Some context, to help potential buyers with a decision: while I'm a big fan of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1, I never truly enjoyed the other FromSoftware games, as I felt they were missing some fundamental aspects of what made the first two Souls games great. Of all the Soulslikes I've played over the years, Hellpoint comes closest to capturing the original lightning-in-a-bottle. It's got a great setting, interesting lore, good combat (not too fast-paced) and big levels with lots of details and secrets. It never gets boring or outstays it's welcome, and there is a whole bunch of stuff to uncover. The levelling system is ok. The levels are fantastically interconnected, unfortunately not as majestic as those from the original Dark Souls, mainly due to the setting and the game taking place in a closed environment. Like with Dark Souls and Demon's Souls, the average gamer should glance at a beginner's guide before the first play-through, just to get a better sense of the game's mechanics and progression and to avoid some common progression pitfalls (like when to use Breach Synchronisers or how to access some more obscure questlines). I've not played this in multiplayer, so I can't attest to the couch or online co-op. I've noticed the game getting quite a bad rep from online critics, which actually put me off from starting the game, but there seems to be some pervading misunderstanding on what this game actually is and how it should be played. So if you're at all interested, try not to look to much into the bad reviews floating around, and give this a shot.
Esthetically, the game looks really nice and it's got some really good voice acting. However, the style of the game doesn't really serve a purpose, and there is no reason for the cardboard cutout style drawing. It could just as easily be 3D models, or anything else, and the game would function the same exact way. That isn't really an issue, though. The problem is that most of the gameplay is very repetitive: find someone, read their mind, "pick" their mind, and finally click on someone else. Problem solved! Don't believe me? Well, you'll see for yourself; absolutely no variety, and it gets boring pretty soon. That's reason behind the grade. There are better platformers out there. There are better adventures out there. Overall, there are better games out there.
It really is! It has a good story, good puzzles and great pacing. The story progresses nicely, and almost each puzzle solved brings with it some story progression. That is a trait of great adventure games. You never feel stuck, and when you do actually have problems with a puzzle, you're aware that it is your own fault and you have overlooked something. A great game overall, one that has a story to tell and does not insult your intelligence or waste your time while doing it.
A big fan of Daedalic I am, and I always expect their games to have a cinematic, story-driven approach. However, this game takes the opposite route - puzzles, puzzles and more puzzles at the expense of good pacing. While puzzles are not a bad thing, there should be a limit. In this game, I never felt like I was progressing enough. Every puzzle I solve brings another puzzle instead of story progression. The story itself is nothing special. There is no magical redeeming quality, no emotional connection to the characters and the world (since there are waay too many characters to properly flesh them out), and most of the story is told in exposition instead of us being the centre of the tale. All of this makes for an OK game with some interesting tidbits here and there, but it never rises to the greatness of The Whispered World, Chains of satinav, A New Begining or Deponia.
The New Beginning is a cinematic epic. It never feels drawn out (it is long, but never padded), and the story moves at an exciting pace as we encounter revelations and story bits that expand on what we believed had been happening before. The puzzles are logical, and never impede the flow of the story, which is important for that cinematic feel I mentioned before. The characters are full-bloodied people, and not just there to help the story along. That helps both humour and darker themes to co-exist and not feel forced upon the player, which gives and amazingly organic feel to the game. In essence, The New Beginning is a classic point-and-click adventure done right. It does not deviate from the genre in the slightest, and does not experiment with the gameplay style (and why should it?). Daedalic understands that this allows the developer to focus on things that really matter - story, characters, pacing and the overall feel of the game. All of which are masterfully done in the New Beginning.
Having revisited the series after a 5 year hiatus (the first time I played them, I thought they were awesome), I can conclude this game is crap. Bad story that's trying too much to be like the first. Makes no sense whatsoever. No character development. Well, BAD character development. 95% percent of all my deaths and reloads come from glitchy, stupid bugs (tower of babel grill...you made me uninstall the game). Horrible combat. Out of all three PoP games, only Sands of Time is worth anyone's time. If you've never played these games, play Sands of Time and you will love it. But for the love of Zeus, do not play the crap sequels.
Arcanum prides itself on its size and a huge list of quests, but it suffers from a lack of content density, and some irritating design decisions. The story is good. It starts rather uninteresting, but after a while it becomes engaging. It's just a shame it takes so long to become so. The cities are horribly too big. Too much empty space, to many empty buildings and too much walking around. Because of the way its structured, you'll spend more time running around from person to person to identify this, sell that, fix that, that it becomes so impossibly boring. It also tends to shoehorn the player. You will not be able to find out the location of certain cities, EVEN if you talk to people about them, unless the main quests tells you to go to that city. Also, many quests are terribly unclear as to what to do next, so you'll be bumbling around a lot of the time. And theres surprisingly little choice in those quests. There were numerous moments where I felt my charismatic persuasion expert could smooth talk it...but there was never an option to do so. In comparison, in Fallout 2 I could always persuade people in these types of situations. It just seems that because of the game's hugeness, the quests are more generic and linear. I quit in the third part of the game. Yet ANOTHER quest that makes me do ANOTHER three quests that EACH make me do another quest in order to solve them. A good game that never really 'clicks', and has some bad design decisions.
A different direction from the previous game. Back when I played it the first time, 6 years ago, right after I finished Sands of Time, it was left in good memories. That was when the novelty factor of the game was still fresh in my mind. Now all I see are badly designed fight sequences (which are plenty) that see me falling of a cliff because the game misinterpreted my actions. The savegame system is also extremely bad, with save points sometimes being minutes apart, and sometimes half an hour apart. And the backtracking. OH HOW I HATE BACKTRACKING. And this game has it plenty, and all for the purpose of artificially lengthening the game. As it is always the case. So I quit the game at the halfway point. Sorry prince, you should have just stayed a memory, and instead I choose to revisit you, only to find a plethora of faults.
When I first played the Sands of Time 6 years ago, it was fantastic to me. The platforming was fresh and novel, the fights were simple and stylish, and the time travel mechanic so awesome that I instantly fell in love with it. So now, I bought the Sands of Time (and the other two games) on the Ubisoft discount action. And I wanted to revisit it, and see how, one of my then-favourite games, was holding up. Now that the novelty factor is gone, there is nothing actually impressive about the whole game itself. - The story is simple, but it works. However, there is nothing really that grabs hold. - the fights are simple and stylish...for a while. after that, they become repetitive and boring, with numerous problems relating to dagger aiming and maneuvering the battlefield, and the number of moves at the prince's disposal - the camera is ATROCIOUS. The movement is camera-sensitive, and there is ABOSLUTELY no delay between camera-changes, meaning that as soon as the camera changes, if you were going forward, you will turn another way...sometimes to your death - the puzzles can become boring in the later stages. The game is short, but I have absolutely no problem with short games. I firmly believe that a game should last as much as the story requires. But I DO have a problem with intentional padding, once the developers realize that their game is "too short". The most abhorrent example was the doors-with-statue "puzzle", which had absolutely no logic and was solely trial and error. In the end, this makes for an interesting game, but the novelty wears off after the first playthrough. I wish I experienced the game like I did, the first time around, but I didn't. Which means this game can never be among the greats, because the truly great games, like Thief 2 and God of War 2, never wear off, no matter how many times you play them.
