The game has a fresh take on the point & click adventure genre. You no longer move a character around and guide him through a story by making him interact with the world. You become the silent observer of a story. You are presented with explorable scenes which capture certain moments and try to make sense of what is happening right now and what are the developments which led up to it. You observe. You watch people and their actions. You collect clues to your inventory. Finally, you bring all the puzzle pieces together to form a story: The Case Of The Golden Idol. While playing the game, I found the story telling the most interesting part. Some scenes are very relevant to the story, but you only later understand fully what their importance is. And even if I found the conclusion of the story somewhat lackluster, it felt very good not only to bring together each of the scenes but also the connection between them. I found the average level of difficulty very pleasing. The only real downside of this game is that it feels quite short. Well, it is not exactly short for this kind of game - it took me around 10 hours to solve the game (including DLCs) - but it kind of feels short with respect to the price tag.
I played this game with quite high expectations due to the praise it got from critiques, and I was not disappointed. The artstyle is - for what you can expect for such a production - beautiful, the atmosphere sucks you right into the world and the gameplay is fast paced and very much on point. I found the difficulty reasonable. Yes, you will die to some of the bosses and also sometimes just during exploration, but one thing the creators did very well is to put in shortcuts which can be opened during exploration and remain permanently open if you die at some point. This way, almost any death feels forgiving and honestly, the longest way from dying to any boss took me less than twenty seconds. And while I game a lot, I am not particularly skilled and none of the bosses took me more than a couple of tries to beat. Overall, I was only disappointed by two things. First, the collectibles in this game feel somewhat useless. Even though you can find several weapons in the game, I stuck to the initial weapon as it was the most balanced and none of the other weapons felt stronger. It takes a very long time to collect enough crystals to extend your health and mana, and one can only get two additional points each. The mana is useless as it can be replenished easily, and the health is good, but two additional points for a lot of searching do not feel rewarding. The hidden upgrades to your skills are quite weak. Second, the game was over pretty quickly. It took me 9 hours to complete the game and another 3 to get to 100% (where I admittedly used a guide to find the last two crystals). The post game has a lot of missed potential. It is short and does not add any new areas, it only let's you explore the old areas to unlock the true ending and everything you might have missed. The true ending does not add a lot to the story. Overall, I still had a lot of fun exploring the world and would have loved more of it!
