With this game looking like a Russian cartoon from a few decades ago, I hoped I'd get some insight into the two main characters. They seem like a pair you'd grow to love fairly quickly. But seeing as the duo barely speak, in an effort to make the game as easy to translate to as many different languages, I imagine, it's hard growing attached to them. They might as well have been copies of each other. They do perform some gags from time to time, when you try to get them to do something they can't or won't do, but those gags repeat themselves so much, they lose their humor, however little there was to begin with. The plot doesn't matter, since you'll solve many puzzles unrelated to it, and quickly move beyond the zoo you start in. All you do is move from screen to screen, with a total of 15, solving puzzles using the few interactable items in each screen. Some screens take a few seconds to get past, while others may take ten minutes, due to some screens having several puzzles, with others only having one. Most of the time it isn't difficult knowing what to do, instead the difficulty is in finding out the correct order in which to do things. More often than not it will cause each puzzle to devolve into a trial and error session, mainly because of how rigid this game is. It seems that in order to justify having two characters, sometimes one character can use an item another can't, and sometimes one character can't even pick up an item - for some reason, while still being able to use it once it's picked up. It's a very forced way to lengthen the game. But my biggest gripe with the game is the lack of puzzles. It seems like several mini-games are interspersed between the puzzles, and those mini-games are more annoying than challenging and rewarding. Finishing this game, I felt ripped off by how few puzzles this game offers. Each screen is an individual experience - solve the main puzzle there, and move on to another screen. I just wish the brothers weren't so basic.
Bad Dream: Coma is, as the name suggests, simply a long dream sequence divided into eight chapters. Being a dream, each chapter is disconnected from each other, and the screens of each chapter aren't that related either Making this game into a hodge podge of ideas thrown together, never rising above the sum of its parts. Basically the horror version of Gomo. The game isn't scary, it just tries to constantly shock you, unsuccessfully, while a thin plot takes place in the background, unrelated to anything you do. The only good thing about this game is its art style, which although interesting to watch, is so sparsely animated, I can't help but feel like I'm watching a slideshow of someone's highschool doodles. Having done my fair share of those, I'm not very impressed. It seems an art style better suited for an R. Crumb or Peter Bagge comic-book. The game does present some interesting shticks, such as the various sounds produced when you click on different items on your screen, but those shticks are used sparingly, making them disappear into the background. One such shtick is the ability to choose a path - to be good or bad, but it seems that once you choose that path you're stuck on it, and anything you'll do won't change the ending you're going to get. So to solve the various puzzles you receive you have to go the route chosen for you - meaning you'll do things you might not want to do. Solving a puzzle exactly like the creator wanted me to doesn't make for a very fun experience, and since the game mixes logical puzzles with illogical ones, each chapter would eventually devolve into a hunt for hotspots, and trial and error puzzle solving. Either way, puzzle solving isn't very rewarding, since the story you advance goes nowhere, and isn't much different from what you experienced so far. It doesn't help that you can get stuck by missing a minuscule item you need to pick up, that looks exactly like several other items in the background. Bad story,mediocre puzzles.
Risen is a streamlined diluted version of Gothic, and Risen 2 is a streamlined diluted version of Risen 1. The two games are so dissimilar, Risen 2 might as well have been made decades apart by a completely different dev team. Everything about this game screams "for the casual gamer", making it an RPG for people who don't want to play RPGs. The map is fairly small and made of a series of islands, which you can't travel between freely, at least at first. At every island you'll also be restricted to following the trails available for you, since about half the island is made of unscalable mountains and hills. Meaning that you'll kill every monster and find every treasure in the island before completing all the quests you're given. You'll also complete about half of the quests before ever receiving them, and the ones that require work are simple fetch quests, with your map showing you where is the person that gave you your quest, and where is the item you need to fetch. Since you can fast travel in Risen 2, the easy, mindless quests become even easier and more mindless, ensuring there's no fun in completing them. Like previous games you have factions, which you can choose between, but you switch factions several times in the game, and learning skills isn't dependent on them, making them obsolete. You can level general traits yourself, and learn any skill if you have enough gold. Collecting plants has become obsolete as well, since they're fairly useless now. Stealing has also been made easier - people see you steal but don't react, and you can loot someone house while they're in it. You also aren't forced to level up as quickly, since throughout most of the game you'll have an OP sidekick to help you fight. There are also achievements and collectibles, but collectibles don't require any skill to get - you find them in chests or buy them from merchants. You also don't need to buy anything, since your gear is as good as the ones for sale, saving you money for skills.
Having never played Gothic 3, I have to review this based on Risen 1, which seems closer to this than previous Gothic games. Compared to Risen, this game seems not exactly rushed, but as if there was no plan going forward - rather a vague idea what the story needs to be, with everything else tacked on. This expansion has everything you need to create an interesting story - castles, warring factions, and orc and human camps. It's very reminiscent of Gothic 2, despite having a fairly small map. Sadly, the small map is underutilized . The kings and leaders don't influence the story, and various monsters and locations have no quests associated with them. Such as the several dragons on the map, and a location with two ice golems and two fire golems very close to each other. I only learned of them by stumbling across them. Luckily Forsaken Gods doesn't inundate you with minuscule quests, but the ones you get aren't exactly big, difficult or memorable. Playing on Hard, the only difficulty was finding places based on vague instructions, leading to aimless wandering. Most monsters can be dispatched with fairly quickly, and most plants can be collected fairly easily, leading to an empty map. Leveling up occurs fairly quickly, most skills you can learn aren't required to finish the game, stealing is easy, better gear is bought, not earned, and most plants you collect serve no purpose. At level 40+ I became overpowered, but could have been OP sooner, if I didn't spend my LP on a myriad of skills. The game is also extremely buggy, possibly due to the large community patch I had to install to make the game playable. Characters I was tasked with killing just would keep returning to life, and other characters would get stuck in the environment, forcing me to backtrack in order to complete a quest. The game also ends on a whimper, by having one final monster to fight, which isn't very hard to kill. There are also far too many chests lying around the map,most with useless items.
