The Book of Unwritten Tales 2

The second tome of the Book of Unwritten Tales has been revealed. And it is marvellous. It kept me busy for more than 26 hours which makes it nearly as long as The Longest Journey. Speaking of which, BoUT2, along with its predecessors, is simple the best adventure game since The Longest Journey (i. e. since 15 years) and almost reaches the quality of LucasArts' classics. The Graphics are nice with backgrounds using projections mapping (a technique that was once proposed by a fan for the Monkey Island 2 remake in a YouTube video), the soundtrack is played by the City of Prague Symphonic Orchestra, and the voice actors are doing a great job. There are actually three editions of the game: the Standard Version, th Almanac Edition, and the Kickstarter Backer Edition. The latter one is not available for sale, since it is limited to people who pledged 180 $ at Kickstarter. The Almanac Edition contains the game plus some additional features: a soundtrack CD, a making-of DVD, a 100-pages book with concept art, a double-sided A3 poster, an extended manual and an ingame-feature to change the Critter's fur colour. If you like to have the additional features, I strongly recommend you to buy the boxed version of the Almanac Edition. All boxed versions are DRM-free.

The game is a decent entry in the series but compared to the first one is noticeably less inventive. There are still loads of references to other games, witty dialogue, interesting story, and good humour. A fat "but" is - it's all stretched too thin. Having many locations is good but it means a lot of pointless travel to find a missed clue, and more importantly - less depth. Many items mean you have to carry loads of seamingly useless stuff and often resort to trying random combinations in your inventory. Many playable characters... Well, same thing here, though Wilbur becomes the main character the other ones are too shallow, and only one or two puzzles need more than one character to solve them. Many puzzles unfortunately mean that most of them need trial and error to solve - you just have to travel over a location to find out that NPCs get a new line of dialog after you try something, and suddenly there is another way to combine things after your previous attempt failed. I grew tired of this process twice or thrice and resorted to looking up a walkthrough rather then mechanically check locations and NPC for new options. Also you'll need to walk to a precise point on screen to get a view of a few items you need - sometimes they are covered by other objects or placed outside the visible area. Making large and diverse world also means less testing - at one point you find Critter in two places at the same time, nothing game-breaking but disappointing a bit. Also Linux version contain a few obvious bugs - e.g., it won't let you to pick up a secondary clue (not hangs completely, you can still exit and reload but you lose some progress if you are not prepared, and one achievement cannot be unlocked because of this bug). Personally I didn't much like the ending - it points to a possible sequel but I see it a dead-end rather than intended cliffhanger. Still the game is very decent and well-made, a good buy - and a must for those who like the series.

This is one of those titles whose sheer charm and heart can easily make you overlook its flaws. And does it ever have flaws, from the persistent audio glitches accompanying you throughout the game (text unaccompanied by sound, missing lines and the odd weird echo effect), to the awkward way the characters position themselves before some objects to interact with them, or the fact that a couple image files for inventory items appear to be missing. I also had the game go into an unending loop due to a character's animation once, and there's an annoying bug that can easily make you lose a bunch of hours while you try to solve a puzzle that has become insoluble due to simple mixing and matching of items in your inventory. So how does a game with such amateurish flaws still get four stars? Well, being one of the prettiest point & click adventures around certainly helps, as does its great score and humor, which isn't of the laugh-out-loud variety, but is certainly funny, even if it does come out somewhat forced at times. It is not a difficult game by any means, but still pretty long and easily a good 20 hours worth of playing time or so. Its strong suit is its charm, likable characters and solid fantasy narrative, and you can't help but appreciate the effort of people who clearly love the genre, but acknowledge that the point & click adventure game cannot possibly thrive in today's market without some tweaks and changes. So good on KINGart games and congratulations on a job well done. Looking forward to the third chapter.

the game felt about twice as long as a normal full length point and click adventure so that gives it five stars for me. if a point and click game that lasts a while a gets you your money's worth is what you're after, than this game is for you. the length of the game definitely justified the price for me seeing as it's a new release as well.