It almost feels like the golden age of Lucas Arts adventures never ended. It's really nicely done and I'm glad to see this style of graphics again since most P&C adventures tend to go for pixel art these days. The voice acting is very good, I like the characters and the story. The puzzles are mostly way too easy for my taste and there are too few of them, especially at the beginning. Certainly not wrong for beginners and especially for children, but I'd rather have more difficult puzzles, perhaps with in-game help, than some of these time-fillers without any challenge. Sometimes you're very limited in terms of hotspots, locations and items, so the solutions become quite obvious since you don't have any other options anyway. All in all, a very good game that is well worth playing.
Great music, ( seemingly) nice campaign and technically everything runs very smoothly. But it's just not well balanced for causal players. After a few missions it just gets frustrating and I never got to see the great mass battles that are promised in the trailers. Don't get me wrong, the easiest difficulty level is perfectly doable, it's just not fun. It has too much micromanagement and gets annoying after a while. In one mission, in addition to the waves, I was repeatedly pestered by scattered enemies and small troops from all sides. And before I even noticed them, parts of my infrastructure were already destroyed, so the progression almost came to a halt. It's like one of those annoying, extremely persistent flies that just won't leave you alone. Even the easier maps in endless mode are no fun for me, as there is simply no variety in terms of troops, fortifications, traps, etc. There are fewer options than in good old Stronghold, for example, and it also looks less pretty, which is why building for the sake of building doesn't appeal to me either. The game is probably more for speed runners who can raise a base within minutes and reach the highest technology level in an instant. If you're looking for a challenging but relaxing experience like Stronghold, you've come to the wrong place.
This is one of the best Point & Click Adventures I've played in years and I played them all! Well not really, but I love this kind of game and I have no idea how I could miss this for so long. It has an engaging story with an intriguing mystery, tightly written dialogue, a good portion of non-linearity and logical puzzles, which are not too easy. Just a very balanced game all around. There are multiple solutions to certain problems and different scenarios, but you're also allowed to make mistakes. Time is an essential ressource here, but the game gives you enough wiggle room and it never felt punishing. It's more an element of suspense, which let's you feel the urgency of the situation and not a frustrating trap like in some other games. You don't have to play the predecessors, at least I haven't (yet). I will definitly check out the rest of the series and keep an eye on the developers.
This game is really something special. I'm not really into Lovecraft and never read any of his works, but I've tried a fair share of game and movie adaptations, like In the Mouth of Madness or the recent Sherlock Holmes game by Frogware. While The Sinking City, for example, did not manage to spark my interest in the original works, Dreams of the Witch House with its distinct historical background made me curious. Also as a detective game it's just vastly superior, you really have to be attentive and dig through the available ingame books and files to figure stuff out. The game doesn't have that many classical Point and Click Adventures puzzles. It's more like one big puzzle in itself with a variety of ways to approach it and many different outcomes. This non-linearity is one of the games greatest assets, but it also comes with a price. I'm not really a fan of surivial mechanics in general, let alone in a classic adventure game. Some of your regular tasks can become tedious over time and sometimes I had the feeling to not making any progress at all. Fixing your light bulb again and again, getting to town to buy the same items week for week, borrowing and returning books... there a quite a few chores you have to get through time and time again. I started over in easy mode after a while, which will give you more breathing room to try out things and make mistakes. It was still a great ride, just don't expect anyone to tell you what to do. After being a little put off by the rpg mechanics at some point, I just rolled with it and it was absolutly worth it. MILD SPOILERS: My Walter started as a straight A student, who fell further and further into the maelstrom of the occult and almost went mad in the process, until things took a turn in the end and he finally gets the upper hand. Even if it took its toll. There are a lot of variations on how the story can turn out, it was nice to get one of the better ends at first try. Not sure if I could stomach another go, though.
This game is really bad at being a (kind of) survival horror game, just without the horror. The only horrific thing is the inclusion of combat. The story is mostly told with audiologs which are received after beating a puzzle section. So the story is basically told in exposition dumbs. I didn't like anything this game has to offer. The puzzles are okay, I guess, but it's not enough to keep me going.
I think whether you will enjoy this game depends mainly on whether you like the story or not. The gameplay is unlikely to convince anyone, as the battles quickly become repetitive and the role-playing system doesn't have that much impact on the narrative. This game is more about your dialog choices. It's not like Disco Elysium, where the dialog options are largely dependent on character stats, and so far only pride seems to play a major role in that regard. Maybe there will be more later on, but I gave up halfway through the story. It just didn't grab me, even though I find the setting very appealing. The art design and music are great, but here are a few points why I'll probably never finish the game: - Poor performance, frequent stutters, texture pop ins - If you start a conversation while roaming the streets, it will probably lead to a brawl (possibly historically accurate, but ridiculous at some point) - Hints are often too vague, you don't miss that much if you don't read them - Conclusions are drawn automatically, no player agency here - when you're not fighting or talking, you're mainly running around snapping your fingers to find clues; the constant right-clicking to examine a small area is a main gameplay element and quickly becomes tedious - the English dubbing was realized with both polish and native speakers, which is why the result is very uneven; Polish dub is much better and spares you the constant F-bombs, which for me don't fit the setting (I'm not against swearing, but at times it felt like I was on the Steam forums) I think the game could have been a lot better if they had taken a little inspiration from Frogware's Sherlock Holmes games. If you had to come to (possibly wrong) conclusions on your own, the story would be much more engaging for me. It also takes far too long to get going. Only from chapter 2 there is something like a common thread, while the events from the prologue don't seem to be too relevant later on.
This looks like a great game, but it seems to be broken on certain configurations since the latest patch. I couldn't finish the first level due to constant crashing.
I refunded the game, since I was getting stutters every 10 seconds while traveling the world map and crashes with framerates higher than 60fps. Maybe its a bit harsch, but at the time the game was out for more than a month and there hasn't been any updates to resolve this issue. I guess I'm just tired of the lackluster pc releases this year. There some smaller problems like the really bad pathfinding, where your group constantly gets stuck on the terrain, especially when traveling on top of a mountain. It seems like the ai always moves in a straight line, ignoring all obstaceles on the way, so you have to constantly adjust. Sometimes I was stuck on something in a forest and couldn't even see what was going on, sometimes on the edge of a lake... in short: traveling the world is a mess at this time. The graphics need some work too. The game suffers from a overall bad image stability at 1080p and the antialiasing method in the settings just blurs everything. The UI and especially the fonts are already quite blurry form the get go, which is highlighted when rendering the game in a higher resolution and downsample to screen resolution. Otherwise this would be an ideal solution, if your not playing on 1440p or UHD Monitor. For the first few hours the combat wasn't really engaging for me, since there wasn't much enemy variety and a lack of tactical options. But I'm sure this will get better over time, since the progression systems look promising and games like this often take some time to grow on me. As soon as the technical problems are resolved, I will give Wartales another shot and update this review.
