Overall most helpful review

Posted on: February 18, 2017

PushingUpRoses

Games: 2 Reviews: 2

A Zany, Unique Gem from Sierra

I discovered this game on my 1997 edition of the King's Quest collection; both The Dagger of Amon Ra and it's predecessor, The Colonel's Bequest, were included. They are both solid murder mystery adventure games with some "Sierra like" snags. Even though The Dagger of Amon Ra is now one of my favorite video games, I am giving it a solid 4/5 stars to account for some of its shortcomings that may not sit well with certain players. First of all, if you plan on playing this walkthrough-free; be sure to take some notes or at least be on your observation game. This title relies heavily on dialogue, both instigating it and listening to it. This can be tedious to some considering the amount of discussion that is necessary to have to beat the game, but others will find it enjoyable due to having a motley crew of characters. What drives this game is its silly tone and cast of zany personalities. Imagine "And Then There Were None" meets "Murder by Death." Really beautiful art and animation and some questionable voice acting that leans on the charming side. The puzzles can get rather obtuse, and concluding the game, or solving the mystery, is a little too difficult in my opinion, but overall this game is a really fun experience that has a lot of captivating elements. It is not the most cohesive adventure game, but it remains a joy to play. Beautiful soundtrack, interesting mechanics, and funny dialogue trees. Definitely a unique title within Sierra's catalog. My video retrospective for further interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DukV02gDq8

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Posted on: February 21, 2017

honoredeprozac

Games: 137 Reviews: 3

A slightly different Sierra classic

This one has a lot of 'find an object, find where to use it' as it's a classical adventure game. However, it's also a game where it's critic to be in the right place at the right time to listen to other characters' conversations, and to spy on them. Apart from a fairly standard prelude and coda, most of the game takes place in a handful of museum rooms you'll visit again and again. The feel and play, at least among adventure purists, is very different to a King's Quest, Space Quest, etc. You (the player, not the character... well, the character too, but I hope you know what I mean) must make some deductive work, as you'll be tested at the end, and from your testimony the culprits will be apprehended or not. That's the only thing I don't quite like about Dagger - you can solve it to perfection and still feel some pieces of information just weren't there, you just had to make up some parts of the solution. This is a fault I find in most games of this kind. But there are a whole lot of great things about this game - the hand-painted graphics, the very dark humor, the tongue-in-cheek characters, the wonderful music... Voice acting is attrotious but in an endearing way. If you like period mysteries such as Murder on the Orient Express, there's a good chance you'll enjoy Dagger of Amon Ra. Just bear in mind the game was made about 25 years ago.

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Posted on: March 4, 2018

CharlieLima79

Verified owner

Games: 638 Reviews: 149

A good, but still flaws Laura Bow game

In my review of 'The Colonel's Bequest', I noted that it was a good game, but with flaws in its execution. Naturally, I was hoping that its sequel, 'The Dagger of Amon Ra', would improve on -- if not keep -- what worked in the first Laura Bow game. Visually, 'Dagger' is a beautifully drawn and animated game. The closeups of the characters, especially the corpses, were detailed, with the latter also chilling and shocking. The dialogues and object descriptions were also well-written, with the occasional dark, witty humour to them. Most dialogues were well performed, too, though I did find the voice acting for the Steve Dorian (the stevedore!) distracting and unfitting. Unfortunately, while the spoken words were on point, the overall story was lacking. The pacing was uneven, and there were some plot holes that, even after having observed or overheard all character interactions, seemed unexplained. 'Dagger' and 'TCB', both of which were inspired by Agatha Christie's novels, failed to do what the Queen of Crime did brilliantly in her works -- that is account for all characters' whereabouts and actions. While I could forgive this flaw in 'TCB' given the technical limits at the time, I expected 'Dagger' to rectify this. One of the biggest flaws in 'TCB', which somehow many people failed to address, was that Laura Bow technically didn't solve the murders. She observed and took notes. However, she never got to identify the murderer(s) and explained what happened, but was told what happened instead. Thankfully, 'Dagger' allows the player to actually identify the murderer(s), as well as his/her/their motivation(s) in the final act. Your conclusion, based on what you observed and eavesdropped, would result in different endings to the game. Yet, while finally getting to incriminate the murderer(s) in the game is welcoming, the game's inconsistent account for the characters' whereabouts and actions made this challenging. This was in part due to having the same event-triggering mechanic in 'TCB', which results in the player missing crucial conversations and character interactions if Laura happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. The game gives you this false sense of freedom, but really expects you to play it the way the designers exactly planned out for optimal experience. Plus, all characters, seemed oblivious or unresponsive to the murders around them, and they would just merrily continue with their preprogrammed paths. To overcome this, the designers made some clues very obvious, making deducing who the murderer(s) actually is/are less gratifying. So, while 'Dagger' is not a bad game, it didn't really improve upon 'TCB' either. The user interface for questioning suspects was cumbersome, making this supposedly fun part of the game a drag. 'Dagger' is definitely worth playing, but again best enjoyed using a walkthrough at some point. While it was not what I expected, 'Dagger' still offers a decent mystery adventure game with some thrils and shock.

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Posted on: February 18, 2017

vakthoth

Verified owner

Games: 470 Reviews: 2

Disappointing version of a decent game

The Dagger of Amon Ra was a favorite of mine when I was young. I've replayed it twice recently, once with my old floppy copy, and once after buying a copy on GOG. I bought this because I supected the CD version would have a higher quality version of the soundtrack, of which I'm a huge fan, but no such luck. Instead there's voice acting, and it is awful. Shame, considering how good the acting was in King's Quest VI, released the same year by the same company. Very different budgets, I guess. It is kind of fun to meet each character and marvel at how bad they sound -- almost every character has a different accent -- but it does clash with my nostalgia. Anyway, not a big deal, just put it on text mode and it's the same as the floppy version I love. Except... Bugs! The floppy version had one big bug, sometimes preventing you from interacting with things in the armor room (not an issue in this version as far as I saw), but I experienced several problems in my playthrough of this version. Music often goes missing, the options menu is inexplicably unavailable fairly frequently, and I did experience one freeze-up (not a total crash, but I couldn't interact with anything anymore). My rose-colored glasses for the underlying game have faded as well. The whodunit aspect is honestly not good -- you're quizzed on details/motives at the end, and for some of them you have practically no information at all. There are also several spots in the game where you can miss a clue or an item and be unaware until the final act when it turns out you need that item and you can't go back for it (the game actively discourages you from getting one such item, in a way that makes it seem like you're not supposed to get it). And the conversation system, where you ask characters about any topic written in your notebook, is interesting but ultimately very tedious. Still, despite the flaws, the game oozes character, and should be overall enjoyable for people fond of old point-and-clickers.

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Posted on: January 11, 2018

Bakusson

Games: 369 Reviews: 1

Rough around the edges, but pretty

Dagger of Amon Ra features a nice period setup, but despite promising to be a murder mystery, borderlines on splatter and pulp entertainment in the end. In it's heart it's a rather solid action game, which relies a bit too much on pixel hunting puzzles. Despite being a relatively late Sierra game, it still features situations which can be made unwinnable by failing to do something easily missable earlier on, a sign of bad game design. Progress in the game often relies on invisible triggers, like talking to a character about an unimportant topic somewhere makes a key character appear elsewhere. Progress thus seems tied to "fate", not player's own actions. The graphics, music and general atmosphere are good, but programming and scriptwriting are not up to par, leaving the game with a general feeling of unfinishedness. This leads to illogical situations where Laura can refer to things that have not been said yet, and characters otherwise acting illogically. This is especially problematic because the player is supposed to solve a murder mystery through logic! The sometimes fuzzy design tends to leave players at a loss as to whether their inability to progress in the plot is their own fault, or a result of a bug or weak design. The characters are charming in their own pulp-esque manner, but are rather one-dimensional stereotypes that do not lend depth into the credibility of the plot. In general, many plot elements seem rather haphazardly thrown together. The weak writing makes the mystery near-impossible to solve completely no matter how thoroughly the player combs the setting, which the game nonetheless expects the player to do, and this seriously detracts from the overall experience. A more consistent writing would have produced a true game, now we only got imitation pearls.

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