E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy Review

IGN has put online a brief review for Streum On Studio’s E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy, which has so far received mixed impressions from the press, and they lean heavily on the unfavorable side, awarding the cyberpunk title a mediocre 5.0/10. Here’s a sampling:

With character building making up such an important part of E.Y.E., it feels near criminal that it’s handled so poorly, all but completely marring the experience. On top of having to seek out the proper venues to buy the various upgrades I wanted, I also had to figure out an unnecessarily difficult research system and in-menu upgrade system. Why couldn’t everything live in one place? Is it so important to the “realism” of the experience that I have to venture to multiple locations to handle all my upgrades? Hell, at least explain such precious details to me clearly so that I don’t allocate my attribute points in such a way that precludes me from using the awesome powers I finally find. The system as it stands now is just sloppy and completely unfocused.

The team behind E.Y.E. may be guilty of trying to smash too many ideas into a single game, but one thing they did well was instilling the power of choice. Many missions are rife with characters to interrogate and have discussions with. Like Mass Effect or similar RPGs, you can choose how you respond to each part of the dialogue. This in turn can change the course of the action, changing a mission that started out as simple bribery into an assassination plot, for instance. Dialogue choices can even change the course of the plot entirely and if you do enough reading to figure out the story they actually carry a lot of weight.

The missions that involve a lot of choices and present multiple quest options are better than those that don’t, but many of E.Y.E.’s objectives just boil down to fighting a number of foes before interacting with an object. There are small diversions along the way, but none provide much interest. The hacking mini-game is just boring, and many other objectives just involved rolling into an area and touching something. I understand that leveling up and getting money and experience are important in E.Y.E., but the more boring missions make it a real grind.