Sovereign Syndicate review

Our VerdictWith its emphasis on roleplay rather than combat and borrowings from Disco Elysium, Sovereign Syndicate feels like another step forward for the CRPG.

Our Verdict

With its emphasis on roleplay rather than combat and borrowings from Disco Elysium, Sovereign Syndicate feels like another step forward for the CRPG.

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Need to knowWhat is it?Shadowrun but steampunk instead of cyberpunk.Expect to pay£/$Release dateJan 16, 2024DeveloperCrimson Herring StudiosPublisherCrimson Herring StudiosReviewed onWindows 10, Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 1060MultiplayerNoLinkOfficial site

Need to know

What is it?Shadowrun but steampunk instead of cyberpunk.Expect to pay£/$Release dateJan 16, 2024DeveloperCrimson Herring StudiosPublisherCrimson Herring StudiosReviewed onWindows 10, Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 1060MultiplayerNoLinkOfficial site

What is it?Shadowrun but steampunk instead of cyberpunk.

Expect to pay£/$

Release dateJan 16, 2024

DeveloperCrimson Herring Studios

PublisherCrimson Herring Studios

Reviewed onWindows 10, Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 1060

MultiplayerNo

LinkOfficial site

(Image credit: Crimson Herring)

Clara stands outside a dockside pub

A Tale of One City

While the version of Victorian London in Sovereign Syndicate is gritty, it’s not reality. Atticus is a minotaur, one section of the East End is a werewolf containment zone, and half the police force seem to be centaurs. The third playable character, Teddy Redgrave, is a dwarf engineer who moonlights as a monster hunter with a steam-powered automaton called Otto as his sidekick.

Having three player-characters lets you see this strange London from different perspectives—even if all of them are on the lower end of the social spectrum. Clara’s trying to get together enough money to leave the city, but gets roped into investigating a murderer the papers have dubbed “the Courtesan Killer”, while Teddy chases a less-circumspect killer through the sewers, and Atticus tries to hold off the gin bottle so he can find some missing orphans and his long-lost mother.

You personalize them further through play, with choices that embody one of the stats bumping up the relevant bodily humor and eventually boosting its score. Though I chose to give Clara a high starting grace, which represents both physical and social agility, I picked a lot of cleverclogs dialogue that increased her “black bile” bodily humor, slowly making her intellect score go up as I played more like a detective. (Smoking cigarettes had the same result, though at the cost of hope points. More about that later.)

(Image credit: Crimson Herring)

Molly explains that she paid to have her name highlighted

As someone who has never finished a Dragon Age without restarting because I don’t like my first character and would actually rather be a mage and have a nicer face, I appreciate having character creation taken out of my hands like this. It sucks to get halfway through a huge RPG and regret a choice you made hours ago when you didn’t know the Trickster archetype wouldn’t be a fun way to play Wrath of the Righteous and you should probably have angled for the boring old Angel from the start. I know there are people on the internet who think if you don’t get to roll up a bespoke PC it’s not a real RPG, but if your definition of RPG doesn’t include The Witcher 3, Disco Elysium, or Planescape: Torment your definition sucks.

And having three protagonists lets you play a little loose with them, making risky decisions or experimenting with immorality, safe in the knowledge the other two will probably turn out fine. This must be how parents of large families feel.

(Image credit: Crimson Herring)

Atticus talks to his wardrobe

Parlour Music Elysium

(Image credit: Crimson Herring)

Atticus gets in a fight

What Sovereign Syndicate doesn’t take from Disco Elysium is the regular need to reload when you goof and end up dead in a dumpster. It’s much more forgiving. Instead of hit points you have hope points, which I found easy to keep high once I dragged myself out of the early-game gutter. The climax suffered a little thanks to this lack of risk, and thinking positive thoughts whenever I saw some leaves on the ground or the coffin-shaped boxes homeless people sleep in kept my hope buoyed whenever my hope briefly fell. Interestingly, your temperament sometimes determines which options are available, and a no-hope run where I could make more vicious or cynical decisions would be an interesting second playthrough.

Sovereign Syndicate also replaces dice with tarot cards. The Major Arcana represents unlockable character traits, the Devil giving you the brutal trait while the Sun makes you confident, and you draw a numbered card from the Minor Arcana for skill checks. You’re still generating a random number but in a way that accentuates the era, when occultism was a semi-respectable drawing-room fad while dice games were considered uncouth.

Though Sovereign Syndicate starts strong, the final chapters don’t wrap up as neatly as I’d like. Some NPCs and storylines are written out abruptly, and Teddy ends up feeling like a guy who just happened to be there rather than an equal protagonist. The other two-thirds hit the mark, though. Even as someone with no affection for steampunk as a genre, I got caught up in this particular blend of Victorian London and mythology thanks to how well Sovereign Syndicate evokes a time and place. Hell, I even read the highlighted glossary words to understand all the references to historical characters and Cockney slang.

The Verdict80Read our review policySovereign SyndicateWith its emphasis on roleplay rather than combat and borrowings from Disco Elysium, Sovereign Syndicate feels like another step forward for the CRPG.

The Verdict

80Read our review policySovereign SyndicateWith its emphasis on roleplay rather than combat and borrowings from Disco Elysium, Sovereign Syndicate feels like another step forward for the CRPG.

80Read our review policy

Sovereign SyndicateWith its emphasis on roleplay rather than combat and borrowings from Disco Elysium, Sovereign Syndicate feels like another step forward for the CRPG.

Sovereign Syndicate

With its emphasis on roleplay rather than combat and borrowings from Disco Elysium, Sovereign Syndicate feels like another step forward for the CRPG.

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Our Verdict#

A Tale of One City#

Parlour Music Elysium#

Our Verdict

A Tale of One City

Parlour Music Elysium