“Troubles,” an adventure game from Russian developers based on the historical novel by Mikhail Zagoskin, has gone on sale. The creators were so reluctant to reveal important details that some gamers doubted the existence of the project until the very end. And in some ways they were right. Meduza played Troubles for several hours and talks about her impressions of the game, as well as what other journalists and gamers write about it.
“Troubles” is the debut project of the Cyberia Nova studio, founded in Novosibirsk in 2015. The game was funded by the Internet Development Institute (IRI), which allocates money for “patriotic” content. It was reported that the organization allocated two grants totaling approximately 500 million rubles for the Troubles. However, Vedomosti’s source on the video game market in February last year claimedthat the total investment volume could be twice as large.
The action of “The Troubles” takes place, as you might guess, during the Time of Troubles, in 1612. According to the plot, the main character, boyar Yuri Miloslavsky, goes to Nizhny Novgorod to join the people’s militia of Minin and Pozharsky. As the game itself suggests, Miloslavsky is destined to become a key participant in future historical events. The developers promise that certain moral choices await him, but the plot develops slowly, and in the first hours nothing of the kind could be noticed.
The website of the game creators states that before starting Troubles, the team spent several years producing game prototypes and outsourced graphics for other companies. And this is noticeable – the graphics can perhaps be called one of the few advantages of “The Troubles”. The thoughtful work of the art director is noticeable here. The locations are created with love and attention to detail. The landscapes are picturesque. But all this is inanimate. You can’t help but feel like you’re in a museum where you can look at the exhibits, but under no circumstances should you touch them.
You cannot talk to ordinary city residents unless this is provided for by the current task. You can’t even push them – the hero simply rests against them, like against a wall. IN document from 2020, which describes “The Troubles,” it is noted that the developers used the third part of “The Witcher” and the Assassinʼs Creed series as references. But even in the first Assassin’s Creed, released more than 16 years ago, you could interact with the crowd. But here both people and furnishings are just decorations.
Before the release of Troubles, the developers were extremely reluctant to share details that interested players, and showed virtually no gameplay. It got to the point that from February 1 on the project’s social networks banned asking the question “where is the gameplay?”, and after the release it became clear why. There’s not much gameplay here. The main character, Yuri Miloslavsky, runs around locations from one task marker to another, talks with other characters and carries out primitive tasks, which, as a rule, involve talking to someone else or fighting opponents.
It was impossible to do anything other than run around in the first hours of the game: no clear side quests, no riddles or puzzles, no mini-games. Only unintelligible and endless (one gets the feeling that the studio reports to Iran the number of characters in the texts) dialogues, which, on top of everything else, are also poorly voiced – the actors do not guess with intonations and overact. The animation of the plot scenes is also not up to par: in the dialogues, we are alternately shown close-ups of speaking characters who move their lips inappropriately and make random gestures, sometimes completely inconsistent with the conversation.
The combat system really resembles that of The Witcher – only not in the third part, but in the very first one, released in 2007. Yuri can use several types of weapons, he has the ability to carry out a fast and light or slow but powerful attack, kick the enemy (if he hits), shoot him with a pistol, block and dodge a couple of times. But even if you lock onto a target using a separate button, the hero will still swing his saber into the void most of the time. Just like his opponent.
It is almost impossible to understand from the animation whether an attack will succeed or not. As a result, most of the time you just have to stay away from a group of enemies, lure them out one by one and click with the mouse until the bitter end. The game also has the ability to level up your character, but it was not possible to evaluate its effectiveness in the first hours.
A couple of times the game offered tasks related to secret passage. And this is very strange entertainment. Two playthroughs of the same mission led to completely different results. For the first time, the opponents instantly spotted Yuri in the bushes from a great distance and raised the alarm. During the second playthrough, they did not notice the hero, even when he was in an open area literally a few meters away from them.
It’s hard to call “Smoot” a bad or a good game. She’s more like nothing. It was as if it was created according to a checklist, simply adding those elements that are in similar projects from Western developers, without really thinking about how it will all work and, most importantly, how interesting it is to play. I can’t help but feel that the recent half-hour demo of the arthouse game INDIKA has more meaning than the multimillion-dollar blockbuster from Cyberia Nova.
The developers promise to support the project for a long time and improve it, but there are things that cannot be fixed with patches. “The Troubles” lacks a game designer, an intelligent director for plot scenes and dialogues, and a living world. Sense, after all. At some point during the gameplay, the player will definitely begin to wonder what exactly is keeping him here. And most likely he will not find an answer to this question.
Reviews in the media: “The Troubles didn’t work out. At all”
Journalists from several Russian media write that the press version of “The Troubles” was given to them one or two days before the release. During this time, they did not have time to complete the game, so for now they are limited to only first impressions based on the results of about one and a half dozen hours. And they are generally similar: “The Troubles” has a good visual part, interesting ideas in places, but many strange, hacky or not working elements.
“There is no point in maintaining the intrigue—“The Troubles” did not work out. At all. And, given the game’s entire path to release, it’s hard to be surprised by such an outcome,” writes Mikhail Shevkun in his text for the website Championat.com. According to him, the project cannot adequately reveal even its strengths, for example, an interesting setting. All the most interesting things happen somewhere in the background while the main character is busy with small errands.
The author criticizes “The Troubles” for unclear and tiring dialogues, a primitive combat system, general prolongation and completely broken segments in which the player is required to pass through stealth. “There are literally four gameplay mechanics here: walking (80% of the time), dialogues (10%), battles (7%) and stealth (3%). There’s no depth to any of them,” he adds. The only thing that received praise was the graphics and location design.
Author of Cybersport.ru Sergey Sergienko notesthat the tasks in the game are monotonous, and the locations, despite their beauty, are empty and uninteresting. “In the end, the world as a whole exists, but why it should be studied is absolutely unclear,” he sums up. Sergienko adds that the battles feel better than they look, but overall, “Troubles” leaves mixed impressions and is more like a project from.
The GoHa.Ru observer, based on the results of 12 hours spent in the game, complains because the game is poorly implemented. “To put it simply, you will regularly encounter situations where an attack that obviously hit the enemy is simply not taken into account by the system!” – noted in the text. The lifeless intonations of the main characters were also criticized. “I’ll be honest: the game needs to be re-voiced almost completely. I’m ready to bet that the developers themselves were dubbing the game, recording the voices not of professional actors, but of their own employees,” writes the author.
Mikhail Shevkun notes that he will not rate the game because he sees no point in playing it to the end: “It seems that it will not be able to offer anything new over the next 10-20 hours.” Based on the results of the first 10-15 hours, he rates it two out of ten.
Oddities from the game are shared on social networks. And they write that she “doesn’t even deserve a grub in her direction”
At the time of writing, users left more than 600 reviews of “Smuta” on its VK Play page. Almost half of them are neutral or negative. Edition 3DNews writes, that at least several users gave the game a maximum rating in advance. The criticism generally coincides with the opinion of journalists – the game is empty and monotonous, the plot is unclear, the combat system is bad, there is no optimization.
Although the game cannot be clearly called a propaganda project based on the first hours – also due to the slow development of the plot – it sometimes flashes moments that in 2024 can be considered ambiguous. For example, the call to “mortgage our wives and children” in order to finance the army:
Or a scene in which the main character provokes a German mercenary with “jokes” about the masculinity of women and the effeminacy of men:
On social networks writethat “The Troubles” is not worth a minute of the player’s time, and criticize people comparing it to popular European role-playing games – Gothic and Kingdom Come: Deliverance. And also remember INDIKA, which did not receive as much attention as the Iranian-supported project.
But there is one difference: INDIKA does not have such an incendiary dance:
The game “Troubles” is available on PC exclusively in the digital distribution service VK Play. There are no plans to release the project on other platforms and consoles.
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