This is one of my favorite village building games ever! I have both the PC version (Steam) and the tablet version (Android). I bought the premium version (there's also a free to play) for my tablet - you can buy prestige and other features to speed up some aspects of the game on the tablet, but I never needed them. There are many ways to earn prestige in-game (through king's requests for products, etc.) so you don't ever need to buy it with real money. It started out as a mobile game, but its game mechanics always made it fun to play and I never paid extra money after the initial purchase. I've had the tablet version for many years and the developer always added more maps/scenarios and features to it throughout the years - and is still doing so even now! The developer still looks to find ways to improve his game for both the PC and mobile versions, so you can always give him feedback and suggestions. So having a developer who cares about his game and continues to improve it is an added plus. The PC version has different maps and enhanced features for the PC - also it has NO micro-transactions. The campaign teaches you how to play the game and once finished with that, you'll be able to play the plentiful scenarios and sandbox villages like a boss! It's really enjoyable and the graphics are cute and pleasant to look at. I also like it because it's not a memory or CPU hog. So yeah, I highly recommend the PC version! (Also recommend the tablet version too to play on the go.) It's really fun and has great gameplay!
Out of the Kyrandia trilogy, this is my favorite game! As the story goes, the land of Kyrandia is slowly disappearing piece by piece! In order to save it, a plan was formed to go to the center of the earth to get an anchor stone which will save the land - and Zanthia, the youngest of the four royal mystics is chosen to embark on this journey!The devs learned from the first game what worked and what didn't. Story was very easy to follow and charming with gentle humor. The ingredients for the spells were easy to find and not tedious as it was in the first game. NO MAZES! Artstyle to me is still great. For low pixel art, this is my favorite style. I wish more devs adopted it if they wanted low pixel graphics. Voice acting is okay - I think it can be better, but didn't spoil the experience for me. There is music for many of the different screens that add to the feel of each place. The music from this game is actually my favorite set of midi music ever. I have software that changes the instruments and makes it more jazzy (not in the game though, just the midi versions of these) and they're great to listen to when I'm doing some desk work. Zanthia, the main character, herself is charming and is such a girl! She changes to an appropriate but fashionable outfit for every new region she arrives at, lol! Overall, this was the Kyrandia game I played the most since it's so enjoyable, so I was super happy to find this on GOG and be able to play it again!
I bought this game during the 2018 Winter Sale, but didn't play it until the next month. First impression is that this is NOT play-ready out of the box. It was running too fast but also had choppy animations and controls were so wonky that it was difficult to move my character around, especially in a vehicle. But I didn't want to give up on it as I could see that this would be a good game to play if I can just tweak it somehow. There is a popular suite of mods called Gentlemen of the Row, but I wanted to play it as plain vanilla as possible for my first playthrough. I will add the full suite later when I finish it the first time. Anyway, I added 3 mods (google for them, they work great!): 1. Saints Row Powertools - fixes the speed bug; 2. SR2 FPS Unlocker - removes the 30 fps cap for smoother animations; and 3. Saints Row 2 Handling Mod - improves car control and the camera doesn't go all over the place. Once installed and I made tweaks to the graphics and control options (mouse/keyboard and gamepad sensitivity was too high), it ran very well, with nice graphics, and I was able to play and enjoy the game using keyboard and mouse! It isn't a lot of work to make these changes and the little effort is so worth it! I'm having a lot of fun with the game - there is so much to do and many different fun activities to choose from, including spraying people and important buildings with crap, lol! There's also lots of things you can buy with the money you make from the missions, activities, etc. which increases your style level and thus your respect. I love that many of those things are highly customizable: your character, their clothes, their crib (homes), etc. So yeah, I didn't like this game and regretted purchasing it at first, but once I added those mods, I made a complete 180 and totally love it now! I'm so glad I bought it and I highly recommend it!
The story is okay, nothing special. Your ambitious and hopeful character ends up running around on errands for his bosses who never quite appreciate him the way he would want them to. The thing I liked about it though is how it introduced characters of real people who played a very big part in the development of Miami in the 1920s and onwards. It's always nice to learn a little something new, especially when you weren't expecting it!
I played this when I was younger and did have fun playing it, but the mazes drove me crazy. They're not hard, but quite tedious to get through - you'll need to map it out on paper if you really want to play it old school without a walkthrough. The art is wonderful though and I love the music so it did make playing the game a lot less painful. The story is simple but the gentle sense of humor is cute. Some puzzles are easy to figure out, but there are some where you have to try to figure out what works with what with very little hints to go on. On top of that, it's very easy to die or put yourself in an unwinnable state, so saving your game often is a MUST. Also, there is some pixel hunting! For me, it had been so long since I played this game, so I have no regrets about buying this game, but, even though I did enjoy it after so many years, I think it will be quite a few numbers of years more before I play it through again. I'm not sure if I can recommend this to new players because of it's frustratingly unrefined rules of adventure game play, but if you want to know what it was like for us back in the day when we were young and didn't know what we were getting ourselves into and want to experience adventure gaming the way we did, then I gladly recommend it highly! You can then come to review this game and commiserate with the rest of us older adventurers about how it all was when this was all so new!
I was coming into this game a little jaded after playing some other adventure games from other publishers that weren't so enjoyable, but this one restored my faith that there are good adventure games still out there. I wasn't too crazy about the low resolution graphics, but the background art and characters are wonderful. I really hope this game gets remastered someday to higher resolution graphics so that the already high-quality backgrounds and characters can be more fully appreciated. But what truly kept me playing the game was the story and game play. It was very interesting and didn't stay on one thing before moving the plot along. Problems/puzzles weren't very difficult to figure out either. I highly recommend it!
