I just want to start by saying that if dreamfall chapters was advertised as an interactive movie I would have given it a 5. But it's not. It's advertised as an action adventure, or even a quest style adventure, which it is not. The world bast popsicle makes a great popsicle, but if you get it when you order cake you are likely to get upset. It's terrible as a cake, it Gots no dough of frosting, and it fills even worse since you were clearly decived. The good things about the game are as follows: The worst parts of dreamfall, combat and stealth, have been removed (these were only there to try and attract console audience, with no success). The bast parts of dreamfall, acting, charecters, story and world building, have been improves upon. Graphics has finally become what it should have been - many people praised dreamfall about its graphics, but that was just advertising hype. It had a good graphics angine, but no artists or budget to use it. In the end, 80% of the game had bland, empty enviorments. Based on book 1, Dreamfall Chapters seems to have fixed this. The bad things about the game are as follows: Puzzles are still at kindergarden level. The sad part is that puzzles were one of the things the game was advertised for. "In here, Zoe needed to enter this building or something, and she needes to get around the security robot" is what I recall from a game update. This was suppose to be a common thing - it is not. The game is still 95% walking and talking. Book 1 had only one multiple solution puzzle, which everyone solves immidietly through the talking option. It had 1 mediam difficulty puzzle (the torch + oil one), one easy plus puzzle (wordrobe) and like 10 obvios ones. Thats it. To replace puzzles, they added "walking dead" style "Choices". I hope these will turn out to be a saving grace, but I have seen choices like these before. Except in Witcher 2, did any choice in any game seemed to matter enough in retrospact? No. I'm bracing for disappointment.
This is hard to rate since the two games are of very different levels of quality. "The breakout" was only Daedalic Entertainment's second Point and click adventure, and it shows. The pace is horrifically slow - dialog is sluggish and stretching, long load times, an old-school 4 action-buttons like in king quest, and so on. It's nearly unplayable. The plot is not that great either. However, after two bad games ("The breakout" and "the whispered world") Daedalic started making better and better games. All their 2012 line was great (even "a new beginning", which is surprising considering it's plot) and "Harvey's new eyes" was one of the best two (along with "chaos on Deponia", another must have). In terms of humor, "Harvey's new eyes" is simply the funniest game ever. The protagonist never speaks a full word, and you only here a combination of what the narrator assumes she is doing, and the voices in her head. Never knowing if Lilly is really an innocent girl who happen to make deadly accidents or a psychotic murderer on a rampage, experiencing her twisted perception of reality by seeing and hearing the most quietly disturbing things I ever found in a video game (and one of these gnomes she sometimes saw has there too) and listening to narrator's properly voiced description of her even crazier thoughts (the banner was a disgrace, take it off now!) will lead to some of the funniest moments of your life. buy this.
Say this to yourselves in the voice of the fat guy from the Simpsons and... Now you get it. Writing is terrible, movement implementation sucks, many skills are realized is an unpractical, annoying or unbalanced way (use alchemy to get a billion in every stat or combine 100000 cheap swards into one, cheap+++ sword some how). Admittedly, I didn't keep playing for long, I gave up after the begging - some struggle between two clans about a mine or something, either the plot was written or the voices acting was done by a guy on crack - the result is completely illegible, also you have a Morrowind style faction reputation level that you cannot get beyond 6 (max is 10), probably because of cut content - and some of the pre-middle - you meet some guilds, a necromancer, and stuff. I was suppose to go a long way and get to the capital, but it was too awful a game to keep playing. From an exploration point of view it is big and empty, and what you do find is boring. Some say it gets better later, but I saw my brother keep playing and it really doesn't. Avoid like a plague of burning zombie alien roaches who don't use deodorant. Should be on BOG, there should be a BOG for this title specifically.
