A New Beginning: Final Cut

I hate to compare, but I really love the Broken Sword games, especially the first one. There is just a certain mystery and suspense in them that keeps me playing. But, when I play "A New Beginning: Final Cut"(ANB:FC), I've only played the 1st chapter which didn't make me feel enthusiastic to finish the game because of a some bad points. First of all, the story is just melodramatic, especially in the first act; a puff of smoke can kill a bird immediately? Come on! That really doesn't make the story realistic. That paired with the bad voice acting or sampling(they sound like robots) and voice editing(a lot of clipping off at the end of sentences) it really destroys the immersion. Second, the searching and puzzles are annoyingly designed. When you explore an area, you may not be able to find an item until you talk to someone. The item won't appear until you trigger a necessary dialogue. This really made things confusing for me and lead me chasing around as to what to do next. Lastly, the characters are just uninteresting and unrelatable. Their personalities are boring and you're choices of dialogue don't really matter. The game's only positives are the graphics and the comic book-like design(if you like that). Music is OK, but you won't be humming it through your head. Overall, ANB:FC is just an average game. If you're into this kind of story and don't mind the play mechanics, and boring characters, then try it, you may like it. Otherwise, if you're expecting something to leave a positive impression on you then play something else. If this was the only game I had to play, I'd continue playing it, but with a large backlog, I can just skip this one and find something that will hold my attention. 2.5 stars.

I can't really say much about this game other than it's broken. 1. The English Dialog is bad with some of the voice acting being choppy and pieced together from different recordings. Keep in I did everything the Support sections suggested to fix this game. 2. Sometimes the English subtitles and Clickable options will show in another language. 3. Repeating of voice dialog in some sections and none in others. 4. Numerous times I ran into glitches that either restarted a scene or was unable to proceed. Some of these glitches also include deleted (important) dialog that would not be known by the player without a walkthrough. 4. This game is either horribly patched or programmed, I can't tell which. 5. I didn't like how some puzzles gave a big red button which allowed you to completely skip the puzzle, with no indication as to this being its purpose. I would have preferred this to be in the settings as a feature which can be turned on or off. 6. The settings for the game are very minimalist with the speech-text being broken. I.E. Turning speech-text off before starting the a game keeps speech-text on until a game is started and then returning to settings (even though it says it's off) clicking it on and off again fixes the issue. I really gave this game a chance (because of the interesting story and art style) and pressed on through the game regardless of all its problems but gave up (from frustration from the glitches) when Bent got stuck behind the table at the bar in the jungle. I've read that if you contact Deadalic they will send you a save which bypasses this section of the game, so they are aware of the problem and just don't want to fix it. I will finish this game by watching a play-through on youtube. My recommendation: Wait for this title to go on sale (for really cheap) because it sure isn't worth $10 in this state.

Poor execution of a good game. The English localization is largely to blame; the dialogue is awkward and unnatural. At best, it's worth a giggle; at worst, it interferes with the story and puzzle-solving (eg, I consulted a walkthrough because I didn't understand that "filter" actually meant "lens"). Typos are common, and the onscreen text often differs from what the voice actors are saying—sometimes because they're correcting egregious grammatical errors, and sometimes because the text is in German or Russian. The voice acting is extremely flat. A handful of characters are dynamic and convincing, but the rest sound like they've been given no direction. Consequently, several dramatic moments come across as dull or silly—though that's also because many of these moments are inherently absurd. For instance, one character suddenly conducts a perfectly normal conversation after being interrupted in the middle of a mad dash to the restroom. The last 10 minutes of the game are truly inane, with some decisions and revelations that destroy all narrative credibility. The characters are fine enough. There's a good mix of personalities and (despite the localization and voice acting) some decent chemistry; however, the villains are over the top, and the abusive relationship between one of the male characters and the lead female character is utterly appalling. What saves the game is the gameplay. Yes, the interface is a little clunky; no, the tutorial doesn't bother to tell you to hold SPACEBAR to view all the hotspots. But the puzzles are generally solid, varied, and interesting—just don't think too hard about whether the solutions would be plausible in real life. You can skip the most complicated ones, and there's almost always sufficient guidance. Graphics are clean and professional. Too much of the game is silent, but when there is music or ambient noise, it fits well. There's no fear of dying or dead-ending the game, but a glitch kept me from viewing the full credits.

A New Beginning is a point and click adventure, set in a time travel story with a heavy environmental theme. The plot is unexpectedly interesting, well written and planned out. The difficulty is reasonable, with no ridiculous spikes, whilst offering the usual P&C style puzzles and inventory management. The Dialogue and voice acting is entertaining and not badly delivered, giving appropriate emotion to the matters in scene. A surprising game, that's nicely made and entertains throughout.

I was at first attracted by the hand-drawn art, but when I started playing, the game turned out to be overly preachy, stiff, full of mundane inventory puzzles, improbable, hard to care for NPCs and a very naive view on the world's energy crisis. Years later, I finally finished playing, and... ehhh... I respect the effort, but I did not really like the game. It was like listening to a two hours sermon of a religion you don't care about. For the record - I think climate change is real and critical problem for humans to solve, but the game does not offer any real insights on the topic, just naive activism and virtue signaling.