Dracula Origin

I liked this better than the other Dracula series of games. Much more playable and stylish. Pity they didn't make more.

none of the puzzles in the game were too hard, but in some places a hint would have been nice, like "the lantern doesn´t fit through the bars" on the graveyard instead of a generic message like "i am in need of something". the biggest problem of the game is, that sometimes you need to trigger an event/action, otherwise you can´t progress, even if it makes no sense. for example there is a safe in the game, where you can already enter the right combination, but it doesn´t open, until van helsing has written down the combination in his notebook. i didn´t even know, you could do that and just wrote it down on paper. without a youtube video the game would have ended for me there, because even in a text walkthrough, it wasn´t mentioned, that you have to make van helsing write down the combination for the safe to open.

Story of this game is kind of dumb and related to Bram Stoker's Dracula mostly only in character names and locations, and is more reminiscent of a mystical ancient cult spanning continents feel of countless other adventure games than of a classic vampire tale. Props for a positive portrayal of Christians (it's such a rarity nowadays that it stood out for me). Music is pretty terrible in a way that there is probably only one track per location (don't quote me on this, but I counted three tracks total!) and it's on a constant loop, and it gets old quickly hearing the same looping track over and over again. For me puzzles were the best part of the game and while some of them were challenging, all of them felt logical and solvable with information provided. 3/5

First of all this is Van Helsing's story who is chasing Dracula all over the world and it is an outstanding mix between serious and lighthearted. I laughed when someone tried to poison Van Helsing's camel in order to bar him from reaching another location and noone wanted to rent him another one so first he had to find a cure for the sick camel. There is much more of this kind of subtle bittersweet humour but there are suprisingly also quite dark moments. I really like Van Helsing's voice acting that adds to this ambiguity. He is just very cool in this one. The difficulty of the puzzles is mostly just right and you won't get lost because the game won't let you leave the area before everything needed for the progression is done. The game won't even let you to solve a puzzle that is at the time unsolveable (if you miss something). You can also press spacebar and see all the possible interactions. So no boring backtracking. That is a good thing. It is a really good system, everything goes in a logical order which saves your time and nerves. Just remember to inspect everything and only when Van Helsing writes it down in his notebook it is inspected (if there is an "eye" icon just always click on it).