a very sad occurrence: gorgeous game, wonderful atmosphere (and a special mention for the house which makes an awesome setting) literally murdered by terrible storytelling. in a game like this one it's a deal-breaker, but the fact is the writers have tried to force us to care about a complete and indigestible parade of characters by heaping drama upon tragedy upon pathos at all cost, including that of pacing, character development and coherence (not to mention poor, poor subtlety). and the ending feels badly rushed. depending on how offended you can get at being force-fed bad narrative it will even put you off the very beautiful visual work, which considering the amount of effort that must have gone into it is a damn shame. this is a shining example of how bad a "walking simulator" can be, when ineptly written.
this game came for free because of gog reasons which i cannot recall, but i put off playing it until recently, as i felt it would be too "complicated". i was very wrong. i find the combat system fun and reasonably easy to master, the magic entertaining and the world fairly rich and varied. my only nitpicks are the story being a bit hard to follow while keeping track of far more concrete matters such as the ludicrous but engrossing inventory management, and the characters, well. the npc can be called colorful and straightforward (to not use the word simple), but our hero is just a bit too perfect of the fantasy hero-type (who also happens not only to be immune to illness BUT also sterile. and have white hair. and scary, cool cat eyes. etc). i just found it impossible to take him seriously, but in the end i just let go of that and had quite a few chuckles. i do not know how much i would have been ready to actually pay for it, but as it stands this was a very good deal, and got me considering buying the sequels.
