And I swore to myself I would not let myself get dragged into another Myst-like maze runner, no matter how beautiful. Life is too short.
This is an immersive adventure game, with heavy moral choices. The environments are intense, and the Non Player Characters will curse you out if you wrong them. Puzzles are straight forward, and there are no timed sequences or jumping problems. At first glance I thought it was a fumbling simulator, but once I got past my instincts to try to pick up everything and put it into my nonexistent inventory, I made progress. Just realize you can pull open drawers and examine objects. The ending left me drained.
The 11th mission is broken,and can't be completed or bypassed. Looks like a Baldur's Gate wannabe, with pleasant 2.5D background art. Character skills can be reassigned at any time, so you can customize and try all trees and equipment, depending on what the map needs. Characters occasionally get stuck in the map. Little birdies look cute.
An adventure game should let you take your sweet time each move. Adventure games are a refuge from twitch fests. Yet this game forces you to run and hide with no chance to save in Chapter 3. I hate that. Otherwise, it has been okay till now. I'll give it a rest until I can get one of my kids to play thru the twitch part for me.
I was worried when I started the game that it was for the kiddies, when I found myself talking to a pirate crab. I left it for a while to play another RPG game series that was more challenging. Problem was, it wasn't fun. Driftmoon is fun. It doesn't beat you up. It just invites you along with nice music and art, and an engaging story. It's got all the RPG conveniences we're used to - mini map with 2 levels, instant travel thru the map, a quest log, adequate backpack room, cute characters, cute dialogs, cute items (I was using a magic frying pan for a while). Game length was just right - not so long that you're making a career of it. I'm recommending it to my kids.
