Overall I was fairly disappointed by this. It's very short - a couple of hours at most and there is no replay value. It's also very linear with no choices at all, it doesn't matter what you do the game will always end the same way and you don't need to worry about survival at all. The problem is that this makes it harder to feel involved in the story. For example, fairly regularly Adam will stop working for a few seconds because he's depressed but because the words and animation are always the same it is just gets annoying after a while. I think it could have been great to have to make decisions about helping people or risking getting injured etc with the same story - it would have made more of an impart. Overall it is worth playing especially given the very low price, but it doesn't have the impact of the main game.
This is a great adventure game - original, disturbing and memorable. The stylised graphics add to the atmosphere and though the game doesn't have any voice acting the writing is vivid enough to bring the characters to life. The puzzles are a little too simplistic but this really doesn't detract for the experience. While this isn't as polished as Cat Lady and it's a lot shorter, it is just as evocative and mature. I highly recommend this to anyone who's prepared to try something genuinely different.
Crusaders of Might and Magic isn't a bad game it's just not a very good one. It's a short game that is fun for awhile and is probably worth the price GOG is charging but don't expect anything special just because of the name. There is almost no story, the role playing elements are fairly shallow, the npcs are just silly, the voice acting is terrible and the ending is disappointing. However the combat is fun especially spell casting - and although the game get very repetitive it's certainly not terrible and if you are looking for a short diversion and don’t mind some flaws and a lot of backtracking the game is not a bad choice and overall I enjoyed it.
In my opinion there is very little to like in this game. The graphics were very nice for their time, the story isn't too bad and some of the puzzles were fun. But unfortunately the bad points outnumber the good points by a lot. The voice acting is generally poor and sometimes terrible. Control is frustrating - you have to centre an item in your view in order to interact with it - really you can't move the cursor you have to move you view around. You can't choose when to save your game - the game auto saves instead. As a result whenever you die (and you will die a lot) you will probably have to repeat what you just did over and over. Although some puzzles can be fun, many aren't - and quite often you will get stuck because you don't realise that that you can interact with something because you didn't centre it correctly. I didn't completely hate this game when I played it years ago but there was very little I liked about it. There are much better games out there and unless you have played every good adventure game I wouldn't recommend this one.
Demon Stone is okay, not great, but worth playing. The rather unoriginal and clichéd story is well told and the acting is very professional, it features Patrick Stewart who is excellent as always (I would have only given it 2 stars without him). The fighting is fairly fun - it can get difficult as you have a lot of enemies thrown at you but it never gets that hard. However you need a gamepad to play this game - it's a console port I believe but the keyboard and mouse controls are horrible. It’s a very short game; it took me less than 10 hours to complete it the first time I played, which was disappointing but I guess it’s better than having a lot of dull levels added to stretch out the game. Overall there is nothing wrong with Demon Stone, if fact the story and gameplay are enjoyable but there is nothing very memorable either. If you are looking for a hack ‘n slash RPG to pass a few hours with then you could do worse especially if you are a fan of Patrick Stewart.
This is an incredible game. It has a wonderfully, creepy atmosphere which make you really jump at times. It’s very long and has an impressive story which, despite being very complicated, does actually make sense and there are no annoying loose ends left over. It starts out as a fairly standard tale – you have received a mysterious letter from your father who has died and you’ve met a creepy priest so obviously you decide to go and stay at a large, spooky, deserted house in the middle of nowhere where inevitably you end up battling the forces of evil. But surprisingly the story is actually well worked and well told out and becomes more and more interesting as the game continues. The story is told mainly through reasonable well done FMV scenes – there is a little over acting but mostly the actors are good and sometimes they are even very good. This is still a good looking game I think and the areas are diverse and interesting. The gameplay is action/adventure which some genuine and challenging puzzles as well as the many easy one. For most of the game you are accompanied by Rebecca, a psychic that joins you early on and provide hints and story details. But don’t worry she never gets in the way. You move around in first person view and you can equip various weapons for battling the many, many monsters around. Which brings me to the main flaw in the game – there are too many fights, they work quite well but they are repetitive and they end up breaking the very creepy atmosphere of the game. The other flaw is that the story takes too long to get going but if you have patience it is worth persevering. I have played this game a couple of times now and I love it. Despite the flaws this really is a wonderful game. It is almost impossible to get working on a modern pc (I have Windows 95 on virtual pc) so it’s great that GOG have got it here. If you enjoy action/adventure games with fantastic stories then trust me you won’t be disappointed with Realm of the Haunting.
