Overall most helpful review

Posted on: June 22, 2016

ecamber

Games: 344 Reviews: 31

Wasted potential

The beginning of this game is amazing. It all starts with a compelling intro, followed by the discovery of several Darksheer comic books which do an excellent job of introducing the characters and setting. And then the story gets off to a great start. You'll be dazzled by beautiful pixel art backgrounds accompanied by some great music. The game seems so full of promise and potential. But by the end of the game, you will likely be very frustrated. All that beautiful setup with no payoff! The game is really quite short, it feels like half the game it should be. Fascinating characters are introduced, but never given time to develop. In particular, many of the villains simply seem to just show up, utter a few lines and vanish! And the central mystery of this game is also resolved in the worst possible way. The ending just doesn't make sense and is a total letdown. The gameplay is fine, standard adventure game stuff. Most puzzles are very easy but there are a few that are very difficult and counter-intuitive unless you happen to stumble upon the solution by chance. Unfortunately there were only one or two really fun puzzles of a more moderate difficulty. One thing I really liked was the witty, humorous, and well-written text descriptions for even the least important items and actions in the game. This is one area the developers clearly invested a lot of time and effort into. But since there's only one or two important objects on most screens, and there are a lot of timed sections that discourage exploration, you may not get to fully appreciate this aspect. The much-hyped nudity and violence are nothing special, don't buy the game for these elements or you'll be disappointed. And don't buy it for the superhero elements either: Darksheer has some cool abilities but they are almost never used in game. Basically, awesome start, with great graphics and music, but short length, poorly fleshed out story and characters, and awful ending make this hard to recommend.

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Posted on: January 21, 2016

Bieeanda

Games: 210 Reviews: 2

Quite solid!

I got this as one of those discount reprints back in the Nineties, and was very pleasantly surprised. Adventure games with voice acting and FMV could be really hit and miss, but Noctropolis had really impressive production values, from the painted backdrops to the voice acting. Some of the picture-in-picture FMV clips may not have been spectacular, but they clearly worked at the ones that were important to the plot.

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Posted on: June 1, 2019

wasitabatisaw

Verified owner

Games: 140 Reviews: 2

Just Okay

I may have gone in expecting the wrong thing, but I still have some beefs with this game. I also have no nostalgia for it, so that's not part of my review. I won't spoil the story, but I will mention the setup for it! -------- When it comes to production, it's not bad. The graphics are nice, you get the pre-rendered FMV characters with pixel art background. (For some reason, some characters are hand drawn?) Aside from gameplay, you get a few interactive comics to read in a hand drawn classic hero comic book style. Storywise, it's a power fantasy as a comic book shop owner, recently divorced, is drawn into the world of his favorite comic book to take the place of the main hero - and to get together with said hero's girl-- his all-time favorite character. Despite his crush on this 'Stiletto' character being well-established from the get-go, he has options to flirt with every single female character you come across, so.... romantic elements are flimsy at best. In my personal opinion, the story overall lacked proper build-up and seemed very random at times (many things are introduced, few seem to matter), as well as sporting pretty large plot holes. The ending did not pay off the journey. When it comes to gameplay... it functions, I didn't experience any bugs, but there are just massive jumps in logic as to how you get certain things to unlock. It's also apparently possible to miss important things, locking yourself out of being able to progress in the game, so keep several saves! Though if need be, the game comes with a hint book that contains a check list of all important items and where to find them. All in all... I can be quite forgiving to games like this for their flaws, because of redeeming qualities like Fully voice acted, Engaging characters/story, Intentional/Unintentional humor, Lovely graphics, Intuitive gameplay... Sadly, Noctropolis does not check ANY of these off for me. ( Also, doesn't affect score but...... this is NOT a horror game ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

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Posted on: January 8, 2017

Xaviercrow

Verified owner

Games: 604 Reviews: 3

Masterpiece that is moderized perfectly

I owned the original at some point. This version is slightly different. The drawback is everything modernize expect for the graphics. Granted it was produced in an era of short lived Full motion Videos videgames....(or to people nowadays cutscenes using real actors.) I am writing this video as I play the videogame. The first thing i noticed in the opening seen. Flux(main villian) doesn't flip his cloak back as he did in the original maybe it was because I wanted to skip the lengthy opening credits to actual game play. Doesnt bother me to much. The voices and sounds are pretty much the same as the original. And The window dialouge with the character names and what they are saying had to be turn on. (not a problem , I turned it on when I was in the first five seconds of game play.) The soundtrack sounds better than what i remembered. I had a copy where, somehow i was able to play the soundtrack in windows media player. I had it on my mp3/ipod for a while. The awesome thing i found out by accident is that it recongizes my xbox 360 controller as a controller. And it was perfectly configurated to the game. I do not know why one would play with an xbox controller since you cant physically move the character like in other adventure games nowadays( e.g Game of thrones, walking dead, any tell tale games) But each button on the xbox controller is perfectly sync up to actions such get item go to and open. the movement of the cursor is not overly senstive that you will miss certain areas of the game. It has the option to make it full screen or windowed. Its great if your doing stuff in the backround. bad if your using a laptop, and your dimesions are 1280x 800 because it goes to the next square sized window and words and graphics get distorted since it is downsampling from the original(i am assuming thats the case.) but everything is amazing so far.

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Posted on: June 25, 2020

Anansi

Verified owner

Games: 291 Reviews: 9

The City of Darkness Shines Bright

It's been a while since I played an adventure game, but this hit the fix quite nicely. It's not perfect, but it does enough right to be worth a look at. It has that old-school vibe without being ancient, and kicks off with a strong beginning, easing you into it and the plot-relevant comic is truly something else. Speech bubbles are voiced, and it introduces much of the cast, heroes and villains, while setting the tone for the comic world and setting up a good portion of the plot. But while the comic book start is excellent, it doesn't do as much with the hero angle as you'd think. It's more "Adventure" than using your heroic powers and going against the villains is more of a puzzle affair, most of them ending up in a timed mission. The time given is generous at least but multiple saves are warranted, especially with the amount of deaths/game over screens you can get from conversations or scenes. Some aren’t as obvious and may be accidental but they are neat to see. The writing really shines in death scenes and descriptions. It can be funny at times and the general dialogue dips into cheese and full on dives into it with the voice acting, which is hammy overall. FMV pop-ups make it even more so and it lends to the comic atmosphere. YMMV on it though, but I enjoyed it. Another perk is the hint book that comes with the game. You can get hints, or a straight up walkthrough depending on how much help you want. I needed some as some puzzles are a bit obtuse and due to graphical limitations, some objects aren’t that obvious to spot. It becomes a pixel hunt at times to see what you can interact with. But adventure gaming veterans would have no problems with it. If anything, the ending comes a bit too quickly and it’s over almost too soon. And before I forget, the music is incredibly good. Outside Cygnus Construction and inside the lobby of were two noteworthy ones but overall another reason to listen in. Overall, 3.5/5 but felt 4 stars would be better than 3.

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