After finishing the campaigns in a month, I poked on and off at that series of “Divine Empire” scenarios for a full year before finally finishing all 21 of those as well. In addition, I played all 18 of those scenarios where this was an option with the Undead Hordes, the remaining three, which were the 18th, 20th and 21st, being played with the Empire (Humans). So certain details about the campaigns, or those specific to the Mountain Clans (Dwarves) or Legions of the Damned (Demons), may be a bit sketchy in my mind by now. But I did take some notes, so anything important should be covered, at least if I noticed it in the first place. I only played with mage lords though, so I won’t know anything specific to warriors or guildmasters. I again find myself reviewing a game, and in fact a fantasy TBS game, that I can say I enjoyed at least to some extent, but finding it difficult to think of the specific reasons why. For a turn-based game it is, of course, crucial to create that “one more turn” feeling and Disciples does do that well enough, sometimes making me lose track of time while playing. Couldn’t play for hours in a single stretch though, due to a bug I’ll mention later, but when a scenario caught me, or I just wanted to finish it, I’d just quit when I needed to and then get right back again and again. Plus, I not only finished the campaigns in what for me is a pretty short amount of time, but also decided to go through that series of scenarios that’s actually longer than all the four campaigns put together and, while admittedly after a much longer amount of time, actually did so, which should count for something. There were some interesting scenarios as well, for example the last one from the Legions campaign, or some of the last “Divine Empire” ones, though that unfortunately did not include the very last one. While playing the campaigns it was also pretty nice to see that the races required pretty different approaches, yet all could work once you figured them out. I mean, the Undead are supposed to be the hardest to play with, but after really struggling through the campaign I found that I had learned to play them so well that I preferred them for the “Divine Empire” scenarios, and it was while playing their campaign that I also won a scenario by conquering the enemy capital, even though you’d probably think that, despite the relative weakness of the units, the Empire would be best suited for that. Even did it while still being far from figuring out how to make the best use of the Undead, what units and advancements to pick… Which is in fact another positive aspect, the low number of different units that you can recruit being compensated by what happens when they level up, the significant improvements and the fact that their traits may even change significantly based on your choices, offering a sense of advancement that provides motivation to keep going through the early part of scenarios in order to reach those later stages. But maybe the main thing that made me keep going was a sense of comfort, if I may use the term, given by the Guardian defending my capital city. Sure, enemy capitals are defended in the same manner and completely defeating an enemy is extraordinarily difficult, so they’ll always pester you to some extent, but defeating the enemy lords is not normally a requirement for victory and having this protected capital means that you can explore and keep your better units on the move without worrying that you may lose everything if an enemy slips past you. And the fact that resources are obtained according to who owns the terrain also largely does away with those silly moments seen in other games when mines or other resource-generating locations keep changing hands. Rod bearers can still do something about this, and using them effectively, especially early in a scenario, is crucial, but for the most part you can focus on exploring, advancing and achieving the objective. If that’s pretty much all I can say in favor of the game, now comes the easy part, the negative aspects… Though I guess I could start with something that’s more of a missed opportunity, a lack of a potential positive aspect, because if it’d have actually bothered me I wouldn’t have gone through any scenarios after finishing the campaigns, if I’d have done even that, and considering the other issues I definitely wouldn’t have enjoyed it to any extent. I’m referring to the leaders and the combat. For one, leaders are weak, being somewhat comparable to level two units of their type at level one but then advancing very slowly, so regular units with a similar amount of experience will likely overpower them, one consequence of this being that it’s mandatory to choose the Leadership ability whenever it’s offered. But on top of that, there are little tactics involved in actual combat, having little to do except to simply keep attacking and hope the random number generator determining hits and misses won’t go too much against you. Moving on, could get to the story next, which obviously caught my attention so little during the campaigns that I remember pretty much nothing of it by now, nor did I mention it in the notes I took. Still, at least that means it wasn’t in itself a negative aspect, and what atmosphere the game could create, in large part through the graphics, as aged as they are by now, did give the sense of a struggle and the need for survival, which can provide sufficient justification to go through fight after fight. On the other hand, the “story” of the “Divine Empire” scenarios seems to be nothing more than some lines of text thrown there largely as an afterthought, hardly offering anything positive in the sense of an actual story and being worse at providing useful information than, well, actually providing said information directly. Speaking of those scenarios, a decent story would have been important not only to make it easier to put up with starting over time and time again, not even being able to take one leader and a few items from the previous scenario, as you can during the campaigns, but also to get you through those that pretty much share the same map, with only a few small changes. They did put some effort into the final ones, though the very last one apparently didn’t take the flaws of the AI into account and is therefore a complete joke, but before that point… Let’s just say it’s all right in small doses, which is why I took so long to finally get through all of them, giving up for months at a time because it was getting quite tedious to do pretty much the exact same thing multiple times in a row without even any decent story as motivation. Why couldn’t they have found a way to make this series of scenarios, which is basically the Gold Edition’s additional “campaign”, into one or more actual campaigns, I don’t know. Since I mentioned the AI, it definitely won’t be winning any prizes. Sure, the game’s hard enough even so, and the AI also has advantages to make up for those failings, such as units automatically gaining some experience each turn or quite obviously knowing my armies, and possibly those in ruins as well, without spies, but seeing it consider wards and immunities as the same and waste attacks randomly attacking units with either is messed up, and it doesn’t even keep track of which wards get used up, so instead of attacking a warded unit again in order to actually deal damage, the odds seem pretty evenly split between it doing so, attacking another warded unit, and attacking one with immunity to that kind of attack, if all are present. It also seems to spread spells and summon attacks around if multiple leaders approach, often not causing enough harm to matter if it doesn’t have access to the powerful spells, and at times it even summons in the wrong place, having the summoned creature need to go around other armies to reach the intended target, or at times be unable to reach it at all. Getting back to the advantages the AI has, there’s also one which I consider to be a bug, and that’s that it definitely keeps some of its gains, such as unit experience or advancements or summoned units, obtained after the end of the player’s turn if the autosave from the end of that turn is reloaded. However, such bugs go the other way for the player, since if you level up a leader at the end of a campaign scenario and then reload the starting save for the next one, you will not get to choose the new ability again. When you first start the scenario you will get the choice, but if you reload that starting save you won’t get it anymore, so you’ll lose an ability. Not sure if I tried it with reloading a regular autosave at such a time as well, as I specifically avoided doing that after noticing this bug. Then again, found the fact that you get to choose the new ability at the start of the next turn after a leader levels up instead of immediately to be quite unpleasant in itself. Back to bugs, while I obviously can’t know whether this has to do with the version I played, from GOG.com, or with my specific system or anything else, the one I found most frustrating was that one that made me unable to play for more than about one hour at a time. The exact time varied, I think I saw as little as about 45 or 50 minutes at one point and maybe up to an hour and a half at another, but typically after a little over one hour the game crashed. Not sure what caused the variation, but the crash always happened when something moved on screen, meaning units on the map but also the animation of at least one of the Hordes’ “Dragon” damage spells, if not others as well, and I think always when it was my turn. Fortunately the autosaves meant that I never lost much even if I did forget to quit before it happened, though reloading an autosave did mean offering the AI some slight advantages, due to the other issue mentioned above, and it was annoying either way. As for the little things, the sounds for the Undead sure are annoying, with the Banshee possibly being the worst. Believe it or not, this is the first thing I wrote in my notes about this game, the Hordes’ campaign being the second I played, and despite playing 18 “Divine Empire” scenarios with the Hordes as well I never got used to it. Nor did I get used to how long animations feel after a while, or to the focus being moved to the capital city at the start of each turn, or to each summoned creature that you happen to have taking its time dying before that. Getting a message for each item taken instead of a list if there are more taken at once also gets tedious, as does needing to move, including when buying or selling, items one by one. And it’d also be useful for the guard stance to be saved instead of only in effect for the current turn, so selecting the next leader would only cycle between those you mean to actively use. In addition to that, diplomacy seems rather tacked on, not offering some useful options, and the descriptions of the lords only being listed there likely means they may not even be noticed. On another note, campaign scenarios won by transforming a certain percentage of the map seem odd, because you may well need to avoid winning too soon in order to level up your main leader or find the best items to take to the next. And having the area controlled always listed at the top of the screen but having to toggle between displaying the available resources and seeing the minimap is a strange, and simply bad, design choice… As is the lack of any sort of grid, to let you figure out how far armies can go, or that the attacker always flees on turn 11 of a fight but there’s no turn counter anywhere. And I do wonder how can they possibly justify making human archers more accurate than elven ones, and for that matter making the simple archer, a basic unit the Empire can recruit right away and which also attacks as a range, have the second most accurate attack in the entire game, becoming the single most accurate one when it quickly advances to marksman. After all of that… Disciples: Sacred Lands is not a bad game, and the scenarios added in the Gold Edition do give you more to play if you so wish. It’s a simpler game than others in the genre, being pretty light on both tactics and RPG elements, but the Guardians and the way resources are obtained allow you to focus on what you need to do, and advancing your units and leaders and getting through difficult battles may be sufficient motivation… And it pretty much needs to be, since the story isn’t and there are plenty of reasons for frustration that you’ll need to put up with, including bad design choices and some bugs. But expectations, including about interface and features, and also about AI, were somewhat different back when it was released, so some leniency may be in order if played, and reviewed, now.
Certain design quirks make it quite obvious that Ember was designed for tablets, and I saw articles stating that it may be an all right game for the PC, but it’s an outstanding one for tablets. That may well be true, but it’s also irrelevant, seeing as I don’t care about tablets and will judge it solely on its merits as a PC game. What is relevant, on the other hand, is that, once you get used to them, those controls designed for tablets seem to me to work better on the PC than those designed for consoles that are so often found in bigger titles for a long time now. Due to said design quirks and a beginning that may not be particularly inspired or original, it is possible that the first impression may be somewhat underwhelming, but rest assured that Ember really does get better as you go along. More importantly, the improvement isn’t due to the fact that the characters gain better and more interesting skills, which isn’t really the case, but instead due to the locations, the books and the enemies. And while the locations are the first improvement you’ll notice, as they will get more interesting until you reach the City of Light, which I’d say is the best the game has to offer from this point of view, the other two elements I mentioned probably require a few more details. Hardly any of the books available in Ember need to be read and very few even need to be found in order to complete the game, but they offer interesting bits of history and lore, as well as various stories that are simply enjoyable to read, including quite a few that intend to be funny and usually succeed. In addition, various books as well as the game’s story in general also tackle current issues from our world, situations and problems that we’re facing and that we need to do far more about before it’s too late. As such, those who enjoy reading will find themselves searching for all titles and parts and keeping track of what they found and read. As for the combat, it’s the enemies that make it interesting, the developers seeming to have put some effort into making later battles nicely tactical. This may apply even earlier, for some boss and elite fights or when you simply try to get through an area that’s way above the party’s current level, but late in the game even standard enemies make a tactical approach very much recommended. And I definitely remember the boss fights starting from The Bastille, plus some later elites, most notably the one at the end of a side quest that rewards you with one of the best pieces of equipment in the game. Playing on normal difficulty, using found gear and no consumables until the final battle, and without grinding and only rarely even using sleep as intended, plenty of these battles proved difficult, but they were always fair, a few even seeming a bit like a puzzle to solve. You will need to pause often, maybe move around a lot, possibly make good use of combos, dealing more damage by having characters use skills on an enemy almost immediately one after the other, but perhaps most of all in these battles you’ll need to pay attention to the icons that show up above enemies, indicating the skills they’re preparing to use, and act accordingly. Yes, I know that the above will make some say that my playing style makes games unnecessarily difficult, but that’s just how I play, being very frugal, not using consumables until the end if I can avoid it in any way and not buying much of anything if I can find things I can make good enough use of. I would enjoy crafting, but while it is possible in Ember, I found it unnecessary before the end, which I guess adds to the freedom of playing however you prefer. But if you want to make things easier, on top of being able to change the difficulty at any time, you can gain as many levels as your patience allows, as I’m not aware of any level cap, by killing the enemies that respawn and by making full use of sleep in order to boost your experience gain from kills, you can craft the best gear available for the party’s current level, you can use various kinds of potions and food, which can be crafted as well, and you can also purchase runes from the merchants in the City of Light and Pinnacle in order to get just the skills you want. On the other hand, if you want a challenge or, as in my case, simply want to explore, you can visit locations intended for much higher levels and try to survive, seeing as there’s nothing other than the enemies to stop you from traveling to most areas even early on. One other thing to mention would be that the game is particularly forgiving when it comes to party members getting “killed” in battle as well, since unless none are left standing, those knocked out will not only immediately recover after the fight, but recover with 20% of their health, and without losing any experience. I’m not quite sure what to think about that and there were only three moments, one of them being the final battle, when I continued after a character got knocked out instead of reloading an earlier save, but I guess I’ll take it as a good thing, because it once again offers the player the freedom to play as they wish… As does the fact that characters that join the party are always immediately raised to the level of the main character if needed, so you don’t have to worry about leveling them or choosing when to meet them. On a different note, autosaves are also useful. You can turn them off if you want, but if you don’t, the game will save to the autosave slot not only after a certain time has passed and before major battles, but also just before using fast travel to leave an area. And since I mentioned being able to turn off this behavior, there are a few other potentially useful options, such as free camera, disabling moving the camera by clicking and dragging, or opening the inventory whenever the character sheet is opened, this last one being the one I enabled right away. Back to the game itself, being able to buy back the last items you sold from any merchant, at the price you sold them, also offers some peace of mind, reducing the risk of losing something by accidentally selling it, at least if you realize it in time. But the last thing I want to point out as actually being very useful in the game itself is much more important, and that’s the information displayed when hovering the mouse over an enemy in query mode, including not only the exact current and maximum health, but also the level, class and a strength rating, which may be minion, standard, strong, elite or boss. Since elite and boss enemies are immune to certain skills and minions die very quickly but may deal a lot of damage if you don’t kill them right away, this is important to know. Unfortunately, since there’s no highlight function and object names only show up when the Lightbringer is very close to them, entering query mode very frequently and therefore pausing the game just about constantly even while simply exploring is pretty much required due to the fact that this is the only way to see objects you can pick up or interact with outside the Lightbringer’s immediate vicinity. Worse, there are a handful of items, I think all of those I found being containers, that for some reason show up in query mode as if you could interact with them when you’re some distance away or in a spot from which the game’s pathfinding won’t allow the Lightbringer to reach them directly, but seem to be simple scenery items, not allowing any interaction, when you actually get close. And then there are also a number of items and containers that can’t seem to be reached in any way. Also on the topic of items, those owned by others are handled in a rather strange manner. The name shows up on a red background, indicating that taking that item would be stealing, but you can take it with no consequences if no actual NPC sees you, those you can’t interact with not counting. However, if an NPC is in the area they will stop you and your only option is to put the item back. The character won’t refuse to try to pick up the item, which could have perhaps been a better option if you’re being watched, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to sneak or otherwise avoid notice. Some NPCs have schedules that will result in certain areas being clear at certain times and I found one NPC that didn’t seem to care that I was grabbing owned items right in front of her, which may have been on purpose considering her situation at the time, but otherwise if an NPC is there, even if their back is turned, even if they are asleep, they will notice you and you’ll apologize and put the item back, then continue as if nothing happened. But those are little things, though there are even smaller issues that I noticed, such as the handful of typos in books or the fact that there’s a major discrepancy between what a character tells you about a certain important moment in history and what you can read about it in books found even right next to him. Much more notable but I’d say still minor would be the 99 item inventory limit, which seems to be a completely artificial limit added just to have one. But there are several containers to be found in order to expand it to some extent and you can always get back to sell things well enough, so if it didn’t bother me quite that much despite being the pack rat that I am, it’s probably just a little nuisance… As is the fact that items in containers don’t show up in the shop window, needing to first be taken out before they can be sold. And since I can’t fit this anywhere else, I’ll also mention here that all area maps are displayed completely as soon as you enter an area, with nothing telling you which places you already explored, making it a bit of a pain to make sure you don’t miss anything in open areas. An artificial limit that bothered me more is the fact that you will meet three companions, but can only take two of them with you at once. It would make sense if there would be more options, but having to just leave one person out after you find all of them feels quite forced. Sure, the areas intended to be explored after meeting the last companion would have needed to be significantly more difficult for a party of four to make sense, but I’m sure that could have been arranged. Something that bothered me even more when it comes to companions, on the other hand, is the fact that they have so little to say. Then again, it may take an accident to find that you can talk to them at all, as you need to click the main character and drag to a companion in order to do so, which behavior also applies in combat, though the character will say it’s not the time for it if you do so then. Not that you’ll be losing much of anything if you don’t discover this at all. Speaking of clicking and dragging, though you can get used to it quite fine, that control system does feel strange on a PC at first. Click to have the Lightbringer go somewhere, with the companions following, but if you want a companion to move you need to click on them and drag to the desired location, which needs to be very close because they’ll turn right back if they’re more than a few steps away from the Lightbringer, and if the Lightbringer moves again they’ll reposition themselves as well. Also, for the skills that target a location instead of a single enemy or ally, you need to click the skill and drag to the target, which is also how you can target a single creature that’s different from the one that’s the current target, or when the character in question doesn’t have an active target at the time. And this applies to using items as well. Click on the item and drag it to the object you want to use it on in the few places where that is needed, and if you want a character other than the Lightbringer to use an item you must either have that character’s sheet open or click on the item and then drag it to their portrait. Again, you can get used to this and it may even get to feel less awkward than the controls designed for consoles that are found in the PC versions of plenty of bigger titles, but you should be able to select a skill, or a party member, and then click on the target or destination, and the same would also apply to the “whole party” button. And speaking of that, a way to exclude one party member from a command, selecting the other two for it, could have been of some use as well, though this is a minor thing. Probably the worst part, however, has to do with each character being limited to just three active and two passive skills, all of them being determined by the equipment worn and having no way to improve any directly. All you can do when gaining a level is distribute two attribute points among the four available attributes, the efficiency of the skills being determined by the associated attribute or, in case of some passive ones, by weapon damage. And whenever you find a better piece of equipment, you have to weigh the better attributes against the possible change in available skills. Yes, you can add runes to equipment in order to replace the skill granted by it, but runes are expensive and can only be used once, and there are only two actual rune merchants in the game. As a result, you’ll find yourself sticking to older and otherwise worse equipment to preserve the useful skills granted by it, and possibly carrying around a few different pieces of equipment in order to be able to use other skills you think may be needed. Which is not to say that a trade-off between positive and negative effects of equipment is necessarily a bad thing in itself, but characters having nothing to do with their own available skills is, and it makes for very limited and downright poor character development. Character development is also harmed by the fact that maximum energy can’t be increased, except again by wearing certain pieces of equipment, and even then only by very little. And while I’m on the topic of energy, it’s also annoying that there are no numbers listed anywhere when it comes to energy use or recovery. You use or recover low, medium or high amounts of energy, but it doesn’t say exactly how much that is anywhere. Also, while some items that restore health can more helpfully state that they restore half or all of it, others, as well as those that temporarily increase attributes, follow that same rule and do not specify any actual values. It’s quite frustrating and doesn’t allow you to calculate or accurately plan much of anything. And then there’s sleep, which I made little use of. The game seemed balanced even so, with enemy levels seeming just about right, and I finished it at level 24 when it seems to assume that you need to be at least level 20 at the end, with level 20 also being required by the best few pieces of equipment that can be found. But it just seems wrong to tie maximizing the experience obtained from kills to sleeping at certain pretty exact intervals. There is, of course, some logic in wanting the characters to sleep at certain intervals if the developers wanted to introduce that sort of thing, but it could be handled differently, while such rewards should be offered to players who go as long as possible without resting, or at least that’s how I see it. Instead, the experience boost obtained from sleeping once is determined by the time since the party last slept, up to a maximum of 25%, and gradually drops as you kill enemies after waking up, yet higher values can be obtained if you sleep again after enough time has passed and without killing too much in between. While, again, making full use of this is not needed, having a system that would greatly benefit the characters but making it an exercise in frustration to attempt to properly use it is quite annoying. To finally move away from such details, I should also say that the story isn’t exactly much to write home about, and the way you choose one of the two endings also seems quite lazy, for lack of a better term. The books save the storytelling aspect of the game overall to some extent, but the story of the game itself pretty much just keeps you moving forward from one point to the next. I wasn’t sure where to put this, how to include it in the review, because it’s not really bad, and it also does quite clearly draw some parallels to some major problems from our world, but some quests, including parts of the main one, did strike me as quite silly, and I’m not referring to anything intended to be funny, so I guess it can go here after all. Again, it does its job I guess, but I’m looking at some of the writing in the books and can’t help but wonder why does it seem like the effort and even skill put into those entirely optional elements wasn’t also put into the game’s actual story, or the characters for that matter, for the reasons I stated above. And then there are certain technical aspects that need to be mentioned. One is the fact that the game crashed quite a number of times when fast traveling between areas, though the autosaves made at those moments always worked and turned this into little more than a small nuisance, as I could always just get right back to where I was. A much bigger issue, on the other hand, is the fact that the game constantly reads data from disk, and at up to a few Mb/s. I guess this isn’t much of a problem for those with SSDs, but the wear caused by this may be a concern for those of us still using mechanical HDDs. The developers stated that, since the development of Ember started many years ago, they couldn’t switch to 64-bit, or at least make a 64-bit version, and were therefore limited in the amount of memory they could use, but since they also stated that textures are loaded straight from disk before being displayed and music and sound effects are streamed from disk as well, I’m not sure what’s taking up memory in the first place! To conclude, Ember has certain design and technical quirks you need to be aware of and it doesn’t excel in any area, but it’s an all right game if you don’t expect too much from it. There are limitations, some of them seeming completely artificial, but with the exception of the particularly light and limited character development system they shouldn’t prove to be major problems. The world is open, allowing the player to explore as long as they can survive, but combat is the most important aspect and fortunately it does get better as you go along, with fights becoming quite tactical and not the sort of click-fest that tends to be the norm for action RPGs. For all of that, it’s a quite forgiving game and therefore caters to an audience that can deal with challenging moments but does not particularly seek a challenge. As for the story, it just gets the job done, but some of the books found in Ember can actually be quite good and finding and reading them may be one of the game’s best aspects, at least for those of us who enjoy reading.
This is a rather difficult review to write, in good part because calling Her Story a game may be questionable. It’s an interesting experiment, an interesting use of the medium, and there is something to do and progress if you do it right. Unlike a fair number of others which are clearly games, there’s even a point where it may be considered “completed”, which will typically come after the moment when you get the option to “finish” it, so there’s an end state as well. So it meets the criteria, more than a number of others do, but… Perhaps it’d be more accurate to say that it’s difficult to talk, or in this case to write, about it as one would about a game? Yes, that seems like a better way to put it… Even though you’re thrown straight into it, after only a plain title screen, the fact that you see a relatively normal desktop should make the interface familiar enough for anyone, and specific instructions are in files anyone should know to read. Of course, I keep seeing that the typical user doesn’t read, which continues to baffle me, but one may get away with it even so, maybe finding a few specific functions on their own later, maybe sticking to the basic ones and reaching the end state even so. A few things need to be discovered by the player anyway, and that only requires doing things one would normally do when looking for something on a desktop. Speaking of additional features, there is one which is a nice touch, and possibly also a clue, but saying more about it may count as a spoiler so I won’t. Other than that, it’d have been dreadful if videos you didn’t watch wouldn’t have been marked, so it’s a good thing they are. And having the date and time in the corner of each and readable in the thumbnails as well may also prove particularly useful at times. That may also be the case for the search history, though I personally didn’t use it. One option I did use, on the other hand, was the filter that does away with the “old monitor” look and makes the image look as it would on a more modern one. Some may see the default look as part of the atmosphere, but for me the “old VHS” quality of the videos, which can’t be improved, was bad enough and I didn’t want to put up with more if I could avoid it, so it’s a good thing that option exists, even if it seems to come at a slight cost. But the entire game, if it may indeed be called one, relies on those videos and on the performance of the actress, which is indeed excellent. I wouldn’t call it flawless, but maybe the flaws one may spot and, perhaps even more so, the exaggerations aren’t mistakes, but there for a very good reason, clues in themselves. Or maybe not, but the whole is too good to make that not only possible, but highly probable. And, as a side note, while some seem to have found it out of place or at least too drawn out, I quite enjoyed the bit where she sings. Also particularly commendable is the fact that they managed to make the whole thing work and make sense, inasmuch as any of it does, despite the fact that the player may discover answers in any order and doesn’t get to hear any of the questions. And yes, I can confirm that you can discover every last one of the 271 videos, which have a total play time of just over one hour and 35 minutes, without cheating in any way. A few may prove difficult and a short series, which is irrelevant anyway due to the missing questions, requires the use of a certain search function, but they are indeed all possible to unlock by playing normally. All of this requires a script that was very carefully constructed, and that’s on top of the complexity of the case itself, all the stories told and the fact that it needs to provide at least some motivation to continue searching even if you may well find what may be the most relevant answers early on. Sometimes pulling all of it off does come at the cost of some answers not sounding quite natural, but that happens less than one would expect, considering everything, and once again I must point out that some of these apparent flaws may not be mistakes. As such, to use terms quite appropriate considering the matter at hand, there’s sufficient reasonable doubt to make it difficult to build a strong case claiming that any of them are. That said, it’s difficult to point out actual flaws in general. The fact that the time doesn’t skip as much as it should between answers, especially in a few particular places, is an odd slip though. And one feature I clearly missed was the ability to automatically sort the videos added to the current session in chronological order. You can drag them manually, but doing so is so terribly tedious, also due to how few thumbnails can be viewed at once, that if you want to watch them in order inside the game you may be better off just scrolling through them and looking at the time stamps. Plus that, while I did this a few more times before giving up and it didn’t happen again, the first time I changed the position of a video I saw that it moved back to its original place once I added a new one to the session, so even that tedious manual sorting may not work as it should all the time. Still, that may not be that much of a problem if you consider how you can easily watch all the videos, preferably after unlocking them in the game if you don’t want to cheat and spoil it for yourself. So the one real problem that I really want to point out is actually the one that’s certainly completely intentional and perhaps even the main point of this experiment, and by that I mean the lack of an actual conclusion. You can “complete” the game when you find all the videos and you can “finish” it when you choose to do so, after you find enough of the important ones for the game to offer the option, but the only thing you’re left with is the conclusion you arrived at yourself, if you arrived at one at all. Just like you don’t hear the investigator’s questions, you don’t see the conclusion of the investigation or anything else to tell you what actually happened, what the right answer is. You are asked the question, or at least one of them, but the game can’t know, and therefore can’t check, what you mean by saying yes. So, is Her Story interesting? Yes. Is it an actual game? Probably, but definitely not in a typical sense. Is it worth playing, experiencing directly, as opposed to simply doing a quick search for the videos and watching them all put together, in order, if you’re curious about it? Maybe… Or maybe not. Only you can answer that for yourself… Which is perhaps the only proper way to conclude a review for a game which asks the player to draw their own conclusion, isn’t it?
Before anything else, I must stress the fact that this is a game made, with the exception of the music and most portraits, by two people. Granted, I have previously praised a game made, again with the exception of the music, by a single person, and that one is far more complex and quite simply much better in terms of combat and enemies, and probably also character development, but Driftmoon is more of a typical RPG, also involving exploration and much more interaction, which is a notable achievement for such a small team. There are limitations and simplifications that I’ll get to later, but it is nevertheless one of the examples proving that the age of games being made by “two guys in a garage” doesn’t need to be a thing of the past. Just that now they’re not necessarily guys anymore and they may work in something a bit more comfortable than a garage. If I were to describe Driftmoon in one word, it would be “charming”. That’s the overall impression I got from it, whether we’re talking of the atmosphere, humor, characters, enemies, graphics, locations, music, or the many references. Despite the typical plot of saving the world from a great evil and the inclusion of themes such as torture, it does cater to a younger audience and doesn’t take itself too seriously, yet manages to avoid actually becoming childish or just a parody. Take any single element out of those I just listed aside and it most probably won’t charm on its own, some possibly even bothering adult gamers seeking something other than just amusement from their games, but see them as part of the whole and, from the first moments all the way to the end, this one word describes the game almost too well. At least as long as you manage to ignore one particular infuriating theme, or of course if, unlike me, you happen to be among those at least not bothered by it, Driftmoon is simply charming. On top of that, there’s something to be said about it managing to avoid the typical elements that make a game frustrating, at least for me. I could hoard pretty much anything I thought could be useful at some later point without running into inventory problems and this hoarding is at times even rewarded, some items proving useful in less expected ways. I never felt that if I made a choice at one point, whether in terms of story or of character development, I was going to mess up more things later without even being made aware of it before it was too late, and I also want to make note of the fact that companions who leave drop all equipment you gave them, so you’ll never lose anything that way. Also, with one late-game exception that you’re very clearly warned about when you mean to leave, areas I had moved on from remained open until the, again very clearly specified, point of no return at the entrance of the final one, so I could always go back and make sure I had really found everything, and the number of quests completed and available in each area is listed on the world map, so you’ll very easily know if you somehow “managed” to miss one. And no fight or other challenge felt unfair or cheap, and it was nice how you could move freely while using ranged weapons and you found a quiver that used mana to provide endless arrows even early on. Admittedly, the game was rather too easy on what should be normal difficulty, but keep that younger target audience in mind and, either way, there are higher settings available for those who want them. And I really must mention all the references as well. Yes, there’s a lot of humor in the game and it usually works well enough, at least for me, but it’s how many other things, whether also humorous in themselves or not, the developers managed to squeeze in that stands out far more. The entire Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail is reproduced with a skeleton in the crypt. A secret room in the library acts as a tribute to quite a number of classic games, Discworld, Muse and Don Rosa’s Disney comics. You can pretend to play a bit of hockey in a frozen area and, also there, a character whose resistance to cold helped him end up just frozen instead of petrified recovers after you get him in a sauna, which is an obvious reference when the developers are Finnish. And many, many, many other things, in dialogues, little quips, writings, book titles, item descriptions, places… Identifying all of them may well be a game in itself, and now I’m even wondering whether the way in which the outcome for each character whose life you influenced is presented at the end isn’t at least in some part a nod to Arcanum. Unfortunately, one of the things the developers insisted on including is Christian proselytism. As a simple reference like all the others, even to the extent of hiding the entire New Testament in a couple of places and adding a paragraph at the end of the ending credits thanking “Our Loving, Forgiving and Almighty God”, it would have been quite fine. This game is a work of passion and it’s made by two people who really put a lot of themselves in it, including all these references to what’s important to them, what they enjoy or what they personally see as otherwise sufficiently relevant. That’s fine, I get it, and if it’d have been treated like all the others, and possibly just focused on more in the monastery, including by having crosses or even pictures of Jesus instead of the duck images, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But these are not just references, but instead something pressed and hammered in, the game sliding into proselytism plenty of times, even if mainly advocating blind faith and devotion and not also the conservative “values” usually associated with organized religion. Considering that younger target audience, I’m tempted to see it as even more troubling, even more so considering the reaction religious or conservative people tend to have when progressive, liberal or secular values are taught or even simply presented to children. Otherwise, there’s the matter of the game being rather too simple. I was mentioning the complexity and diversity of combat and enemies in The Spirit Engine II, which was developed by a single person, at the beginning of this review, so the fact that it’s lacking here isn’t because it can’t be done by a very small team. Yet, while the number itself may perhaps be passable, the reuse and to a fair extent similarity leaves the impression that there are only a few actual enemy types, and they pretty much just go all out to attack you with whatever means they have. And your companions behave the same way when aiding you in battle; you can’t even give them any orders such as to attack without you or a different enemy or when to switch to ranged or melee during combat if they have both types of weapons. If they use a melee weapon and you switch to ranged and put some distance between you and the enemy, you may even find that they disengage and just follow you around. Still on the matter of being too simple, there are rather too few items available. The number of melee weapons is perhaps passable for a game this size, but the rest is quite restrictive, barely a few items of each type being available. Potions also don’t have different strengths and the crafting system, which might have been interesting if used properly, can only produce basic consumables, plus maybe the tickers if you care to use any, so felt like quite a waste to me. And not that there even are more actually useful rings to wear, but being limited to equipping a single magical ring is rather odd. On that note, have to wonder why isn’t there even an equipment panel and you just select what you equip by clicking on the items in inventory, which makes the background turn green. It just seems rather lazy, even if the reduced number of items does indeed help when it comes to not getting frustrated with inventory management. And I may also mention the length here, but in truth, once again considering the team size and also that likely younger target audience, the bigger issue is elsewhere. According to the save timer, it took me 17 and a half hours to finish the game, but I likely spent less than half of that actually playing, much of it consisting instead of double and triple checking every little bit of every map and moving absolutely everything that could be moved to find all the silver feathers and the few other hidden items. And while it’s nice that you can move so many things around, it gets a bit annoying that you have to, considering the effect and eventual importance of the feathers, especially when we’re not talking just of candles or flowers that you can just throw around, but also of large heavy items that barely budge, plus the cases when some need to be cleared away before you can get to others, so you’ll be spending plenty of time slowly moving absolutely everything you can, just in case there’s something under or behind it. And what makes that even worse is that there are some items that sometimes move and sometimes don’t and there’s no way to immediately tell, so you’ll click and drag and find your character moving instead, then likely try every direction, just in case the item is blocked in some directions and you can’t see why, then conclude that the item in question can’t be moved, but maybe later find one that can be, and then you’ll go back to see if you didn’t miss any others. I was saying above that the game avoided the typical elements that make games frustrating for me and that fights didn’t feel cheap, but this one thing is cheap and frustrating. Overall, Driftmoon is, in one word, charming. Maybe intended for a younger audience and not taking itself too seriously in terms of the story or characters, but not going too far when it comes to that and being, in my view, enhanced by most of the many references and personal touches included by the two developers. It is rather too simple in some ways and the search for the feathers can get frustrating and feel a bit cheap, but in spite of that it’s quite an enjoyable experience that manages to be close enough to a typical, albeit not exactly serious, RPG while doing away with many of the elements that make many of those almost as frustrating as they are enjoyable, or in some cases even more so. Or it can be all of that if you can ignore all the Christian proselytism or just aren’t generally bothered by it. I for one tried and largely managed to enjoy it in spite of this, but while the developers, especially when it’s such a small team and they obviously put so much of themselves in it, are free to make a Christian game, I am also free to hold it against them. The other flaws may well be forgivable, but this is not, because it’s not something immediately obvious before you purchase or start playing and even more so because of that likely younger target audience. Quite simply, Driftmoon would have been quite an achievement for a team this size if not for this one very obvious and annoying issue. Note that this review refers strictly to the game itself. Driftmoon includes an editor and supports mods, some of which are included and just need to be selected, but I played it without any of them installed and didn’t check any other content created by users using the editor. It’s always a good thing when such tools are included, however… And I didn’t check, but wonder if somebody made a mod to get rid of that particular main problem I kept stressing in this review, even if it’d require a fair amount of rewriting.
