I'm going to treat Books 1, 2, and 3 as a single game for the purpose of this review. By far my favorite aspect of the game is having a whole world to explore. You roam far and wide in a world filled with mountains, forests, deserts, caves, dungeons, creepy crypts, and secret passages, always wondering what's around the next corner. Highly addictive! I like the turn-based aspect of the game. You can go as fast or as slow as you want. If you don't like reflex challenges, this game won't force you to do any. The characters are often interesting. The radical tree-hugger witch made me laugh out loud. The grumpy magic-shop owner: why is he so grumpy? If you snoop around you might find out. Sometimes you have to decide who to trust and who is a liar, which I thought was an interesting twist. The puzzles, while not super-challenging, add some variety to the game so it's not all just monster-killing. The only problem? Book 3 is much TOO SHORT!
I was initially drawn to this game because I found the picture (a robot holding a kitten) so intriguing. And because I like games with puzzles woven into a plot. This game did not disappoint. The puzzles are interesting and challenging, and the time-limited puzzles (which are not really my thing) are infrequent enough to not become annoying. The story and the philosophical element is interesting as well. And yes, there is in fact a cat in the game. My only gripe is that two of the puzzles require a smartphone to complete. You have to be able to scan a QR code. This was not mentioned in the system requirements, and not everyone chooses to own a smartphone. There is a workaround: you can save a screenshot of the QR code and upload it to a web site that will translate it for you.
Overall, this is a fun, addictive game. I played it through, then went back to get all the bonus objectives in each level. It's still fun to play even after you've gone through it several times, and you can figure out a few little tricks to make your track layout more efficient. However, there are a few things about it that I find obnoxious: 1. It's too short. There's another level (Germany) that you can download, but you have to pay extra for it, which I didn't feel was worth it. This wouldn't be so annoying except that it takes you straight to the nag screen on game startup. 2. Some of the music I find obnoxious. There is no way (so far as I can tell) either to disable the songs I don't like or to replace them with, say, the Beatles. Often I find myself restarting a map multiple times till it randomly selects a song that I don't mind. 3. Occasionally it will spontaneously demolish one square of track and put a windmill in its place. Then, not only do you have to rebuild that one square of track, but you also have to pay $5000 or $10000 to demolish that newly-constructed windmill. What's REALLY annoying is when it does this right in front of an oncoming train, so there's no time to prevent a crash. Fortunately, this rarely happens. 4. By far the most annoying thing is this. It dispatches trains on a regular timed interval, but you can click a button to dispatch an extra train ahead of schedule. This is cool; you can run more trains to increase the challenge and get a higher score. The problem is that it charges you a fee (say, $3000) to dispatch the extra train, but sometimes the train is only worth, say, $2000. Automatic money loss. VERY annoying!
