The Book of Unwritten Tales

It started off quite well. Nice graphics and environments. However, from Chapter 2 onwards, it just devolves into tedious fetch quests. In order to get one thing, you have to go through several hoops just to get one thing, which then leads to having to go through more hoops to get other things. The story isn't really moving forward. On the positive side though, the humor was excellent, and all those homages to other games and movies. But overall, not a very good adventure game

Excellent graphics, vivid characterizations and voice work, and some genuinely funny satire can't overcome the glacial pacing and standard plot lines. This is a video game in the same way that cotton candy is food. Maybe I made a mistake playing it directly after To the Moon which does everything wrong that the Book of Unwritten Tales gets right and yet To the Moon is the better game because it made me /care/. I really wanted to like The Book of Unwritten Tales. It's creative, fun, and even funny but winds up being the type of girl you'd love to hang out with but never get serious. The original Broken Sword has better drama and something like To the Moon or The Longest Journey has more meaning. Only get The Book of Unwritten Tales to play when you want to zone out and be brain dead.

The puzzles are mostly logical (though I wish they could be solved in more than one way) and the story seems interesting. The reason for the low rating is actually the humor. I do like some Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, World of Warcraft, etc. jokes, but the sheer number of these crammed in is exhausting rather than clever. And there was no internal humor: in four hours' play, I did not notice one joke that didn't either parody an outside source or break the fourth wall. I'm not usually a quitter, but four hours was all I could take before frustration too badly outweighed fun.

The classic coming together of adventurers against their will for the purpose of saving the world, and it's really cute - full of allusions to role-playing games and their players, whether it's about the addiction factor, or the methods of getting money out of the players' pockets, or the rules that can only be explained in several hours. There are also nice allusions to other franchises, and in general the story shouldn't be taken too seriously. Situations and dialogues are just cute and straightforward, partly quite funny if you get into the tone, and they say plainly: everything will be fine. The game would have deserved five out of five stars if it didn't also have a few really annoying moments that you especially don't love in a P&C game. There is the slowness in the movements, when you have to go various ways several times, which can't be avoided despite the "travel map"; also the delay when you change the character, which really shouldn't have been necessary, and last but not least: Two puzzles that steal your last nerve, one of them a reaction game that is quite inappropriate in the given setting. You'll have to repeat both puzzles several times, enduring the same dialog or delays each time, and when you've done that often enough, it unfortunately sinks the motivation tremendously. So there are "only" four stars, because apart from the aforementioned evils I really had fun with it.

The game and the story are very beautiful. The characters are well defined and the story evolves well. Even the puzzles are not bad, but ... the gameplay is done wrong. The puzzles in the beginning, are very funny, but gradually the game progresses are always the same. So slowly the game becomes more and more boring. Towards the end the only thing to do is talk to everyone and try all possible combinations. Maybe for once I would have preferred a shorter game. If the gameplay was slightly more fun toward the end I would have given 5 stars. In any case it is a game with a humor artfully done, one of the best. I recommend ... 4 stars do not mean "bad game", meaning "great game but not a masterpiece." So buy it if you want to play a good puzzle game. italiano Il gioco e la storia sono molto belli. I personaggi sono ben caratterizzati e la storia si evolve bene. Anche gli indovinelli non sono male, però... il gameplay è fatto male. I puzzle all'inizio, sono molto divertenti, ma pian piano che il gioco avanza sono sempre uguali. Così pian piano il gioco diventa sempre più noioso. Verso la fine l'unica cosa da fare è parlare con tutti e provare tutte le combinazioni possibili. Forse per una volta avrei preferito un gioco più corto. Se il gameplay fosse stato leggermente più divertente verso la fine avrei dato il 5 stelle. In ogni caso è un gioco con un umorismo fatto ad arte, uno dei migliori. Ve lo consiglio... 4 stelle non significano "brutto gioco", significano "ottimo gioco ma non capolavoro". Quindi se volete giocare un ottimo puzzle game compratelo ad occhi chiusi, ne vale la pena.