Posted on: July 16, 2021
lacktheknack
Verified ownerGames: 659 Reviews: 14
A volatile mix of great and horrendous
On the one hand, this game has a lot of the things that made Schizm great. The environments look gorgeous for their time. There's a strange underlying intrigue. And when the puzzles are good, they're fantastic. However, it is often quite obtuse and there's some item hunting necessary. The environments aren't huge, so the pixel hunting isn't too bad, but it's there. And some of the puzzles are pretty poor and badly telegraphed (the Three Buttons puzzle springs to mind). And most importantly, hoo buddy, who on EARTH greenlit that ending? Plotwise, the game is fine. It starts kind of abruptly, but does a good job of keeping you invested and trying to move forward, even as the plot subtly changes up on you. Graphically, the game is pretty dang good - looks good (albeit a bit unnervingly smooth nowadays), has great world design, and the style changes are drastic enough to yank your attention. The game is also really atmospheric, and in an actually good way - every location is just removed from reality enough to stay completely foreign and somewhat unnerving. And lastly, the puzzles - the logic puzzles were a ton of fun and really satisfying. Some complained that the final puzzles at the end were too annoying and difficult, but I really enjoyed them - Reverse Towers of Hanoi is a fun concept, and I enjoyed sketching out the Eight Dot puzzles on a piece of paper and solving by hand. It awoke a lot of nostalgia. Unfortunately, the environmental puzzles were pretty bad across the board. Not enough clues given, illegible symbols, forced wandering, easy-to-miss information that you can get an hour past before having to go back and find it - yeah, I used a walkthrough, and didn't feel bad about it. But the ending, oh the ending... who greenlit that? It literally is designed to make the game worthless and to kill replay value. The good stuff in Reah is great, but man, did it turn sour.
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