Memoria

Oh my, i'm in love with this game! Can't get out of my head. Hope there will be a sequel! Unfortunately i did not know that there is a prequel, but i did not miss it either. The story is brilliant, the graphic is pretty, the charachters are easy to like and to bond. The world is a decent fantasy world, and most of the scenes are very atmospheric. The dialogs are not too long and neither boring at all, oh, and i loved so much the voices! Especially the princess and the staff. I had to use the walkthrough, but i'm an impatient person, and compare to that it's amazing how many puzzles i solved all by myself, with some thinking. I like it when i'm rewarded for patience :) I was waiting for this game since Syberia 2. Thank you!

Memoria is an excellent game with stunning graphics, pleasant music, good voices, and an intriguing story that twists unexpectedly as it unfolds. As a matter of fact, the game has two separate stories intertwined through the time. The game has a balanced and engaging approach in its storytelling; it was difficult to stop playing until I finished the game. The puzzles are not mind-bending, but still enjoyable, with an exception of a few silly and/or boring ones. It looks like the developers have learnt from mistakes made in the first part, Chains of Satinav, (which I rated as 3 stars) and improved everything significantly. I truly enjoyed Memoria.

This is my first foray into the Dark Eye 'universe' although I am certainly not new to the fantasy genre or point and click games. Memoria is pretty standard point and click: A story based game on rails that you can't really fall off (just become paused now and then over a puzzle) in which you control a protagonist (in this game two) by clicking on 'hot-spots' on the screen to traverse screens or interact with objects. You have an inventory and can pick up some objects and combine them before using with/on hot-spots on the screen. A couple of nice touches are (1) holding down the space-bar shows you where the hot-spots are (no more scanning your mouse pointer over every pixel looking for things to ineract with), and (2) an option that means the object you have 'in hand' will glow when your hover it over a hot-spot in can interact with - much less trial and error. Some might say these detract from the story or make the puzzles too easy but I found I only used the space-bar a couple of times on a screen and then remembered what could be interacted with. And the glowing item feature only came into real use when I was stuck and just trying all sorts of different combinations. Both great features. The hand-drawn backgrounds/scenes are beautiful, really nice to see this kind of art in our age of 3D-everything gaming. Despite the art the atmosphere just wasn't there for me - the voice acting was a bit wooden, not awful, but quite bland, nothing powerful or exciting although using (I assume) British voice actors helped to keep the fantasy feel - I think American accents are great for most things but not fantasy. ( **Very Minor Spoiler** The staff had the best voice acting I thought.) The lack of music was also a shame. There was some music but not much and what there was, again, not awful but bland. I generally play games wearing headphones and this game had me nodding off to sleep a couple of times; I'm not joking! So then, wonderful hand-drawn art and a couple of great features tied into a slightly boring fantasy story with a somewhat lacklustre atmosphere. I can see the effort the makers have put into Memoria and why it has its fans but the end product doesn't sit at the top of the tree. I'm rating this 3/5 stars - good/solid, not great.

I'm one of those people who only play adventure point and click games and I loved this. Gorgeous graphics, good music, hints of romance, and really good story behind it. The ending was fitting, I found myself replaying it and thinking through what it meant. The characters are unique and lovely, and you come to like them. One really nice feature is using spells in this game, and the puzzle is you have to figure out which situation to use it, and sometimes also how to use it. There is a lot of text, dialogue that gives you information about the previous game and the world in general, so I felt really immersed in the game. You don't necessarily need to have played the previous one before. I didn't and I didn't mind it. Some of the puzzles make sense, some not really - I don't mind this aspect so much. My only gripe is that it could have just a tad more character development and stronger characterization.

While Memoria continues the story of Geron and Nuri from "Chains of Satinav" in a way, this mainly serves as narrative framework for the story of Sadja and her magical staff. Which is a good thing, as Sadja is a much more interesting character than Geron and Nuri combined. Actually even the new supporting character Bryda is more interesting than Geron and Nuri. Even better, Memoria improved also in other aspects: there are much more animations and the user interface is slightly improved. Like you can highlight important objects now by pressing space. There are a few scenes though where not all of them are highlighted and I'm uncertain if this intentional or not. There are also sveral minor bugs where removed items or characters are still partially displayed or react to clicking them. And well, some visual issues are still there. Things like faces looking distorted (Fahi) and inconsistent look of characters. The puzzles are not quite as straight forward as in the first part. Both Geron and Sadja have several special abilities which are used in the puzzles. Also Memoria tends to trick you by letting you fail trying to use the obvious approach and then forces you to find a different solution - but not in an illogical or erratic way. Well, and there is this somewhat annoying maze which can be skipped though. All in all, this is a big step forward regarding story and characters compared to "Chains of Satinav" and definitely worth playing.