Broken Age: The Complete Adventure

Looking back at Broken Age from a distance, able to take in the whole picture, I would say it still holds up. The game is wonderfully charming, offers solid challenges later on and knows how to entertain and make you chuckle. Broken Age gave me one of my favorite adventure gaming experiences. It helped to play it with a good friend! If I had to pinpoint a weakness, then it would be the rather disappointing and rushed way the story resolves. Revealing a whole group of boring antagonists that late wasn't to my liking. In my opinion clear-cut antagonists weren't needed for this story anyway. Still, if you want to play a fun high-resolution 2D adventure game that looks handpainted, you can barely do better!

After having played through the game I just felt something was missing. The story was good but also at times you get so sidetracked with things you almost loose sight of the main story until you come back to it again. I did enjoy the way you have the story told from 2 different characters. The puzzles went from easy to harder as you progressed through the game which was nice. Graphically it is a nice well done game with the style they went with. It has some interesting characters but for me most were forgettable and some annoying. For me something was missing to make me really enjoy the game. Don't know if it was how the characters were and the story told or what but I just couldn't really get into it but played through it all to get a complete picture of the game so to say.

'Broken Age' feels broken not in the sense that the game doesn't work or load, but in the sense that it feels hollow, flat. A Tell-Tale like game, but even saying that wouldn't be right, because it's not Tell-Tale in any way. Tell-Tale, despite lacking meaningful gameplay, gives you rich characters, enough so that you often forgive the lack of gameplay. 'Broken Age''s characters and settings were flat all around vague promises of what could have been. The ending feels rushed an information dump that only tells half the story and the end scene I promise of more, rather than giving us more. 'Broken Age' left me feeling frustrated with its world rather than wanting more. The puzzles varied from easy to obtuse and nothing seemed fun by the end of it, I cheated through most of the second act as all I wanted to see by then was the conclusion of the story. I did not enjoy the puzzle or the world and the only redeeming quality was the visuals. 'Broken Age' was a disappoint, a promise not a deliverance of a good point & click adventure game.

I'm bored in quarantine so im going through and reviewing old games. Basically the title. The "puzzles" have been so stripped down that there is not really any gameplay. The art is cute and well done. Professional voice acting is good. The writing is meh. The writing is what i find most offensive because it is pretty obvious that Double Fine think they are incredibly witty, so much so that they think no one will notice that there isnt actually a game here but a mediocre cartoon. I'm a big fan of Yahtzee Croshaw and very much agree that the most importatnt thing in a video game is the primary gameplay loop, or what the player is doing from moment to moment. In classic adventure games this consists of solving puzzles. In my opinion the puzzles are not any good, therefore this isn't a good game. I could basically post this review for about every Double fine game. even games that are quite good like psychonauts. They have really neat and cute, game worlds and/or mechanics but have failed to put the work in to make the primary gameplay as good as it needs to or should be. If i had to guess i would say there is a lack of discipline at the top of the company. They care more about the fun quirky creativity than they do about actually making a good playable game.

Fun story, great characters, top-tier voice cast, logical puzzles; a delight for a lover of LucasArts-style adventure games!