The Whispered World: Special Edition

The title says it all, really. The game is a work of art in itself, and the world is unique and by the end of it I was genuinely glad to have played through the story. Like most reviewers have mentioned, they needed a walkthrough, I wasn't much different. The game's puzzles can be illogical. Still, while it has a slight child-like feeling it was worth playing and a lot of work was put into it by Daedalic.

To call The Whispered World a beautiful game would be an understatement. It's one of the most visually impressive games I've played, and that's all thanks to the wonderful artists who have crafted such a whimsical and charming world to point and click your way through. I was overjoyed to discover this game before it was released. I anticipated it's release and scooped it up on Steam the day it came out at full retail price. I am a huge adventure game fan, in particular the hand-drawn ones like The Curse of Monkey Island, and King's Quest VII. On top of that the developer, Daedalic, is a German company and in my opinion Europeans have a much more colorful and whimsical take on fantasy than Americans do. The story isn't that memorable and the ending left a fowl taste in my mouth, but what's important here is the pointing, clicking, dialogue, and adventuring. The Whispered World both succeeds and fails here. The dialogue is interesting and rarely long-winded so your moving at a decent pace, but the voice acting is grating at times. The Protagonist is annoying and nasaly, and the voice actors are used repeatedly for many different characters, so there's rarely a sense that your constantly meeting new faces because, for the most part, they sound similar. But the voice-work is passable and doesn't drag the game down by any means. The puzzles are where you're going to love or hate this game. Some are brilliant and interesting, but most are so illogical that they'll have you spending too much time in one spot. I was able to complete the entire game without a walkthrough, but the temptation was unbareable at times and the game is so gorgeous that the inability to see the next screen or area because of an illogical puzzle is maddening at times. I'm very forgiving of illogical puzzles because I'm such a sucker for artwork and point and click games in general, but for some, these will create problems. But that aside, The Whispered World is oozing with charm, and it's a breath of fresh air for the stagnant adventure game genre. If you love games like Lucasarts' or Sierra's old adventures, you'll more than likely forgive this one for it's missteps. But as a word of caution, it can be frustrating at times. As a final word, the ending is absolutely terrible, and if you're in it for a good story, beware. But if you're just looking for a good harking back to the days of old, it's worth every penny.

TWW does so many things right that it could have been a gem in my collection of classic 2D point&click adventures: It features beautiful 2D art, some of the most interesting characters alongside funny dialogues and a mature story with a touching ending. As Sadwick is ventures out into the world accompanied by his only friend Spot, a little caterpillar, the player will not only learn more about the nightmares, but will also be confronted with very general themes about the transient nature of life, and continuity and change in the real world. So, where does it fall short? First of all, despite of having a few great puzzles, which involves Spot's unique capability to shape-shift into several useful forms, the average level of puzzles is mediocre at best: some of the puzzles are highly illogical, others fall short because of too little or even misleading hints of what to do next, so you should be prepared to be stuck and rely on try&error at several points during the course of your adventure -- even while the numbers of areas is quite limited in each of the four chapters. Another downside is the actual build-up of the plot. While the idea behind the plot is great, it is pretty much set in the first chapter and resolved in the last one -- there is almost nothing relevant happening in chapters 2 and 3. Adding to these conceptual problems, there are some flaws on the production side: The english voice-acting is downright horrible up to Sadwick's voice beeing unbearable -- the original (german) voice-acting is on a professional level though. The video cutscenes have been produced by a cheap 3rd party company and do not reach the quality of the rest of the game. Some minor technical issues such as no proper wide-screen support exist, but no game-breaking ones. Overall, TWW is still a good adventure and good entertainment for adventure enthusiasts or fans of other Daedalic adventures. If I had to recommend a modern adventure game, the Deponia series is a much better choice.

I was really excited when playing this game. Excellent hand-painted point and click adventure. If you love games like Broken Sword (1+2) or Curse of the Monkey Island and if you don´t quit 1st-time you are stuck with some puzzle, you will probably love also this. Touching ending, great storyline, many puzzles (some of them a little harder and less logical, but you are not in real world in this game, so don´t expect classic solutions all the time), classic good feeling after solution of some hard puzzle, this game has everything what good old point-and-click adventure should have. This was really worth my money.

Hey daedalic, put back the French voices & subtitles. It's a pain for the youngsters who aren't fluent with English. Also, I don't like the ending :-)