Parents' Guide to Disjunction

This role-playing game (RPG) is at once slightly repetitive and moderately stressful, which limits the appeal that it will have to many players interested in its story. Unforgiving stealth puzzles with few checkpoints in Disjunction lead to a sense of exasperation more than accomplishment once they're completed. There are two major elements that contribute to this: First, players must master three different play styles to progress past even the first few levels. That means playing with abilities and play styles they're not comfortable with, with little flexibility and no adjustable difficulty level. Because this is a stealth-based game, players may have to repeat the same set of time-consuming actions many times in order to travel from checkpoint to checkpoint, leading to the temptation to rush certain sections and fail the level yet again.

Second, while the story is remarkably detailed and the non-player character dialogue is fairly well written, it's difficult to become emotionally involved with any of the main characters. Conversations also feature rather small, difficult-to-read text, so it's easy to feel like skimming the paragraphs of dialogue instead of taking the time to soak up each word. In addition, lore is dispersed throughout high-stakes missions, and while it provides a fully formed picture of a city in peril, the pacing is greatly interrupted by these item discoveries. With all that the game leaves to be desired, it's difficult to picture what type of player this experience is for. While many difficult games earn fan favor with big payoffs waiting at the end of a set of levels, Disjunction rewards its hardworking players with only a small piece of information related to the main storyline before sending them right back into another long set of similar obstacles. As a result, many may choose to throw in the towel fairly early on, if they are not enthralled with the combat.