Enigmatis 3: The Shadow of Karkhala

The Enigmatis series of games has better than average puzzles than the standard hidden object game because they are typically related to the action at hand, and there is some suspense as you are trying to, e.g., save your own life by solving a puzzle. The game made good use of its budget by keeping its use of character models limited and focusing on its 2D art, which is very good. The background music has improved, I noticed. There are some nice "Eastern"-themed tracks for the later sections of the game. There are some things that aren't necessarily cons, but they can get old. This game has you rescuing a helpless little girl, which, if I remember correctly, happens in both the other games. (It is definitely a recurring theme in hidden object games.) This particular one is being trained in a *spoiler spoiler* as a *spoiler*, so it is really strange that she spends her time drawing with crayons in a stereotypical "cute" way. Also, the supernatural elements are introduced in a ridiculously casual way. The characters never act surprised or disturbed by seeing any new phenomenon, and the voice actors recite fantastic stories matter-of-factly. Let me also note that he character models and animation are just "off" enough to be creepy. What I found really annoying was the poor optimization of the game. The load times were up to 10 seconds by the end of the game, and that was between scenes that were as short as 2 seconds long. This killed my immersion entirely. During the bonus chapter, the game started lagging really badly as well. Steam commenters report that this can be fixed by restarting the program. I didn't know that while I was playing, but it may help you. (I searched to make sure this wasn't a problem unique to my computer or the GOG version. It is not.) I'm going to give the game three stars for its attempts at involving puzzles, but leaving in memory leaks or whatever is going on with the optimization was a really poor choice.