Anna's Quest is an exceptionally well produced point and click adventure. Its puzzles are of the inventory and conversation based puzzle style typical of the mid 90s LucasArts and Sierra games (Like Monkey Island, Kings quest 5-7 etc). It has a passable but not exceptional fairy tale plot which is very much family friendly and will certainly keep any under 12 players thoroughly entertained. Older players might find themselves a little bored unless they play it in short bursts. The game is worth its high price for the playtime and puzzle quality. You are probably looking at around 20 hours playtime, puzzles which are, on the whole, pretty sensible and the whole thing is backed up by good graphics, a decent musical score and voice acting of professional quality. The reasons I have only given this game three stars are the following 1) Long sections of extremely dull scripting 2) A very, very irritating protagonist To elaborate, the converations with the non player characters are largely dull and frequently irrelevant to the plot. There is virtually no humour in the game. Also at times it feels like a huge effort to find anything the irritatingly pious main character is willing to do. This is especially the case when trying to get her to use her 'super-power'. You'd think this would play a big part in the puzzle design. But no, it is underused and poorly used. In short, get this if you want an old school point and click to play for an hour every evening. Any more than that in one go and you are likely to get bored or seriously annoyed by Anna.
So many games of this era sacrificed game quality in favour of using lots of full motion video. The 11th hour is one of the worst casualties. Some of the gameplay was close to being really good but all the effort seems to have been spent on the full motion video interludes. The gameplay is as follows. You play a man whose girlfriend has gone missing while investigating a series of murders related to a haunted house (Stauf mansion of the 7th Guest). You follow her into the house and explore. The ghostly owner of the house forces you to solve riddles and puzzles and each time you are succesful you have a video clip that reveals some of the background plot. The reason you might want to play it: Some of the puzzles and riddles are really quite elegant - properly enjoyable. The reasons you should think twice about buying it: -About 1/3 of the puzzles are either nonsensical or you are playing a game against a frustratingly difficult to beat artificial intelligence. The hint system is so slow it is near useless. The riddles vary in quality from 4 letter obvious anagrams to things which I nor anyone else I know can fathom. -The game hasn't aged well. Most modern screens don't cope well with the video clips. - The story is ridiculous. They should have stuck to 7th gues cheesiness rather than trying and failing to make this plot serious. - The soundtrack isn't great and the sound balance is completely wrong. Choose between being deafened by the music or not hearing the voice acting.
I played this game when I was about 15 when it was released. At that time I didn't quite appreciate the quality of the puzzles but now it actually feels better than it did then. If you're looking for a complex plot, you aren't going to find it but that isn't the point of the game. It's trying to present a series of mathematical and word based logical puzzles in a frame of an entertaining but silly horror story. There are a few creepy moments and a few gross-out cut scenes but it is all very mild. Add to that a lot of hilarious (deliberately I hope) hammy acting. It's undoubtedly fun but daft. The puzzles should keep you going for a while. One ot two have become too well known to be a challenge anymore but some take a lot of thought. Really good quality here, so much so that I take some to my brightest 17 year old maths students. It's also well produced given its age. The visuals still look good and its got quite a nice soundtrack. The video cutscenes haven't survived that well but they are watchable. So in short, good puzzles, entertaining setting, well produced. Not really scary but good fun.
I know I'm repeating what some other reviewers have said but I feel I should show my agreement. I should also say I really liked 'Dracula 3: Path of the Dragon' so it is very disappointing how low the quality fell for these two. The two games Dracula 4 and 5 together are about as long as you would expect from a single episode of a game. To make it worse some of the puzzles have really odd and unpredictable goals. The mechanic of keeping your character alive through giving her medicine is odd and adds nothing to the game itself. The story could have been built into something really entertaing but it ends abruptly in both chapters and never develops any depth. Paying half price in a sale for Dracula 4 & 5 together I still don't feel its worth the price.
This is definitely a short story. It's a little expensive for the gameplay time so if you want to get it you may want to wait for a sale. I think it took around 5 hours for me to finish. In hindsight I'd only pay around $12 for it. There's a lot going for this game. The graphics are great, the voice acting is excellent and the soundtrack has moments of where it really shines. The puzzle design is pretty good too and the writers have done a reasonable job of using the ability to switch between characters to make the puzzles more interesting. Sadly the plot is dull. There are lots of characters with potential to become really interesting but nothing really gets going. I've played two of the potential endings but they are anticlimactic. The whole thing just lacks substance. If this were chapter 1 of 3 then I'd be more positive. It's just not worth much alone.
The third game in this series is wildly different from the first two. It's turned the sickly sweet overtones on their head and brought in the original villain as the main character. Unsuprisingly after that you need to be ready for a lot of sarcasm a lot of totally crazy side characters and one hell of a lot of mischief based puzzles. I have played this game twice now. The first time I didn't notice the full extent of how annoying and illogical the puzzles could be but we were used to having a lot of poor puzzle design then. Some of the puzzle designs in this game were really poor. Younger point and click fans might get really annoyed with good reason. The main issue is not that the puzzles are hard. The execution is tedious. Theres a lot of stuff you have to collect that seems to be randomly distributed over your landscape. Kyrandia 1 was also like this but it didn't seem quite as laboured. Many people will find this game tries their patience a bit too much. It's a big shame. I loved this game as a teenager and I barely noticed the noticed the annoying bits back then. But although the game's plot and characterisations are really well thought through the puzzle execution is really poor compared to what is available now.
