This is more like the bad part of normal adventure games where you walk around in big area and wonder what to do next to advance the story (like Grim Fandango). I wish they'd telltale it up even more if they already strayed from the mouse gameplay formula (which they did, with mouse you can just swivel the camera a little, even though you have to touch the edges of the screen to do that, you have to use WASD to walk in front of something and then press joypad button, pardon, number to interact). In their titles thus far you can doubleclick on a door to switch to the next room, here it's just tedious to tank-control your tank, pardon, character to the next door. He can't even run... :( I've seen Z-Fighting (white lines), character warping through floor (reproduceable after you walk from one of the high areas to the next), and general ludicrous long loading with black screen from every area to every area (even when just pressing back on a desk), even moments of endless-loops for 2 seconds with the game not responding and after that 2 seconds you can move character. Sorry to say, this is the first mediocre King Art game :-(

I wish they'd go back to their own style, the Book Of Unwritten Tales style, in which you can just press space and get hotspots, and then look a them and the ones which are relevant to the story stay and the others vanish, and then you can fast-travel or doubleclick on doors/exits, and use the mouse normally to click on things.

Essentially what's wrong with the game mechanics wise (I'm not talking about the sensless content like having a hatchet and not being able cut down bush) is this:

https://imgur.com/K6lpkDJ

See the character? That's you. And then there is a mouse cursor also (not visible because capturing software could not do that). And then there is this white circle. You expect that when you click on the white circle, something happens right? Wrong. In this game, you have to tank control your character nearer to that spot and then the circle changes to (1)label and then you can click that construct and something happens.

I just saw the making of. It consisted of the awesome trailer (played twice even), voice actors, and orchestral music. These three are clearly where they blew all their money on. They better let a few gameplay specialists and programmers on this project :-(

I agree with everything you said. The controls of this game are utterly messed up. The scene with the dead girl in the basement is another perfect example of this. You only have a few seconds to interact with the right hotspot in order to proceed but since the controls are as bad as they get you end up dead yourself over and over again. This is not only because of the horrible controls, it is also just bad game design.

And to call this a point and click adventure like gog does is actually a farce. Unfortunately this game itself has potential. The story is still interesting and if you played any of the predecessors you can't but want to know how the story goes on. If they had just made this as a true point and click adventure, like Raven for example, this would have been another great game from the KingArt.

Sorry KingArt you truly and utterly screwed this one up. And this is coming from a guy who has 2 of your adventures on his personal all time favorite list.

Are the controls any better when played with a gamepad? Sounds like it's optimized for those, instead of traditional P&C Adventure controls.

I'm generally fine with either input form, although it can be annoying when a game could have worked perfectly well using just the mouse, but instead requires movement controls via keyboard ( or a gamepad ).

Not really. The problem at least in my mind is that the character moves a bit too fast and scenes like the one I mentioned above require precise movement. You can sidestep or even restrict the movement on 2 axis, X and Y. But that doesn't help much when the controls aren't precise enough. Also the character can't really walk slowly, you can move a bit slower with a gamepad. This makes it so frustrating to find a hotspot, especially when they are close together and you only have a few seconds. Lots of it is the fault of the changing camera angles, which requires you to adjust your controls to the new angle. It's a really old problem and one that never goes away. But that's entirely because the camera isn't fixed behind the character, like true 3rd person games for example.

This is why the use of a gamepad is strongly recommened. The movement with a keyboard is even more sluggish because the character always runs. The only plus for using a mouse and keyboard is that you can interact with hotspots faster but you still have to move the character to the spot first.

But I guess if you have the patience or will to work through these issues you might actually enjoy the story.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make Unwritten Tales 3

Wow, reviews for the game here on GOG look really negative. I thought maybe it's just a matter of GOG users being old-fashioned and purist, because it requires ( sort of ) a gamepad and doesn't play like a traditional P&C Adventure, but reviews on Steam seem to be mixed as well. ( And I noticed there is no metacritics rating on the Steam page of the game. Do they hide it by default when it is below a certain percentage? )

Anyhow, looks like it's best to wait for patches, and then consider buying a copy once the price drops. Too bad really... I wonder what went wrong? I mean, they're experienced adventure game devs, right? Did the publisher rush them to release an unfinished/ unpolished game?

Yeah the reviews aren't that promising, even GameStar gave a 69 or something. Which is rather low for them. I think the devs or the publisher wanted some sort horror game since they are quite the hype, more or less. But they didn't think it through or gave it enough time. Who knows, but your idea is best for the moment. Patches might change the technical stuff, not sure if they can change much of the story. But for me I am really well pissed because I love all 3 Black Mirror games and thought well if they at least capture the essence it can't be that bad. And it is OKish, it's just the controls that truly messed up the game.