Posted on: December 15, 2023
SlavaKosmina
Verified ownerGames: 319 Reviews: 50
Good game, Bad design
A part of me wants to give ToN 5 stars, the other part – 0 stars. THE GOOD: interesting story, horror and humor (made me LMAO a few times), unique characters, puzzles, adventure, crafting, RPG elements, adult content, great pixel art, environments, cinematics and animations and NO crashes. THE BAD: ToN is much LESS than the sum of its good parts. 1. The story is killed by EXCESSIVELY long SCRIPTED conversations you must read or you will miss the story. There is a SKIP button, but if you use it, you miss the (good) story. The adult scenes consist of short segments. Each segment contains A LOT OF TEXT. It is mostly primitive text, and you must click SKIP to move to the next segment. Many scenes have up to 50 sentences. I wonder if the devs ever had sex in real life. NO ONE EVER talks THAT much, not even in porn movies! It starts as amusing and then progressively deteriorates to intolerable. 2. You are CONSTANTLY interrupted by scripted events. So you forget what you intended to do and must rely on the in-game hint system or google. 3. Most puzzles are impossible, unless you google them. 4. Crafting is backwards. You have a Chest for recipes, BUT YOU CANNOT STORE recipes you find in it! A recipe appears in the Chest only AFTER you have used it. The scrolls remain on the ground but you cannot pick them up and store them in the Chest for quick reference later. 5. Inventory system is BAD. Items are constantly shuffled and it is hard to find what you need. 6. Fishing mini-game is atrocious AND, just like with all other elements, completing the game depends on it. You cannot solve the last puzzle without making the Bait Shop going broke. VERDICT: Great game killed by BAD design. If the devs cut the text by 70 percent, it would STILL be too much (especially in sex scenes). It took me 104 hours to complete ToN (and I googled half the puzzles). I was clicking SKIP so much and so frantically that it killed my enjoyment and now my wrist HURTS.
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