First of all, things that I like: - Open Source - Available on most devices - Amazing depth and diversity - Awards tactical planning and thinking - Active development Things that I don't like: - Starvation mechanic - Thieves that steal items in a way that is eventually unrecoverable - Many annoying monsters that force movement in one way or another - Too many cursed items - Regular armour too weak for level that it belongs to. - Combining food items costs alchemy points.
The story is charmingly relatable and the art style is vibrant. The protagonist is a Tamil woman from India emigrated to Canada along with her husband. You follow her through the stages of her life and whenever there is a eventful change, it's spiced up with a cooking mini game featuring real recipes. It's rather short, but the atmosphere is great. She does not have an easy life, so in that sense the subject matter can be considered mature. I had hoped for a bit more cooking lore, but I did enjoy a taste of a culture I'm not familiar with. The recipes are included with the game as an extra from the menu, which is a nice touch. One star deduction for sometimes having to guess during cooking and I would love it to be a bit longer.
This game is about starting with a sugary pastel world and halloweenising it by simply moving near things. It's a tug of war between the player character of corruption against bringers of cleanliness and joy. In the beginning you can only stun the goody-two shoes, but after you have corrupted enough of the world, you are strong enough to corrupt them as well. There is also some 3D platforming included, because some of the corruption, notably lava, will kill you. The game loop is hopelessly repetitive as your your character gets hints where to corrupt things most effectively and saying a few lines over and over. I uninstalled this after playing two levels because it was not entertaining or engrossing (pardon the pun here) enough to spend my time on.
First of all: I love identifiying plants in real life, so I was overjoyed to see a game that featured that. I would like a bit more complexity and steps with identification rather than vague descriptions in the book that describes them. The atmosphere in this game is incredible. There is a beautiful soundscape and the drawings of both people, plants and the map feel consistent, beautiful and immersive. The puzzles in this game are logical and mostly quite original, which is quite hard. I would liked to be able to save my game and branch decisions rather than playing this game anew. Recommended to those with an inquisitive and curious mind.
First of all: I really like this game and I would give it 4 stars if not for 4 issues I have with this game: Issue 1 : Insane amount of back-tracking Issue 2: major impact throwback after being hit. Issue 3: timed spoils upon defeating enemy. Issue 4: This game cannot be completed on Linux due to a game-braking bug first reported on Steam in May 2015: see: https://steamcommunity.com/app/230700/discussions/1/620713633846327367/ Last reply from the devs: first august 2016. No resolution or viable workaround so far that I know of. Issues 1-3 are matters of opinion. Issue 4 is a blocker bug that should have prevented the release of the Linux version in the current state. This is such a shame, because the game does have a lot to offer: The pixel-art graphics are top-notch and improve quite a lot on the MSX-styled original. While the game is quite hard, the game is consistent within it's world rules. I just love the action-based riddles that are presented to you, although some puzzles are a bit too obtuse for my taste. La-Mulana is quite big and has distinctly different segments of the map when it comes to atmosphere and monsters. The in-game music is catchy and I like the software concept, but not the menu controls. Every pressable button should have been in the button reconfig. So all-in-all, a good game that could have been great with a little polish in the controls. One star deduction for a game-braking Linux bug version that still has not be addressed.
This review has been written after playing for 8 days in the game. First the positives: 1. The graphics are gorgeous, apart from animation stutter. 2. Sneaking in dangerous situations is handled well. 3. The game hasn't crashed yet (using Ubuntu 18.04) The negatives: 1. Both the characters and the story feel flat. 2. The required social interactions annoy me, since your fellow students are not fleshed out enough to make this enjoyable. 3. Time flows far too fast. If I needed tight deadlines, I would go to work. This feels like doing chores. 4. I don't like the abundance of pun humour. Probably because I generally don't like the American style of humour in general, but I can't hold that against the game itself.
Warning: The game expansions still contain active SecuROM DRM. Do not buy and if already bought, refrain from installing lest you end up with an unwanted and extremely diffcult to remove DRM malware.
This review is based on the Linux version 1.0.0, using Ubuntu 14.04 with a nVidia Geforce 640 GT GPU and 8GB of RAM. I love classic JRPG's in general, but I have never played the 16-bit original. I probably wouldn't have liked the original as well, but there are porting issues which I will discuss after discussing the game itself. = Level design = First of all, this game contains so many Labyrinths that it comes across as a gimmick. rather than something which sets a specific level apart from the rest. It slows the pace down to a frustrating crawl. = Graphics = The worst issue I have with the graphics is that they are not clear about which part can be walked upon and which part cannot. This is true both for the 16-bit and the "HD"-graphics, except in towns. The backgrounds have been largely redone and they look the part, but the foreground items and the characters have not. This does have one advantage: You can clearly pick them out from the background. The spell animations are both crude and too long; a spell as ubiquitous as Healing taking 5 seconds?! What a drag... I would not dare to release this as "HD", although admittedly my standards for that are rather high. The option for original graphics and sounds is a nice one, worth one star. = Combat = I don't like the Gathering mechanic, especially because gather levels can be lost by just a slight tap from an enemy. In contrast to this, defending is much more useful than in most JRPG's that I know of. = UI = Nostalgic types will probably adore the spinning selection wheel. I don't. A proper PC port would adapt the UI to the system ported to. In the case of the PC, that means a keyboard by default. The keys cannot be remapped and mapping shows up as tiny characters, hardly readable on Full HD *wink* screens. 1 save game is not enough for a game with many scripted events. = Story = The story is nice, but not enough to compensate for the issues stated above. On top of that the game crashes quite frequently.
Outcast, a unique game... When the game first appeared it was too expensive for my budget. Later, I started hunting for it, because I was intrigued by good reviews. [Gameplay] -Adventure The adventure part is a bit bland to my taste, with a great emphasis of errand-boy type quests that typically direct you from one end to the other end of one map, or in later parts of the game, to an entirely different "world". There are some more original quests that have more story elements, with explanations on the society and the world(s). Sometimes they can be engrossing like reading a book. Similar to Fallout 3, the automap system is hardly usable, because there are no descriptions of key locations apart from the teleporting beacons. The worlds are vast, but some areas especially the Temple and city area suffer from repetion., making it hard to orientate yourself. The tree world is quite beautiful and a real joy to traverse. -fighting The fights are intense and I'm glad that using tactics pays off as the enemy AI is quite good. Placing dynamite would really benefit from a bit more precision. for annoyances on fighting, see visuals below. [Visuals] The distance fogging works great and gives a good sense of immersion in a world. The objects in the game are quite crudely rendered against a much more detailed background. Though this game allows you to switch from a third person and a first person perspective, it frequently forces third person view on the player, which often leads to the ego rendering obscuring the target in a firefight. Annoying. On top of that there are extreme zoom-ins where an overview of the battlefield is crucial for survival. [User Interaction] The user interface is mouse intensive and would be more comfortable if the menu system could use the keyboard as well. The frequent clicks that are required put quite a strain on your hands and fingers. [Maturity and stability] the game plays, but some frequently discussed bugs are still around in this version supposedly compatible with WinXP and modern machines. The most grating one is the stuttering, fast forwarding sound. fortunately this can be easily circumvented, with the price of making 3D sounds impossible. At least one bug prevents you from completing a quest, without resorting to drastic "cheat" measures. An example is jumping to the lighthouse and not being able to get to the top platform. I can understand that some of these issues can simply not be patched, but I would have appreciated it if Gog had mentioned this in the manual, rather then having to search for this in the forums and outside of Gog.com.
