GB Feature: The Council Review

Delving a bit more into narrative- and adventure-heavy territory, we’ve cranked out a three-page review of Focus Home and Big Bad Wolf’s 2018 role-playing crossbreed, The Council. A little something about the RPG elements you’ll experience as you solve mysteries around a secret society in the year 1793:

Soon after you arrive on the island, you’re asked to pick a class. The options include a Diplomat, an Occultist, and a Detective. Each class has access to five unique skills, but you can still learn the remaining ten if you pay some extra skill points that you gain by leveling up. You do that by completing the game’s chapters and secondary objectives. And with each episode containing several chapters, you can also read books between them and get additional skill points that way.

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In order to use your skills, be it during a conversation or while exploring, you will need to spend a few of the so-called Effort points. You get a limited number of these per chapter, but you can restore them by using certain consumable items. And while using skills during exploration is fairly straightforward, dialogues are a bit more tricky. You see, each NPC in the game has a list of vulnerabilities and immunities. If you exploit a character’s vulnerability, you get some Effort points back, but if you inadvertently run into an immunity, you get a temporary penalty on all subsequent skill checks, which can really sting in a prolonged verbal confrontation.