Moebius: Empire Rising

I am so glad I did not listen to sh4dow83 (the first review on the list) whose review 2-starred this game and bashed the animation. I am an avid Jane Jensen fan who fell in love with Gabriel Knight in the 90's and grew up on Sierra (Roberta Williams, Al Lowe, Scott Murphy) point-and-click adventure games since the 80's. I am not looking for a button-smashing, high-end graphic, fast paced 1st-person shooter game designed for an 11 year old. I want a game I can escape into and become part of a Sherlock Holmes flavored mystery world. I love Jane Jensen for the story, the music, the art, the puzzles, the magic, the chemistry, the codes & brainteasers. I love her character development and interaction. Hell, ..I even love the real life history and geography lessons she peppers her games with. Her games are stimulating! Her characters are fun. If you liked the Gabriel Knight series and Gray Matter, this game will NOT disappoint! (I hope one day she will give us Gabriel Knight 4! Is Grace pregnant??) As someone who misses this type of entertainment, I am so grateful this game was kickstarted. Thank you Jane Jensen & Pinkerton Road! I Loved it!

Pros: An intriguing plot with well-written characters. The main character, Malachi Rector, is an antisocial genius and expert antique dealer, and the best parts of the game involve putting his skills to use, either to examine antiques for signs of forgery or to make clever deductions about people, Sherlock Holmes style. There's some guesswork involved with the latter, but usually a mix of common sense, intuition and clues from the surroundings will suffice. Malachi's voice acting is suitably arrogant, wry and dismissive, but the character manages to be quite likeable all the same, and shows a clever sense of humor now and then. Other characters are well-acted, and Rector's companion for much of the game, David Walker, has believable chemistry with him, as well as serving as a contrast to his snooty aloofness (which begins to soften the longer the two are together). Most of the dialogue in the game is excellent, natural and snappy. The focus of the story requires some suspension of disbelief but is intriguing, though mostly unexplored beyond the basic premise. The environments are detailed and well-designed, though the graphical limitations unfortunately make it very obvious when a two-dimensional "matte painting" is used in lieu of a fully rendered background. This being a globe-trotting adventure, a wide variety of locations are featured. Cons: The game fizzles out towards the end, where things seem rushed and less attention is put into the puzzles. The final area is little more than an easy maze, and one especially absurd puzzle involves flying from Washington DC to Manhattan and back just to buy an extremely common, easy to obtain item. The "Moebius" concept itself is hardly fleshed out at all, with no satisfactory revelations or twists to liven up the straightforward plot. The character models are oddly proportioned, have terrible lip-synching and Malachi's expressions in particular look unnatural at times. Lots of backtracking to get items. Quite easy.

I've been an adoring, extremely forgiving fan of Jane Jensen's work for many years. I WANTED TO LIKE THIS SO MUCH. But honestly, even after Kings Quest 6 through to Gabriel Knight 3 - even after the cat-hair-mustache puzzle - I was willing to give this an awful lot of room. What makes all of the other games good, aside from a hugely different and amazing storyline that was really a big deal at the time - was the style. Gabriel Knight 1 and 2 especially had wonderful style - it oozed out of every pore the game had. Even now I find Gabriel Knight 1 (the original) quite easy to show without shame to friends. But this - this is just so lifeless. There's no style here - and the style of the GK remake is pretty lacklustre too. Jane Jensen said on her own forums that she thought the story was more important than the engine - I'm sorry, but she's just plain wrong. It breaks my immersion. The character animation is awful, and the voice acting is just abysmal. The actual interface isn't so bad - but I was just so unimmersed by the time I got there that I found myself turning off the game very early on. I helped Kickstart the Pinkerton Road group. I wanted this to be a magical reinvention of Jane Jensen's genius. But perhaps I had rose tinted glasses here. The story does still appear to be there - but it's clouded over by terrible, unforgivable execution. PLEASE LISTEN, JANE. This is ruining your recent games, I know you have a budget to work to - but be more picky!

This is a game that reminds me that cheap does not always mean crappy. If you are looking for a PnC adventure game with a good story, innovative puzzles, and smooth actions that actually make sense in the context of the story, look no further. Jane Jensen's games are always top notch when it comes to story as she writes her stories from the perspective of a novelist. Too many adventure games construct a story as merely a frame to hold actions and puzzles, but in Jane's games story and character development is primary. In this game, all of the actions you have to figure out make good sense in the context of the story and one doesn't have to feel like they have to read the developer's mind to figure out what to do. I may have looked at a walkthrough once in the game, I think, and that was only lack of patience on my part. The puzzles are ingenious as they are mainly related to the role of the protagonist as an analyzer of people and patterns. You won't find any slidey puzzles here. I also like that the player is switched back and forth between playing either of two main characters. It gives variety and a nice break from the pomposity of the main protagonist. That being said, I found Malachi's personality very amusing, probably because I do not personally know anyone like him. Her game Grey Matter had the same kind of character switching mechanic. I really, really hope that we see more content coming from Jane in the future. Another plus is that this game (as of 2018) is fairly old now and you can find it for very low prices during sales and bundled with other games at sites like Fanatic and Humble Bundle. Check out Jane's other outstanding games such as: Gray Matter, Cognition, and Gabriel Knight.

While some of the elements and gameplay are interesting, the whole thing is a disappointment. One-dimensional characters, unimaginative or irritating puzzles and a wonky shape and moving around of characters. Speaking of the main one, the protagonist Malachi Rector is just... Well, let's just say he is in no way loveable... The historical perspectives and the good music make up for all this mediocrity (or even plain lousiness) and you can tell the creators have TRIED here and there. But mostly failed miserably. With a slight spoiler alert: this game you won't replay so there won't be any historical pattern to that...