Review is based on only 8 hrs gameplay as Im not sure Im going to finish this one. Its not a bad game, though just now I saw the full price and had instant regret until I searched my history and saw I picked this up for 13 bucks on sale, so that made me feel much better. If I had bought at full price it would have been a downer. First the good: Soundtrack is very pleasant and runs throughout the game, fully done songs in the style of long ago bards, perhaps the soundtrac alone would be worth the full price. (tho sometimes it can intrude) Graphics are adequate. Nothing too detailed but they serve. Puzzles, I enjoy a good puzzle game and this one is full of them. I enjoy the grid based fighting, its different and does allow you to strategize. I can save anywhere at any time based on my purchase copy. Its a slow grind to get gear, I like that in rpgs, makes becoming powerful rewarding. Crafting, there seems to be lots of cooking and stuff. Havent gotten to far in it but I like it. The irritating stuff: No handholding at all. Not a clue on skill tree progressions as the final tree layout is gated by levels. you have to buy armor abilities for each member and its important to know what you are going to do with each party member as you can build a very crappy team. its very unforgiving that way. No clue on what all the stuff found on landscape means and if its a puzzle for now or later. lots of time spent fiddling with inventory, searching aimlessly until I went to wiki to cheat spoilers. The bloody back tracking. This reminds me of those hidden object games where you are constantly going back to an item to interact with it later once you have found the item it needs. However, at least on those games there is a fast travel. might be one here but i havent found it. If you dont save often you may find yourself without necessary items found on one side of map to finish puzzles on the other. get it on deep sale and dont expect much.
For the most part i enjoyed this simple exploration game. a bit put off that it wouldnt allow you to choose your own avatar, but i quickly got into the game and was zooming around picking up stuff. pretty seamless controls, no problems there. combat was easy as well and i quickly learned when i should skeedadle or stay and fight. music was charming and it was fun to loot and scavenge and find special orbs to gain higher level armor. crafting was satisfying. After 22 hrs and my 5th time round the world looking for the same quest item/zone I gave up. Why? horrid map and quest log. If you miss the dialogue text given at time of the quest thats it. You may get a rough circle area indicated on the map for some quests if youre lucky. i think you can access entire conversations somewhere but i couldnt be arsed going thru all that lot to glean some clue on a quest i had ages ago where im supposed to go next. sure you can put a flag on the map but no notes and those flags stay on your horizon until you remove them no matter how far away you are. so at one time i had at least 10 giant icons cluttering my horizon until i got a clue and deleted them all. a better option would be to allow you to turn them on your display at you own need. not that they did much good. Another thing that soon grated was the forced story line, why i couldnt broker peace between the clans was irritating. they forced you to cause drama and mayhem as a lesson. just let me do my own thing in game, learn the lesson via pictographs or dialogue given by npcs. i dont want to become a war god, i would rather everyone got along and traded together happily. i really would have enjoyed crafting upgrades to a homestead instead. buy it on deep sale and enjoy the good bits, leave it when it gets old.
It has the flavor of Myst, even down to ripping out some music chords from their soundtrac. I did enjoy the puzzles but the exploration part was nauseating, jaggy views, ugly scenery that looked like sub par unity game. I tried messing with settings to reduce the nausea, kudos to them allowing users to tweak head bob, blur, field of view etc. But it still was jerky movement with the mouse. Will give it a rest and come back later perhaps
Had to abandon the game as using keyboard and mouse is just too cumbersome, unneccessary steps to just read flavor texts, her body blocks using the mouse action most of the time which makes timed events impossible. Very clunky movement and constantly swinging camera angles. I just cant be arsed with it anymore. What I saw of it was a nice immersive albeit teen angsty drama llama story which would have been great to explore though I found the time control gimmick tiring for the most part. I enjoyed the music. will pop on a lets play and just watch it.
I enjoy the premise and love a point and click adventure but so far this games design choices are bringing me down. First the good: decent graphics, nothing outstanding but passable. Music is nice and atmospheric though it gets repetitious until it turns to a new track, usually via new scene. Puzzles are enjoyable. The bad: unskippable puzzles. If you are stuck or just want to get back to the story, too bad. Checkpoint saves, say good bye to progress if you have to leave game. 3rd person only view. For adventure games this is off putting, camera changes constantly, from 3rd person to close up transitions from hot points. All this leaves your view constantly changing and swerving. Unable to tweak controls or UI. Dont like head bob, too bad. And in this game head bob is king. Camera bobs for unfathomable reason, its a camera. Its not your avatar. Robot head bobs cuz apparently robots have muscle fatigue. lol whatever, its obtrusive. Voice choice for robot is annoying. I get it , its a robot but I cant stand the monotone, slow speech for every flavor text you come across. Thankfully you can mute speech and go subtitles. Unfortunately you cant move the text from the very bottom of screen or change font and size. Radial dial for actions with two extra colored buttons just to make it even larger. Are they for console? whatever. Avatar walks slow, reads slow, game loads slow, finding hotspots is slow as they dont pop up until the robot gets in position near them. cumbersome there is a game somewhere in all the annoyances. Im going to try to make it thru , game just feels like a cheap port
The artwork in this game is gorgeous, each environment is very well crafted and detailed. Its a pleasure to investigate. the story is very in depth it boggles the mind that someone made it all up. I enjoyed the flight mechanic, taking time to just soar around and see all the details. the sound track is immersive and unintrusive. You have side kicks who flesh out their back stories occasionally when you access areas, little pop ups where you can choose responses. In fact the whole story is based around your responses and choices with alternate endings. You can save anywhere and at anytime using either the main menu or quick saves. Its all point and click with lots of flavor text on items that appear when your character is near. there are items to find to sell in order to purchase ship upgrades. There are some downsides, mainly regarding travel, as i said before i enjoyed the mechanic of using a ship to travel to other maps, that said it can get old as you have to back track ALOT, mainly due to not knowing what is going on. Devs could have used a quick travel to skip animations to cut down player irritations. They also could have implemented a better journal with more hints as to what to do next. Maps are opened up slowly and every one updates thru the story, so you have to go back over and over in order to see what hot spots are now usable which is annoying. I found myself lost alot, with alot of simply flying to maps to see if a new hot spot was open. that detracted from game pacing. Overall I did enjoy the game a ton, the artstyle, story and my companions. I look forward to any other game they put out
I'm struggling with this one. Perhaps my tastes have changed thru the decades, perhaps its a covid mood, I dont know what but I just cant get into this game. 40hrs in but I just cant keep playing it as the realization hits that its not that fun, which is a shame as it ticked all my fav game boxes. The good, music is atmospheric and orchestrated. Voice acting is superb and immersive. Graphics are beautiful at times, decent the rest. The areas to explore are many, well detailed and interesting. The not so bad, story is convoluted and puts me off. There are too many factions, if that can be a case, I have no idea who is who and its all being thrown at me at once. The inner dialogue between my party can be amusing at times but usually seems just thrown in. I really dont care for anyone on my team, which is gutting as I was very loyal to my team from the last game. Combat is meh, its micro managing, its either too easy or impossible. I find it tedious, there is capability to customize combat to auto use certain spells any way you wish, but for the life of me I cant figure out the interface to do it. Classes are many with in depth variation and multiclass opportunities that I can see would be fun for those who want to tweak and min/max. I cant be bothered. The bad, very long loading times between booting up the game, transitioning to new environments. you just sit there alot looking at splash screens waiting. The tacked on pirate ship is very boring and not fun. I really enjoyed building up my castle, opening up rooms, gaining peons, it was fulfilling. The ship is dull. You can add cannons, (which cost a fortune) and other stuff but its very underwhelming. Ship combat is more work than fun. I wish they had stuck with the castle idea. The game for me has been waiting for load screens, running around towns getting overwhelmed with faction politics. A few mini dungeons. Tedious combat. Ill give it a rest and try again in the future.
first played this game shortly after its release (still have the boxed copy!) and remember how much I liked the atmosphere and how it perfectly fit the movie. I also remember some aggravation on long transition scenes as you travel to office, home etc which you do often. still, I put this game on gog wishlist and immediately bought it when it was finally offered for sale. I was sure those nostalgic memories from decades ago (geesh im old) would not live up to a second playthru in modern times, getting it purely for curator reasons for my collection. I was wrong. the atmosphere is perfect, the ambient sounds, the artwork clutter and rain, the traveling and using the camera thing to zoom in pictures... all perfect. Gameplay is highly enjoyable for those who love point and click adventures with stories. Searching for clues (at times wonky with the camera thing as you have to find the exact spot for it to initiate the progression hotspot) Voice acting is pretty good tho I found the lead actor too young and chipper. There have been no hiccups with game installation, running or sound. The aggravation of long transition scenes still remain but its not so bad to affect the game. I am totally immersed in the Blade Runner world, even my husband turned to watch some cutscenes with a smile, interrupting his FPS game to do it while I played nearby. If you loved the movie then get this game. If you never saw the movie get the game, its a world of exploration and adventure.
i love point and click adventures and had high hopes for this game but its just too darn boring. gameplay for me is get to the next scene then spend a few minutes enjoying the new surroundings and adventuring then spend the next 30min to hr randomly clicking objects or combining objects in order to get something to happen. the puzzles are obtuse, items response changes to gate keeping actions so you have to reclick repeatedly to see if you can now do an action.... its too boring for words. graphics are ok, nothing to keep you enthralled and the voice acting while well done can grate as its just on the side of whiny. add in how clueless and whimpy the main character is just doesnt pull me along. not going to finish it. i tried but have a ton of new games to play and some old favorites to waste my time with a forgettable irritation as this
