I don't travel much in real life, not because I can't but more because I very fond of the comforts of home. Yet, my inner spirit is always thirsty for new excitements, and I mostly find them in adventure games. Specifically in those in the style of Syberia I and II; Benoît Sokal surely knew how to create remarkable worlds, sophisticated machinery and peculiar creatures, the like of which captures the readers/players hearts and curiosity.
I never played the original version of 'Amerzone - The Explorer's Legacy', nor knew of its existence until encountering with the trailer of this remastered version. I immediately added it to my wish list and waited for it to be on sale. I finished it in 2 evenings (13 hours in total). The reviews aren't lying - I honestly couldn't put it down.
Unlike Syberia, this is a 1st person game where YOU are the hero, not just playing one from the 3rd person point of view. It doesn't let you walk around in the 3d world like in an open-world games, but more of showing you cut-scenes that you're walking towards the direction you clicked, which can be skipped in most parts. To make the game more friendly, you have an option to hold left-Alt to highlight interaction spots, so you don't have to pixel-haunt anything; I personally held ALT almost all the time, and I think that it would have been nice if we could set it to always ON in settings.
The graphics are remarkable, and the music adds just the right mood to the atmosphere, very much like how it worked together in Syberia I and II.
There's not much dialogues in this game, but there is a lot to discover, especially documents and journals that you find on your way. It is essential to note that you can click on the text and scribbling on the documents that you find to get a proper on-screen text, which is much easier to read than from the documents themselves. Minor selection of documents you find have narration when you look on them, but most of them are things you'd need to read on your own; I find it more enjoyable to read them aloud, by even making voices to make it more enjoyable, as I find silent-reading boring, but that's just me. Anyway, my English is quite good, but I must admit that this game sometimes made me feel back in junior high, doing an 'unseen text' quiz, as there are quite a lot of high-level words I never encountered with before, which kind of slowed me down. Not all of these reading material are mandatory, but they do give you background about many aspects so you'd feel more connected with the game. Personally, at the 1st third of the game I read everything. But afterwards, I really got tired that I skipped some of them to just keep on with the story.
The game has 2 modes: one with a hints system in case you get stuck, and one without; I played with the hints system and used it when I run out of ideas what to do next, as I was really more interested in the story then in solving tedious puzzles. And don't get me wrong - I enjoyed most of the puzzles, but some of them that I might have missed info about in some documents kind of held me back, and I really wanted to proceed with the adventure than to break my head trying to solve them.
There is no option to save your game progress manually - the game has an auto-save feature, which is both nice and not so much; nice is because you don't have to worry about saving. Not so much is because you can't save whenever you want, and there was one time that I wanted to click on something in one location, but instead clicked on something else which ended up the current chapter, and I couldn't get back but to re-start the whole chapter, so I might have missed some side note.
The UI takes a little time to get used to, not because it's not good but more because there are too many sub-menus in my opinion that you need to dig in, for viewing info about things that you discover on the way.
All in all, this is a great adventure game and I mostly enjoyed it.
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