Short but very well crafted. Its a bit as if studio ghibli made a horror movie. Up there with Inside as a top story/atmosphere driven platforming game.
Mostly fun to play. It has nice music, good graphics and lots of exploration. Problem is that there is little reason to explore anything. Most secrets are more or less useless things you can't do anything with. Just pictures to look at with a few lines of text. Supposedly to add some depth to the world but it didn't really add much. Writing is at times of very low quality. They should have put some more focus into that. All characters feel empty and forgettable. While they are well designed none of them feels like a full blown character. They are just graphics with a few lines of dialogue. Some of them even ruin the game play. Especially that comic relief bard guy that loves to tell bad jokes. Locations are empty and dull. There are secrets hidden everywhere but in their frenzy to add as many secrets as possible they seem to have forgotten about adding non secret stuff. I loved it in Zelda Twilight Princess for example, how in that dark and largely dead world there were some bubbles here and there with interesting characters and fun things to do. None of that here. Just looking for useless secret items. Here, there are few such places and even the one's you'll find feel hollow. It's a shame. The game could have been great but lack of work on characters, story, environments, dialogue etc makes it a 3/5. I think if I'd ever be asked for an example of a poorly designed tutorial stage, I'd mention the one in Death's Door.
+ Nice music and design. Very original. A game that I really wanted to like. - Annoying combat where the attacks often seem to miss due some bug. Attacks go straight through the enemies. Drawing the symbols can be equally frustrating. - Buggy at other times too. Sometimes I bounced to the other end of the dungeon when walking into things at certain angles. - Extremely difficult. This is a game you need to read about in advance and while going. I quit when eventually some brother attacked me and i did not, according to some walkthrough, have enough resources and symbols to defeat him. If I had done this instead of that etc etc he wouldn't have attacked me. More or less forces you to either go with a guide or frequently go back to earlier saves. Going back to earlier saves was recommended by the walkthrough. "Save before entering any new area, in case you get hit and lose resources". Not difficult as in challenging but as in tedious and unfair. Unless you grind and grind and try again and again you won't succeed. - Talking about grinding, the game builds almost entirely on grinding. Resource management. Constantly harvesting and farming color. The world is big and slow to travel. Dungeons are annoying to constantly revisit. You'll have to revisit them constantly as color is randomly generated in areas every cycle of the game. Tedious. - Lots of information is not shared in game. Colors can be used to boost various hidden stats, unknown to most who won't read about strategies online. Certain mixes and uses are more or less necessary in order to finish the game, according to what I've read. Not only is much of this very difficult to figure out by yourself, it's also micro managing intense and frustrating. Needlessly much to have to consider. It does not add much unless you are a big fan and want to try various strategies. - A turd if I ever saw one. Too bad. I really liked it the first hour or so but flaws, bugs, difficulty and anti user friendliness ruined it.
It's too bad! I really enjoyed most of the game to be honest. The story is kind of refreshing, I liked the characters and environments. Most puzzles are good. There's also some interesting and very unusual mechanics, messing around with long term and short term memories which you can bring up during conversations. Bad parts though. What happened? Puzzles flipped out a bit I think. At some point you're even told by the character you solved the puzzle with that the solution was stupid. He says something like "I thought that only worked in movies" when you unlock a locked door with your credit card. I didn't really mind the timed puzzles or the more difficult logic puzzles. There at least you know there's a puzzle and you know that you have to solve it. Here, you don't know what is a puzzle, where it is or anything at all. It's just a mess. Combine everything with everything. Talk to everyone about everything. Doesn't make it better that you have 4 characters to control. The number of stupid things to do is almost infinite. It gets even worse when you actually try the right thing but it doesn't work, because sometimes you have to right click on the thing you want to interact with. If you left click, you're just told "Nah, I don't want to do that". It's just stupid and frustrating. I would recommend using a guide if you get stuck. I'd also really recommend playing the game. It's a bit flawed. It could have been made much better with just a handful of small changes. Still, I want to give it a 4/5. The 3 is very strong. Some parts are 5/5.
Great story telling. I really enjoyed reading log books and entries, getting to know more about the crew and what happened on the ship. The world building is great. Some details about the world are mentioned here and there. Rarely going in depth but adding to the atmosphere and often just being plain interesting. Very bleak both graphically and otherwise. It's not a cheerful game. Parts are disturbing. The puzzles aren't very hard. What makes them difficult is how sometimes you will not see an item you should pick up. Had the developers made them stand out a bit more that would have been fine but now they sometimes kind of meld with the background. That's the main issue with the game. Another issue is that it's not very entertaining as in fun. That's not a big deal though. The environments and story makes up for it. Overall it's well worth a play through if you enjoy story driven games. Be prepared for a nasty scene or two though.
Definitely one of their better games. I think I've played all of them besides from the Blackwell series and Resonance and would give this the third or second place, with Gemini Rue as the #1. The game is varied gameplay wise and has an interesting world with lots of well designed locations and environments. The world and the story are imaginative, original and creative without going over the top. Things stays reasonable, coherent and relevant, while at the same time fresh and new even though I've read, watched and played a decent amount of sci-fi. Puzzles are in general well designed without any of the give random item to random character puzzles often encountered in point and click games. Usually they are kind of connected to the world and plot, not making them feel out of place but rather part of the storytelling and world building. Characters great as well. Nothing too bad to say about it. One of the main characters is a wee bit annoying a times. Close to giving it a 5/5 but something is missing. Not sure what. I'd pick it up discounted or not.
Amazing game that should be played without knowing too much about the story.
I played these some ten years or so ago now and they still pop up in my mind now and then! I'd say the first two parts are some of the best Frictional Games have made. They focus heavily on the narrative and atmosphere. They aren't really horror games per se, they are more like exploration and puzzle games with lots of dialogue, notes etc and scary sections here and there. As I remember it, they kind of gave up on making games like this as they were about to go bankrupt. Luckily enough they found massive success with Amnesia and have since then gone back to their old ways. If you preferred Soma to Amnesia, you should give these a try.
As a game it's very disappointing. Much of the time boring and annoying. The optional things, like running around and talking to other characters etc is great but progressing in the game is often a hassle. I tried my best to start liking it but couldn't. Too many puzzles that makes no sense at all. Try every item on every character kind of puzzles. Then eventually I decided to start using a guide. I didn't want to keep playing but I wanted to know the end of the story, hear more of the dialogue etc. Whenever I didn't progress as fast as I felt like, I'd just check a guide. It's not like solving the puzzles is any rewarding anyway. Hang a wet cloth on some hanger, bottle some dirty water and give it to some random guy, god knows. Some of the worst puzzles I've encountered. I prefer difficult puzzles to just randomly trying everything everywhere. It's a shame! The game could have been great. I'd recommend it but don't waste too much of your time. Better played with a guide ready.
