Ceville

I went into this adventure game with high hopes, but came away disappointed. The characters are unique and voice acted very well, but the story is dull and has a horrible ending. However, this game is meant to be a comedy more than tell a great story. While there were a few scenes that made me chuckle, for the most part it only partially succeeds in this area. There are so many other great adventure games out there, it's really hard to recommend this unless you've played them all and are desperate for something else in the genre to pass your time.

I don't think it's going to replace some of the great point-and-click classics, but it's a nice little game in its own right and is worth a look. It features nice 3D graphics (especially for its time), very good voice acting (everything is voiced), quite humorous, and a good story. There are three playable characters: Ceville (the sniveling deposed ruler), Ambrosious the (hilariously) pompous knight, and Lilly (a cute little girl who has great banter with Ceville). Sometimes you play multiple characters simultaneously, and there are points where you have to do one thing as one character, switch to another, and complete a task. Note that there are a few clearly-identifiable timed elements (a clock will tick) where you have to do something within, say, 10 seconds. There are no failures that require a re-load, and you can save any time. You can double-click to skip run animations, and you can hold the spacebar to reveal hidden objects. Most of the puzzles are quite fair and reasonable-- there were a few I had to get help with...which IMO is a good thing. Many of the puzzles are combining inventory items in a (usually) intuitive way...and using dialog trees to open up new paths. Anyway, give it a try next time it's on sale!

I am really enjoying this fun game and about this awful little foulmouthed king and the sweet little girl. I think the characters are fun and visually it's pleasant and voice acting very well done. It's nice for once for me to play an evil selfish person and the little girl reminds me of my nice side. HELPFUL PART: The reason I am writing this review now though I haven't finished the game is to give some info that I would have liked to have found here. When I get to a part of the game where I need to use a spotlight the game crashes and I know I'm not the only one this has happened to. Since I found the solution that someone thankfully posted on Steam I thought I would write it here to help others. Go to the options and turn down the master sound to 0 just for this part of the game and everything runs smoothly. I would never have thought of this myself and thought I would never be able to finish the game which was a shame because I really like it. I hope this will help someone.

I can't speak for the English version, but the original German version is a absolutely great adventure game. OK it all looks a little bit cheap compared for example to Unwritten Tales Triology, the humor is a little bit flat sometimes and the story might be a little bit childish. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun playing Ceville, it definitely is a very humorous game, not too short and I really liked the puzzles, they are most of the time very reasonable, but not too easy. It remind be mostly on Unwritten Tales but also on Monkey Island (maybe because of the ghost pirate :) ). It is no match to those of course but it is a very good point & click adventure. It's a pitty that there is no second part of it. I can definitely recommend playing Ceville, you won't regret it.