3 people found this review helpful
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 3.2 hrs on record
Posted: 10 Sep @ 1:27am
Updated: 10 Sep @ 2:58am

This game only has one ending, and only less than 2½ - 3 hours of content in total, making the cost per played hour very high.
The one singular ending is quite bad, and even though there are many dialogue options, there are no actual meaningful choices to be made.
There are numerous quite long and somewhat boring unskippable cut scenes. However one could argue that having no skip option is acceptable due to it being somewhat important to pay attention to the them. And since there's only one ending, there's no replayability, and so there's no need to have a skip option. Though realistically, and as others have pointed out, the most probable reason for not having a skip option is to extend the required playtime to over 2 hours so the game cannot be refunded through Steam.
The game has a lot of dialogue, and not a lot of gameplay. What little actual gameplay there is, is enjoyable enough I guess, but also pretty simplistic and easy. This can be seen as both a positive and a negative. If you're looking for any sort of a challenge/puzzle, you will not find it in this game. This game should be definitely thought of as a visual novel more than a puzzle game.
The story itself is mediocre and actually pretty shallow, which is very bad for a game that consists mainly of the story.
The dialogue is fully voice-acted (except for HAL and the protagonist), which is a definite plus. The voice acting is also pretty high-quality. However I cannot help but feel like way too much developer effort and money was put into the voice acting, when it should've been put into other aspects of the game.
The soundscape and the soundtrack are also good, but really nothing out of the ordinary.

Overall, The Operator is a short, pricey mediocre dialogue-heavy and minimal-gameplay game with high-quality voice acting and heavy hand-holding and railroading, and with only one ending. It feels like the game was designed to be just long enough to make it impossible to refund after reaching the ending (which in fairness one shouldn't do regardless, if they enjoyed the game and reached the ending).

I cannot recommend anything else but to watch someone else such as a YouTuber play this game. I think that will actually add way more to the experience than buying the game and playing it on your own.
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