a lot about my old friend, he introduced me to d&d, he was our forever GM and each campaign he would start with a simple disclaimer I am not trying to kill you, I play rules as written, if you die it is because you were stupid. and we died...a lot...until suddenly we weren't. Brutal trap field dungeons-check Puzzles that can make you question your own mental faculties- check interesting situations and tactical challenges- check Disregard animations- oldschool plays on tokens. Allow this game to be what it is meant to be, a portal to another world fueled by your imagination. This game gave me better d&d experience than Baldur's Gate 3 or Pathfinder. This is what rpg games should always be about, discoveries, exploration, adventure... Simply the best.
Game is fantastic, graphics create feeling of a forgotten village at the end of nowhere It plays similarly to Gabriel Knight sins of fathers or a bit more recent title Gray Matter . Our main hero ine is likeable person who goes throught a lot of serious stuff and actually ACTS as an actual thinking human (pretty rare in fiction today). Characters are not just stereotypes, you really feel drawn into the story and want to see what the hell is the deal with this place. Overall one of the better adventure games I played in my life. Would I place it on the shelf next to Gabriel Knight, Broken Sword and Longest Journey? No... but I would place it just bellow, and for a small studio title it is still a high praise.
Quick cred establishement- I played this game on release, I played also daggerfall, Eye of the beholder and even a goddamn hobbit. Point is...I am old, so do not cite the old laws to me, I was there when they were written! This is a very good game (for more information check out reviews of the original game, this may very well be the best point and click in history and at least for me, this is a PROPER sequel to blade runner) and as an enhanced version it is quite decent, good entry place for new players who want to check what the hell this ancient game is about and why are all the old guys sing praises to it. Low ratings mostly stem from people who just dislike their favourite game to be changed in any way, and I get it, I really do, but we still have the original while the enhanced edition is mostly made to entice new people. It is a bit like a thing with Daggerfall Unity edition where a lot of old fans feel that new version does not have the same climate etc. If you are a new player don't be afraid of it and buy enhanced edition. If you are a veteran...let's be honest, you already own it on disk, classic edition on GoG and probably another copy just to be safe... you are not the prime target for it.
This game does a fantastic job of showing how brittle intelligent life is. Here you are trying to star trek your future and making intelligent, peaceful group of people, they develop fine, reach new high and boom...anti-matter explosion in the reactor. This is the game where "And then billions died leaving small group of survivors" is a good ending, cause they might have died out. You will watch civilisations raise and fall, you will see AI rebellions, total cultural decay prompted by creating virtual reality and you will watch in silent agony as your hyper advanced civilisation which invented faster than light travel, singularity and is basically nearing godhood die of because they just...stopped breeding. Great game which still requires some polish but overall...yeah, their answer to fermi paradox is a number of great filters which will just eviscerate your civilisations. But! But...when eventually all of them get their shit together, and have tons of luck, and somehow do not kill each other by EXPLODING THEIR OWN SOLAR SYSTEM... you will see the birth of galactic community and you will be proud of them...really proud.
Ok. First of all...I wanted to love this game, I watched all David Suchett Poirots and simply love the character. However after playing Sherlock Holmes Crimes and Punishment it is simply impossible to enjoy this game. the mind map system looks similar but it is simply impossible to arrive at the wrong conclusion. You do not have to really think about what happened, you may as well brute force your way throught every problem. The whole dilemma of interpreting facts wrong which was actual danger in Sherlock Holmes simply do not exists here. You will never miss anything- game will not progress unless you do everything in correct order. This is very clear during the first case, an item was stolen from the house, do you want to go to the house and speak with people inside? No stupid, first you need to look at EVERYTHING outside and only then you can go inside. Oh do you think you will have any problems with finding who did it? Nope, unless you click on the right suspect the game will not progress. And yes, it is how point&click games work, I get it, I really do. But after playing Sherlock your expectations change, especially when Poirot was clearly inspired by it. And everything that was interesting about Sherlock was removed in this game. When you adjust your expectations and start to think of this game as succesor to Evil under the sun - rather typical point&click it gets much better. If you look for interesting Poirot game try ABC murders which does much better job at making you feel as Poirot.
