Deponia

Deponia continues Daedalics way of playing with our expectations. The atmosphere switch isn't as heavy as it was in "Edna & Harvey", but there are still some unexpected plot twists and shenanigans. Rufus is an unlikeable jerk. On Purpose! Most jokes aims about his lack of self awareness and overexposure. He is surrounded by characters, that would be a better protagonist than him, but that is what makes the pay off so much better. I hope they all return in "Chaos". There is still some arc in Rufus. The hand painted enviroments and character designs are charming and well done. And finally HD. The animation is still stiff, bt not as bad as in "Edna". There is one cutscene at the end of each episode who looks gorgeus. The german voice acting cast does a pretty good job. Don't know about the english one. :( The puzzles are a mix of item combination, dialogs and crazy machines. Daedalic manages to deliver a bunch of puzzles at a time. So if you get stuck, you just take care of another problem. Only in the final stage, it gets pretty linear.

I know, the comparision is overstressed and many adventures claim to follow in the footsteps of Lucas Arts. But for once this comparision is actually justified. Deponia is full of whacky humor, memorable characters and well designed puzzles. The main character, as others have said, is an egoistical jerk. But he still manages somehow to be likeable and the german voice acting fits the characters very nicely. The only bad thing about this game is, that it ends quite suddenly without really finishing the story. But then again it was planned from the start as a trilogy, so I guess we have to wait for the next installment to continue the story.

I just loved Deponia, I can't deny that. Rufus, the main character, reminds me a lot of Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island games, and the game itself feels like it. Rufus always has some scatter brained plan and you combine and use lots of weird stuff to proceed in the game, standard point and click game and it works. There are lots of colorful characters and I liked all of them, they were very well made. What makes Deponia stand out is the world. Backgrounds are absolutely beautiful, they fit the game and story perfectly, and every item you can use and pick up are also very well made, they blend into the background so well that it's sometimes hard to notice what you can interact with and what not. If you press space bar or middle mouse key you can see every object you can interact with. Puzzles itself are really great, I'm not that great with puzzle and point and click games. I've played Broken Sword, Monkey Island and some other games, but I've never been great with them and used lot of walkthrough, but puzzles in Deponia were great, they were logical(most part) and fairly demanding but not on the impossible level where you have to use walkthrough for every puzzle. At least a novice like me could solve them with some thinking. Only problem I have with this game is that it's short and it ends way too suddenly. Just when things get really interesting... It just stops. There's going to be a sequel, Chaos on Deponia I think it's called, coming out in November and I can't wait for it. But ending still seems rushed, like devs just gave up and didn't dare to make any more in case that Deponia didn't sell that well.The ending is only thing that's keeping me giving it whole 5 stars. If you wait till November when sequel comes out and buy these together, I bet you'll get awesome, full lenght adventure game. If you like point and click games, there's no reason to pass Deponia.

The game is definitely well done, and the arts is quite good. The puzzles, few as they are, are relatively well done, with only a few that really require thinking outside of any standard mindset. But the characters were some of the most irritating I have ever seen in any game, and while memorable, they actively hurt my enjoyment of the game as I was forced to play an egotistical, overbearing, idiot. Worth it if you love point-and-clicks though!