This is a surprisingly addictive and dynamic solitaire game combined with a regency visual novel. You get zero choices of how the regency story plays out -- you just watch cut scenes between solitaire levels. Some of the cut-scenes are hilarious, and the sets are garish, but it's all in good fun and spirits. I had a riot talking to my friends while playing this game as if I were the belle of the ball. Many of the challenges that the game sets are quite tough, especially toward the end! However, most yield to just retrying them until you get it. Overall, I really dug this game's predecessor, and I love this one too. According to GOG, I've played for 13 hours, and I should say that that's all been yesterday and today, while I'm recovering from the flu, so this game really got me through that. :) I'll probably finish tomorrow and there are a couple of small extras, so like 14 hours of gameplay. For the sale price it was well worth it.
Oddly, for a game that I'm rating 3/5, I wouldn't caution anyone against playing it. Primordia is a great game. I would, however, say that you should play it with a walkthrough in hand (preferably one with pictures). PRO: The game has a fantastic setting and great lore. The artwork is gorgeous and the world is immersive. The voice acting of the characters is well-done. Some of your choices feel genuinely meaningful. Objects in your inventory feel "real", at least in part because they can be used more than once on different puzzles. Very broadly useful objects get used repeatedly. There is good use of the data pouch for fast travel and information recall. The varied nature of robots is refreshing. MID: The game will let you back yourself into corners or cut off paths and a number of things in it are ephemeral. Many easter eggs or dialogue interchanges that you might enjoy and want to record or show to someone else can't be triggered again. Also, you can't always make people repeat things they've said to you if you don't recall them. CON: The puzzles are incredibly, astoundingly obtuse. After consulting a walkthrough, I usually found myself deciding the solution was something I never would have come up with in a million years anyway. Sometimes the "clues" from which you're supposed to assemble a solution are in unrelated places or given by unrelated characters, or the connection is only discovered after solving the puzzle. Some puzzle clues are fragmentary, some guessing is required. However, I think the worst flaw of this game is that in a landscape so artistically fluid and with a palette so limited, the amount of pixel hunting is astoundingly high and there's not only little or not visual cueing as to what's a "thing" in the scenery, but often entire rooms can lurk without any clear indication that you can go there. Some UI elements are counter-intuitive or frustrating. Some puzzles require doing things you've done previously and have no reason to repeat.
