I wasn’t able to finish The Lamplighter’s League. If you’re here to scroll down to the bottom for the score (or did that immediately and have bounced up to see what gives), unfortunately you won’t find one. I’m a firm believer that a game review needs a score to qualify itself definitionally as a review, but I also believe you shouldn’t review games without finishing them, so the rock is meeting the hard place on this o𝓰ne. I’ve 🥂played enough of the game to offer some thoughts, so that’s what this not-review is.
First things first, why couldn’t I finish? At the end of each mission, you draw cards as part of a minor deck-building mechanic offering power ups that can stack. You draw cards, choose who to assign them to (or to trade them in f๊or currency to upgrade others), then click continue. Readers, I could not click continue. Initially this meant playing whole missions over again, before learning I should save just before a mission ended. But I still encountered the bug too much to be able to progress. I emailed the PR for the game for advice (they suggested the end of mission saves), but otherwise had not encountered the bug and thus had no fix.
In the hopes that I’m the only one with this issue and all the other reviews today can operate as intended, I’m choosing to describe my experiences without forcing a score on an unfinished experience. The game it🦹self is fine, and was at a precipice where it either needed to grow in depth and complexity or, if it plateaued, would risk growing stale and repetitive. Most annoying is the deck building aspect felt unnecessary in my experience thanks to its slow build up.
The first characters you play as in the game’s TRPG grid style have some variety in approach, and the fact this extends to the overworld is a big plus. You don’t just enter battle as you would in a game like Fire Emblem, but instead can walk around the battlefield choosing when and where to strike, sometime💦s even sneaking away with the objective before being spotted. Each character has an out-of-battle ability that can stealthily kill enemies too, either by setting traps or just knocking them out.
While this adds good depth, it can be frustrating to use. Ingrid can run through multiple enemies at once, but lining this up is fiddly and often results in her being spotteꦛd, ruining the heist. Also, if you’re spotted by two soldiers, it puts you in a battle with all 12 in their area, even if some haven’t spotted you and the ones who have are taken out before their turn, which should stop them from calling reinforcements.
There also seems to only be a handful of maps, reused over and over. This is a more noticeable issue given you wander freely rather than just being plonked on a grid. It doesn’t make good use of them either - I rescued a prisoner who𒐪 was ‘hiding’ in plain sight croucheജd by a box, because that particular map had no better place for them to hide. Some depth might have come with extra cards, more agents, and getting further into the game against tougher enemies, but from what I played The Lamplighter’s League was already growing repetitive.
It also seemed ♓stuck between wanting to offer a challenge, and wanting to expand its cast. Each mission, I got enough points to upgrade at least one agent, and steadily improved them all. But I had also rescued two non-agent characters who provided resources, but five missions later I still had barely enough to interact with them. You can have these extra advantages be used sparingly if you want to offer a challenge (as Lamplighter’s does), but then wanting to build on character dynamics isn’t possible when the cast feels superfluous.
Mostly I fear it’s a little too married to its own difficulty. As missions appear on the map, you need to make choices about which ones to pursue, and eventually there’s no right choice to make - it’s about what you sacrifice, and how you best survive. That’s a fine way to construct a TRPG when thinking about your every move is par for the course, but while the agents have diversity enough themselve♔s, individually they don’t have enough range even when upgraded. When you’re attacking the same enemies on the same map with the same abilities, it’s hard to feel like you’re progressing even without a bug.
Aesthetically there’s a lot to admire about The Lamplighter’s League. The noir tone comes across well, staying the right side of parody with some cool lines and interesting use of tropes. We have the exotic femme fatale who deals in poisons, but our big, bulky pilot is also our lockpick, while our smooth talking blonde bombshell is our bruiser. It plays with type, and though the enemi🎶es are faceless by design, the steampunk, gas-mask laden attire captures a voice for Lamplighter’s League itself.
I had an enjoyable enough time with what I could play of Lamplighter’s League, but I found myself wanting more commitment, more maps, more range of abilities. Mostly though I just wa🙈nted to play, and the fac🦩t I couldn’t places a heavy caveat on any recommendation I might make. It’s an interesting TRPG that offers a fresh approach through map roaming, but the trick gets old when it’s the same map with the same secrets each time.