During my first play through of Unrest, I thought I made all of the right decisions. I was agreeable and did my best to make people happy. My character and her entire family died. Unrest puts you in a lot of tough situations and often paints a sobering picture that even the best intentions could end terribly. Unfortunately these interesting and often daring mechanics are more or less whipped out with uneven gameplay and the lack of several features, like voice acting and quick travel that modern gamers have come to expect. Unrest's developers deserve credit for not allowing gamers to take the easy way out like so many games that feature conversation based decision making often do but in the end, it's just another uneven game.

"...improve on your character's situation based strictly on conversations."

Unrest puts you in the shoes of four playable characters in the struggling town of Burma. Once a world leader with a strong economy, the area and its people have come into hard times, and must do what they can for them and their families to survive. You'll choose between the peasant girl, the priest, the mercenary captain and the princess, each of which have their own motivations and thus, their own way to play; at least in theory. Though you'll have to make slightly different decisions as each character, playing as each one often feels remarkably familiar, especially if you play them one after another.

There's no combat in Unrest and you'll do your best to improve on your character's situation based strictly on conversations. Note, that this entails a lot of reading. There is no voice acting in Unrest, and every piece of information; be it dialogue or description is brought to you in the form of what seems like a mini-novel. It's not a problem but it can be a bit daunting not to mention ruin the pace of the game when you have to make a critical decision to have to sift through a ton of written information. Luckily, everything is kept in a handy journal so you can reference it back.

Unrest's biggest strength is easily in its conversation and decision making system. Each interaction with other characters is marked by three bars that represent your friendship, trust and fear with that person. It's a unique and cool little system that adds a bunch of depth to each character interaction and allows you to approach different interactions in different ways. While the homeless man on the side of the road may not be willing to help the mercenary because he fears him, he may trust the priest enough to work with him and help your cause. The key is that there's always a way to work around a problem, you just have to know which way to go and of course be ready for the consequences.

"Unfortunately a lot of the gameplay feels like a chore..."

Unrest isn't like other games that let you decide your answers and choose your own path as there are no real right or wrong answers. You don't choose a good or evil answer because that's what is going to be best for your character. A lot of these answers often have a larger impact than on just your character and even if you choose the answer that best fits what your character needs, you may run into some problems that have dire consequences later on. Interestingly enough, once the game finishes you get a report on how your character did, and it's mostly grim.

Unfortunately a lot of the gameplay feels like a chore beyond the interesting dialogue mechanics. There's no fast travel so you'll have to hoof it to each of your destinations and while the map isn't all that big, it begins to become a pain when you're just trying to finish a certain section of the game and it send you all the way to the other end of the map. It also doesn't help that the character animations are so slow that it feels like even more of a trek.

Unrest's world is filled with gorgeous watercolor style visuals that are always pleasing to the eye, so what's the problem? The bright visuals don't exactly match up with a pretty dark and grim game. It's possible that the developers did this on purpose but it's a bit unnerving and took me out of the gameplay.

Unrest has the guts to put you in the middle of some pretty dark situations and refuses to give you an easy way out. It's an often sobering look at the world and the fact that sometimes even the best of intentions don't turn out so well. Unfortunately, for all it does right, Unrest often feels like a chore to play. Lacking many modern features like quick travel and voice acting, the game is stuck somewhere between the adventure games of the eighties and a choose your own adventure book that never seems to get to the end. There's an audience for Unrest, but it's a slim one.