The Whispered World: Special Edition

At one point in the game the character mutters in his lispy irritating voice: "Do I really want to live in a world where I am rewarded for such actions" and it is an excellent summary of how this game works. Logic is nearly non-existant, too many of the solutions are just arbitrary nonsense. Be prepared to re-visit locations and get trapped in repetitious dialogue and doing the same things over and over hoping for a clue or for some unique combination that will work. Without a walk through be prepared to waste a ton of time hoping to get lucky. I have played many click and point adventures and while all of them have elements of getting lucky never have I seen so many absurd solutions in a single game. Furthermore I just got stuck at a glitch in chapter 3 where I simply cannot advance DESPITE looking at the walk through. It is broken and I wash my hands of this experience. The graphics do not make up for terrible story, terrible gameplay, terrible voice acting.

I actually enjoyed TWW. Didn't find Sadwick particularly annoying, in fact some of his remarks amused me a great deal. Definitely got some MI 2 vibes from a few scenes which laid the seed for the end reveal. Beautiful graphics and some great puzzles (love the one with spot in the castle, very clever use of that ability) but also a few really illogical ones. However, my only true gripe with this game lays in the false choice at the end of the game. Why give an option then tell the player "nope, you can't do that even though we gave you a choice". It's frustrating. I would have liked that choice to actually have been a real one. It would result in a pretty depressing ending, but I like the option of a good or bad ending for a game and it wouldn't have taken much effort. I was disappointed when I saved prior to my "choice" and picked the "bad" option, only to learn my decision meant nothing anyway.

It's probably one of the best modern adventures, with it's beautiful soundtrack, hand drawn environments and characters, the parallax layering is just super cool. The characters are beautifully designed and worked out, the world is filled with dialog and life. It's a great game right to the end, which connects neatly with the beginning. While our protagonist is a negative sad sack the game actually manages to be funny, and make me grin. :) If you can play it in german you should do that, i based this on the german laguage version which generally is the best in this case. It's a must play!

There's a lot to love about The Whispered World - an unusually weighty story, a pleasant soundtrack, and lots of hand-drawn art. But even point-and-click aficionados will be frustrated by the opaque puzzle design. There's rarely any logical process by which you can arrive at solutions, and nor is the process of experimentation enjoyable. This special edition also leaves a lot to be desired. Developer commentary is a nice feature, but it's all in German, and the English subtitles for it are so poorly translated and riddled with spelling errors as to be gibberish. The in-game English audio also has issues, with dialogue lines poorly spaced and frequently triggering before the previous line is complete. As a final frustration, the title screen includes prominent ads for other Daedalic games. This wasn't a polished game to begin with, and this edition adds no extra shine. For collectors and masochists only.

I believe it's the spacebar that reveals all objects on the screen you can pick up. Shaking. My. Head. At that complaint.