyra the Deevine Empress, Deimos the Thol Vanguard admiral and Oberon the Tride and also Eos's former partner. The variety of races just really amazing I just uggghhhhh... (+2)

The soundtracks... AMAZING!!! Eargasms intensified, I never got so hooked up at Choices OST as much since Platinum, and this book served me well in terms of the auditory feature, There are many times I stopped tapping the screen just to listen to the soundtracks. (+1)

You get to do so much in this book. So so much, from maintaining a luxury atmosphere as a Captain to having actions in the civil war all the while maintaining your crews and passengers satisfied is really... well, satisfying. You might call it lazy and boring but I call it dedication. (+2)

The actions in this book never stops, you always have to be on your toes for any twist and turns that might happen. Choosing the correct options to using tools and weapons are really edgy and I love it. (+4)

= Skip (The Bad) = Alright, time for the obvious argument, the siblings are annoying as HELL. I never dealt with a more bothersome duo like these two. Just to be clear, siblings arguing and fighting are very common and I'm fine with that, the problem is the only thing they fight about is the civil war and only that, like are you two don't have anything better to do or something? Add that with the fact MC has to play peacemaker AND they snuck aboard the Atlas just makes it all the more miserable, Eos is overprotective and annoying while Pax is simply rude and pathetic. (+3)

I know I said there's a lot to do in this book, but the 'thing' that we did is actually there for just showmance purposes and nothing more. For example, acquiring the whip in Chapter 11 only has an impact in Chapter 12, it never made any appearance since. And getting high stats on the ship, crew and passengers meant nothing. You just get achievements on Chapter 13 and 22 and that's it, they don't alter the story, they don't mean anything... Nothing. (+2)

This book has a LOT of LIs, many of you might think it's a good thing, but quantity doesn't equal quality. The LI ratio are highly imbalanced and the fact they each take turns to appear just made it confusing. People who wanted to pursue Oberon have to wait until Chapter 13 and wait AGAIN until Chapter 20 whereas Lyra stands just breeze through with enough screen time for Lyra. Also the fact that Zekei can be pursued by 2 characters are really weird. Imagine dating your boyfriend AND his sister. (+3)

The ending is absolute GARBAGE, I really can't put into words of how exasperating it is. We were given the power to choose how the story ends and they put. it. in. the. worst. way. possible. Basically after fighting the Void soldiers for hours you realize that you can't defeat them all, so you decided to just use the astral charges. Your main weapon which you literally could use before the war started and avoid losing people, you were given the options to which side you chose to give the charges. So PB just play basic choose a side and end the story. Yes, that's basically it, you either hand it to the Vanguard, Jura, both, or neither, and then the story ends. Not even a proper ending, no 'Thanks for Playing'. (+2)

The dialogues are very cringy. There are many occasions in this book where the dialogues are pretty unnecessary and unsettling. Example on Chapter 11 when we were defending the Atlas, if you spent diamonds on upgrading the ship, you can 'steal' a kiss with a certain LI. I dunno where you came from but if I was defending myself against a handful of assassins and someone just came to me kissing, I would be pretty weirded out. Is this how aliens talk to one another? Have I just witnessed an alien life or something? (+1)

Paywalled choices which led to deadly circumstances, I just don't see why it's necessary to brought such system normally brought by EA in this book. If you didn't spend diamonds here, you will either feel guilty or pissed off. And this happens for the rest of the story so prepare yourself playing this book diamond-free. I wouldn't mind if a character's fate is determinant by the player, as long as it's not diamond walled over. (+4)

= Final Tally = Well, I suppose this book isn't all bad if you looked at it from both sides, just like this book has two sides of every story (maybe even 3), we also shouldn't be judging things from 1 side only. There are many elements in this book that just make people's skin itch but you can't deny the fact that PB was trying to go big with a very big ideas, it's just this 'big' ideas was served in a poor execution and a small and limited time and resources. Hopefully the second chance strikes better, and hopefully there is a second chance because I still very enjoy this book very very much. Thanks for taking your time reading this and I'll see you in the next episode. Peace, T L Mazemaker.