Broken Age: The Complete Adventure

What a sad state of affairs this whole mess has been. From the blatant mishandling of Kickstarter funds, to the completely ambiguous release window, Double Fine has gone a long way in damaging their otherwise stellar reputation with this game. The big kicker here, though, is that all of that would have been half-way forgivable if the end product was great, but unfortunately it's just...for lack of a better word, not. Basically I felt like this game deserved a star for art direction and a star for some of the witty, humorous dialogue that Schafer and Double Fine are known for. Oddly enough, though (and I think this opinion will be at odds with some other reviews), that same quality of writing given to the dialogue does not seem to extend to the story, especially the second half. So many of the explanations given to the plot points brought up in the first half seem downright lazy and out of place next to the setting and characterizations that were set up early on in the game. Shay in particular I felt was given the short end of the stick in the second half as DF seemed to opt for a more "girl-power" sort of approach to the narrative to the point that Vella seems almost psychopathic near the end of the game. Which is fine, honestly, except that again, the first half seemed to suggest that they would BOTH turn out to be pretty interesting characters with their own moral dilemmas and thought processes. Gameplay wise, you won't get any of the sprawling, epic, "think-outside-the-box" type of puzzles from the classic LucasArts adventures here. Instead we get some very simple, straightforward...let's call them "obstacles" that seem designed to prevent any mental friction from occurring. As others have suggested, it's more akin to a TellTale game than a classic LucasArts adventure. And I think that is a good summation of the game as a whole. It's just not what Double-Fine said it would be, and that is the saddest part for all the folks that put their faith into the project.

I read the negative reviews and was hesitant to buy this game, but on a deep sale I bought it and dont regret the purchase. Its a pleasant game, the graphics are cartoony but are nice, especially the female characters land. The music is ok, nondescript mainly, the voice acting is pretty darn good and some of the characters are pretty funny. I was worried about the reviewers who said there were hardly any hotspots or actions to do but found plenty to do. The puzzles ranged from easy to scratch my head obscure. The story was interesting and engaging. I preferred playing the girls adventure over the boys. The artwork was very pretty. Pros: pleasant graphics, music, story, puzzles and interface. The art is very good. Not as simplistic as the negative reviewers said, enjoyable. Cons: the game still comes off geared for preteens, rather simplistic tale and actions, even tho there are some subtle adult quips buried in there. Seems a bit short Get it on deep sale, ignore the negative reviews. Its a nice game

This has to be one of the most frustrating and annoying games ever made. The promise of the Kickstarter, the fantastic graphics, and excellent voice acting make the terrible, obtuse, and illogical puzzles that much more disappointing. I'm done with Double Fine after this game.

Broken Age was fun, and had me laugh out loud at times. I enjoyed throwing random objects at characters to see their reaction. The artwork is nice to look at and there's lots of amazing details. But the game is short, and it is casual - almost offendingly so! There's no text at all, and you cannot make mistakes. While I liked the wax crayon inspired artwork, the "picture book" art style combined with an extremely casual gameplay takes a while to get into. This is a problem when considering how short this first act is - once you're into the game, it is almost finished. I'll recommend starting with the Shay part to get into the game, then save the superior Vella part for later. Broken Age has a few quirks, like when a characters mood changes completely because you start a dialog that wasn't expected. No biggie, but there goes a star. The game is designed to be tablet compatible. As a PC player, I'm a bit feed up with having to pay money for games developed for other platforms. That said, I don't think the tablet friendliness had have any negative impact on the game and it looks good both in 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratio. The ability to switch between the two characters are a good idea. The two stories in the game deals with some dark themes, which has been used in horror film to great effect. However, everything is kept bright and playful, so don't expect anything horror-like.

Act 1 was easy but really enjoyable, then some puzzle in Act 2 became tedious and so bad I just had to uninstall the game and will probably never go back to it, that's too bad cause I really wanted to finish it but when I weighted if it was worth my time to retry something a 100 time, then no I decided Igot better things to do.