The Book of Unwritten Tales 2

The story, graphics, everything is great and I really want to see the series continue, but: there are missing and mismatched lines of dialogue between subtitles and sound, there are a few game-breaking bugs that force you to to save like in the times of Sierra classics or lose a lot of progress and there is also an insane amount of pixel hunting with some scenes having a geometry written so bad that you have to reload them a few times for the right pixels to pop up to the foreground (literally, from behind an xml object with interactivity switched off, for example). Also, there are strange decisions like the game of "poker dice" which is honestly just a metter of luck (no, disguise does not work in gog version). I really like the series but this made me relive my childhood with larry and suchlike - all the frustration with a walkthrough right next to me to make sure I am an idiot and it's not a bug, and more often than not finding out, yes, I have wasted an hour and a some bytes on the disk with an unplayable branch which was probably not my fault. What is fascinating is that the creators know about the bugs but never removed them, there are discussion with them online proving it. Some of these repairs are as stupid as changing two lines of xml during the saving process - which you have to do yourself with 99pct surety in order to continue in the game roughly in the middle... If the game was finished and polished, it would get 5 for sticking to the roots; like this, 2/5 is being almost too nice.

There are at least 2 bugs in Chapter 3 that will prevent you from finishing the game. One can be solved by editing a save game, for another there is no solution available. It's unfortunate that such a great game was not fixed by the publisher, and doubly unfortunate that it is being sold despite the bugs.

The game contains multiple game breaking bugs. The developers acknowledged at least one of them and claimed they would fix it, but never actually did so. You may get lucky if you happen to do certain things in exactly the right order, but the only way to fix things is to download a working save file from somewhere. The sad part is that even without the bugs, this game would probably only rate 2 or 3 stars anyway. The first game was easily one of the best adventure games ever made, with fun characters, great humour, and some interesting puzzles. This sequel is missing pretty much everything that made the first game good, and is instead a reminder of why adventure games died out. Puzzles are frequently frustrating or nonsensical, and objects and interactions appear almost at random after some other action has been done. This means there is no chance to figure out what is coming next, and instead you're just constantly backtracking to figure out which room you've already searched 20 times has suddenly had the next thing you need to click appear in it. Others require careful timing or clicking on moving objects with tiny hitboxes, which misses the whole point of this sort of game and often requires checking a walkthrough to be sure you're actually doing the right thing. The worst involve repeating the same action over and over again just to figure out what order to click something in, and again usually involves a walkthrough because otherwise it's just so incredibly boring. Most importantly, the humour just isn't there. The same characters are around, but all they do is constantly refer to how funny they were in the first game. There's no character development, no amusing new interactions, and what few actual jokes there are get drowned in the tedium of the gameplay. The first game was one of the few games to make me genuinely laugh out loud multiple times. This one had me bored to tears even before it collapsed under the weight of its own mediocrity.

The game is fun - I love adventure/quest type games and have introduced my daughter to them as well. Played the first one and enjoyed it quite a bit. If you like point and click with humor and some puzzles, this fits the bill. Waiting on a game breaking bug to be fixed (looks like it is fixed in the steam version) so hoping that the GOG crew will come through :) and I'll bump up my rating to 4+ stars.

A classic point&click adventure game with challenging puzzles that are never unfair or illogical, and a great sense of humor. The screenshots above are all in game; what you see is what you get. The cartoon-ish fantasy graphics work well with the setting, and the animations feel natural and smooth. The story is great, the plot twists are actual twists that you don't see coming, even though they are perfectly within the realm of logic. And the eventual resolution does feel satisfying. And you should watch the credits all to the end for a hidden extra scene. Voice acting is flawless. Bonus points for the arguably best release trailer / music video in a decade. The English translation loses only little of the humor, since jokes were obviously rewritten for the English version. In total: Sometimes the English audio has a pun the German version doesn't have or vice versa, but both are equally funny. There are only minor exceptions, like the made-up language of the alien "critter", which is based on German colloquialisms that simply don't easily translate into any other language. Like when critter uses the words "mampf" or "(schmacko)fatz" for "food". That's how minor it is. There are some pop-culture references that haven't aged well (I'm looking at you, Game of Thrones intro). The references are understated and rarely in your face, but some work better than others. Also, there is one brief scene, where the game deliberately breaks the fourth wall, which isn't everybody's cup of tea. The only thing that is really annoying (because even on my third playthrough I still do it wrong, and always run into the same issue) is the unfixed bug in Chapter 3, where you have to repair the Zombie's generator. If you use an item too soon, you cannot complete the repair and have to reload an earlier safe. Save your game before you try that, and, if you are unsure, look up the correct order of steps to complete. All in all, even with that one hiccup, the game is amazing!