Blackwell Epiphany

This review is about the whole series from 1 to 5. With the four games I could give 3 or even 4 stars just because the good job and the nice story but this 5th episode finishes the series in a great way. Completely worthy!.

First, there's something I need to get out of the way: if, like me, you like your games ending on an upbeat note, you really won't like this game. I started playing the Blackwell saga on the week following a particularly bleak Halloween thinking it fitted the mood and that I could use some cheering up. And it did truly do that, admirably well - each day I could hardly wait to get home to play the next installment - until I finished Epiphany a week later, leaving me even more depressed than I was before I started. Mark my words - this game does NOT end anywhere near the way you would like it to. Now, with that out of the way - this game is really great. It has more atmosphere than you can shake a stick at and certainly plenty to suck you in (last game that did that on this level for me was the original Max Payne), and as long as you're OK with the low resolution graphics you'll just love it; the voice acting is also doing its job more than adequately. Puzzles are generally quite logical, so as long as you're prepared to take the time to explore and look at / talk to anything you find you should do just fine. Although fair warning - this is NOT an inventory-based game: puzzles are overwhelmingly dialog-based and some might not appreciate that. Length is a subjective issue I suppose - the game is not particularly long by any standard, so you can finish it in one or two session, but it is certainly much longer than the first few Blackwell games which were definitely notable by being startlingly short. Let's just say that as long as you don't expect an epic you won't be disappointed. And the story - OMG, the story is really good. You won't see twists coming a mile away, and you will feel like you've lived with the characters for a really long time. Which is also the main problem and brings us full circle - yes, this game was certainly memorable. But because of its ending, I really, really hope to forget it as soon as I can - I had enough crying for one night...

This final chapter of the Blackwell story and series of games was very well done and kept me constantly engaged wanting to know where the story was going to take me next. It was very well executed and felt both longer and more entertaining than the original 4 games in the series. While I enjoyed the entire series, I found the first 4 games to lack a central element of the story to draw me in and keep me excited. Blackwell Epiphany however had more characters to discover, explore and interact with, puzzles and problems to solve, and overall much more depth than any of the original 4 games. There was more interaction with Joey being critical to discovering solutions, as well as the ability to control other characters along the way. As the game progressed, the story gathered depth and increasingly engaged my curiousity rather than feeling like I was just doing things to get to the end. The story as a whole left more of a complete story like a decent movie in my mind and in fact it would probably be entertaining if they were to convert the entire Blackwell game series into a single movie or two. The story and dialogue was much stronger in this game. This game is definitely the strongest title in the entire series, however only if you include memory of all of the previous games having completed them previously as it is all ultimately one big story even though this final chapter is the more exciting of the series. As such, for anyone considering playing this I would have to recommend that they play all of the Blackwell games each in order before this one even though this one is the most fulfilling. Part of it's strength comes from the earlier character development and knowledge of what happened in the past in the previous games. All in all, for those who like a good detective adventure game series, the Blackwell games are mostly on the entertaining but average side of things, but Blackwell Epiphany ramps it up to make a much more exciting end to the story as a whole, with a lot of unexpected twists and turns along the way, especially at the ending which I totally did not see coming.

As a counterweight to the predominantly positive reviews, I have to say that I enjoyed this game the least in the series. Storywise it is the best, with a great conclusion, but making progress was very frustrating. Unlike many I did not find the Blackwell Epiphany short. The first three games were somewhat short, the fourth about right, but the fifth felt too long, at least to me. The problem is the way the gameplay works. You have to interview people, search places for clues, and combine these clues either in your notepad or by applying them at the right places in the game. However, I continually found myself running into a brickwall due to this system. You uncover a new location in the game, exhaust all dialogue options with the person(s) there, inspect everything with Rosa and Joey, and ... get nothing. Huh? Ok, I guess I need to check the other 20 screens available again and talk to the 12 persons available again, checking any of the 12 dialogue options with them. Did I ask this character after this already. Yep. This? Yep. This? Yep. This? Oh, this seems to be some new information. It's extremely vague, but maybe it opened up another dialogue option with someone else somewhere. Towards the middle of the second half of the game it was nothing more than a tedious canvassing of all available places and people to find that tiny fragment of 0.1% progress to start this tour from the beginning to find the next clue. At that point, all I wanted was to just get to the end already. I found, that the balance here was better in the previous four titles. (Also, I didn’t find the games too easy in their difficulty, as many obviously did, but just about right up to the last one.) I hope nobody resents me for giving this game a mediocre score. As I said, the story is great and a worthy, epic conclusion to the series, but for me it was a very hard battle with my patience to make it to the end. Keep a walkthrough ready!

Having finally completed the entire series, I can say with confidence the ending is sadly contrived and thematically messy as well as feeling a bit rushed. All the games in the series suffer a bit from pacing issues , caused partially by being relatively short, but "chapter 4", despite not being longer than the others, felt much better in that regard. The Blackwell Epiphany starts well, and I thought it would be another good entry like chapter 4, but I believe the writer was too much in love with the idea of the twist near the end and the sad ending, that he forgot to write a sad ending which made more sense. While spiritual, vague concepts were always part of the series (being centered around the supernatural), here it feels like it was dumped on the players to justify the finale, rather than building up to it over the course of the series properly. We do, in fact, DODGE the ending that was foreshadowed, just to get an almost equally sad ending, with a good dose of randomness attached to it. Unavowed, made by the same company, did a much better job with its plot twist and finale, which arguably does mirror some of the same themes, making this sting a bit more to me. Having said that, if you liked your time with the rest of the series, you'll probably enjoy this as well (especially if you don't care too much about how logical and consistent an ending is). Technically it feels more or less as competent as the previoius two in the series, and graphically it even has a few nice touches here and there (for a pixel art game, of course). Most of the investigations feel nice, a handful of the puzzles are perhaps a tad too repetitive, having played through the entire series, but overall the gameplay is good, and a little on the easy side. Really nice voice acting, and generally the sound and music department are nice as well. I am really disappointed by the ending, however, and I feel like it drags the whole series down, for me. Hard to imagine a second playthrough.