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Looks nice, plays nice. The map gets extremely useful after a while, the journal could store more, but then you had nothing to take notes of by yourself ... the part we all love with puzzlegames, don`t we ... When completely lost there is an in-game hint system which doesn`t take all the pleasure. The end of the story is ... well ... let´s call it "ok". Dont`t expect to much. If you like searching for keys and get some instant reward every time you find one, this is a game for you. It took me 10 hours to complete (I am a slow player) and I liked it.
I can be pretty delicate when it comes to stilized graphics, but this is exceptionally well made, as are the sound and the voiceovers. From the first moment the game got me in it´s grip, and I stayed there for the 10 and a half hours it took me to complete. The warning at the beginning should be taken serious. I would not recommend the game for people who are really depressed or at the edge of suicide. The pictures are a horror and it takes long before there ist some kind of hope. Beside of this the game has one of this rare stories who take you by surprise and not let go until you finish it.
You get what you pay for if you like to fumble with ressources to kill everything that moves and don´t want to get really involved. Looks good, feels good, nice music, a bit of dark humor. I played it on "More pain!" and that´s enough for me. Would have loved it if I could keep what I gained for the next level, but I can`t. And it´s not interesting enough to play the same thing again, just harder.
Most of the games promising some kind of unique experience just give you more of what you already know, but not this one. Besides of being just wonderfully drawn it defines in a really new way, what a "puzzle game" looks and feels like. It talks to both heart, soul and brain, and for me - who likes puzzles inn real life, too - it just felt wonderful to play. What a beautiful little gem!
Driftmoon ist a "little" game, but it has everything a good RPG should have: nice characters, good dialog, good mainquest and fitting sidequests, a tiny levelsystem which still provides everything to make the player happy, good fights, nice little puzzles and a heroic ending. It´s easy to play and I liked the music, which got me in a good mood. The only little flaws are the choosen font (for so much text to read), which makes it difficult to find the right balance between to wide (on a big screen) or to tiny; and the fact that there is not much relevant to buy. If you play on "normal" you find most of the potions you need and don´t need to craft them, so you drag a lot of things around you never have use for nor need to buy more of them. And you have no reason to sell, because you find enough gold and there is nearly no armor or weapon to buy you would need more money for. Besides of that, Driftmoon was a wonderful experience and just made me happy. It took me a bit more than 17 hours to complete (I´m a slow player, I guess), and it was a refreshing break from all this "big" games like Witcher, Skyrim or Dragon Age, which I love, too, but which use to take months of my life.
Medieval Dynasty tries to be a lot of things at the same time and ends up with nothing feeling really good. Pros: Environment looks nice. Buildings look nice. Cons: Concept of TIME: you never have enough of it, while the game makes you waste the little you have. Information: The game tells you nothing that matters for a strategy game. You need to alt-tab to the net to find it there. Building: not possible to zoom out. Fumbling with your building-to-be huge right in front of you, wasting time to find the right spot for it. After a while I startet first searching for a place, then reload and place it. Not what I would actually call "playing a game". Quests: You nearly never know what people want from you before you agree to it. So may be you find out afterwards there is no time again until the end of season to hunt the animals down (because you first need to find them and that takes TIME). Reloading after taking a not finishable quest became a part of my "gameplay", and not a good one. NPCs: are mostly silent, not even greeting you with a sentence or two. Everybody moves constantly around, changing clothes by season, forcing you to rush through the villages searching for the not exactly marked merchants (because you have no TIME to waste), and this is simply not fun at all.
It plays like Myst the first time in 1993 when something like this was new ... In 2021 it feels just awful clumsy and static. The game starts with a serious voice telling a whole bunch of uninteresting stuff while you may look at a picture of the Sphinx at night. After 3 minutes or so you may watch a static description of the interface until a voice rumbles "THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX" while you watch the games logo. After that you find yourself in the desert without WASD, rotating through a boring scene with some tents ... It reminds me of something like the Stone Age of Gaming and I uninstalled it after five more minutes.
On the one hand it´s just beautiful. The game has atmosphere, it´s exciting and never just doing things in the right order and that´s it. On the other hand it´s horrible. The maps are crap, you never really know where to go next or where the f*ck the road was you took the last time. I really never was so lost in an RPG. But I liked it anyway. Tilo, the mouse, is just to sweet, and the game is serious enough to take you on a journey. Give it a try and consult some walkthroughs when struck :)
Maybe I had continued where`nt it for the strange controls on PC and the lack of enthusiasm to find out how to get things done without wasting time for nothing. Or if it would`nt sound like the prologue to a Coming Of Age movie I feel I have seen a million times already. The environment is ok but not more. If you like films and series about american families in suburbs, give it a try.