I've played this game twice and both times had a good time. Its rpg light, meaning the genre has been striped down to basic elements, you can still craft potions, eat food, gather loot, build your skills etc. , its just not super complicated or you have to resort to game manuals in order to figure out how to play. This leaves the game easy to pick up and off you go, plenty of flavor text, items to manipulate in the landscape, lots of loot with clever descriptions, in fact you will read a lot in this game and thats where the fun is. The story is perfectly fine, along the stereotypical lines of evil baddie taking over the world and a young adventurer set on a path to fight it. many characters with back stories and minor quests. companions to equip. Its like eating potato chips, one chip leads to another, same with progress in this game. Its hard to put down, just one more exploration, one more skill to level and before you know it hours have passed. Graphics are minimal but well drawn portraits and dungeons. Music is very well done, orchestrated thru out. Menu is easy to use, inventory is small enough not to be a hassle. crafting is very quick. Now to the religious stuff. It does have direct references to Christianity but only in a couple of cases. the most egregious is finding a whole bible under a desk. First play thru I was most put out by the proselytizing, second play thru I barely noticed. Most of the religious references are what you find in all rpgs, referring to a Maker, following holy texts and monks path of sanctity. If not for the clumsy insertion of actual bible references you wouldnt even notice. Females are portrayed a bit flaky and girlish which is annoying, ive seen worse in other games. Gameplay is maybe 20- 25hrs, perfect for a quick fix of rpg goodness, it has mods which you can easily access in start menu, most are trivial, one allows playing as a female which was nice. its addictive and fun
This game is lovely. Rich realistic villages and environments, nice soundscape of barking dogs, mumbling npcs, clinks and clanks. This is not a glossy depiction of the dickens ideal, its gritty, grimy, moldy, the npcs are dirty, have thick accents, the roads bad. The story is engaging, or rather... stories. Like the tales of Sherlock Holmes come to life, only new ones. Unlike other reviewers I enjoyed the guy ritchie take on Holmes, Im here for entertainment purposes not to maintain some status quo of Holmes stereotype. The relationship between Watson and Holmes is relaxed and realistic. I was a bit shocked during gameplay to see Holmes leave the house in his undershirt, all sloppy, and to even go visit a Lord dressed like that. It wasnt until later I discovered his wardrobe where you can dress him appropriately for the occasion. All good adventure gaming so far. Right? This could have been an easy 5 star game, if it let you play. If it didnt govern all aspects of your game, from what you can explore, to actions, to interactions. If it had included more flavor text, let you manipulate the environment, touch things, grab more objects, open drawers and so on. Instead, each landscape has a few 'hotspots' of actions. If you dont activate them there is no progress. Gorgeous landscapes where you only interact in 3 spots is not fun. some hours in the game when I realized I wasnt exploring or playing but only following a graphic novel with mini games. There were story choices to be made but it was in your face, heavy handed at the very end and you werent given time to really feel for it. often you fight the interface just to work the game. there are clever mini games where you link clues, or go into holmes sleuth mode, but once again its railroaded with big icons saying 'use skill now!' like a bratty spoiler. if the devs had just let players.... play. let them explore, make mistakes, go wrong ways, BE holmes this could have been great.
This is a beautiful game. I thought the minimal graphics would be a turn off but the immersion level is immediate and intense. The soundscape is perfect, waves lapping, winds blowing thru caverns, the sound of nightfall all invite you into this world. Its very reminiscent of Myst. the music adds to the ambiance, at times sad and mournful, others joyous. The story is very intriguing, you find glimpses and clues to what happened, each clue spurring you on to find more. Puzzles are somewhat intuitive, if you look closely you can see markers for where your char is to go and there is no long back tracking to see what effects happened if you did an action. Why 3 stars? well, the camera takes over on many puzzles, limiting your view drastically which is unforgivable in a platformer. ex, there is a bridge arcing over the ocean into another island. For a long time I thought it was a hidden barrier and forgo trying to cross as the camera would take over your char halfway across the bridge to the point that you couldnt even turn it around to backtrack or move the char forward. result was the char falls and restart. finally was I able to deduce that you had to wiggle the char left/right along the bridge, blindly until you reached the other side. many instances of this, I think they were going for cinematic experience, with epic music rips and an eagles eye on the action but what it translates to is irritation as you just cant see what the heck you are doing. In their favor the devs are super generous with respawns, often just seconds away from where you died. Last and what drove me to stop playing the game (for now) is its extremely headache inducing. I managed to fiddle with the UI enough to stop full on nausea but I cant play any length of time without hours of massive headache later. I think its due to the camera not being locked on the point of view, its continually scewing around with mouse look vs movement keys.
I was excited to play this game, from the trailer it looks lovely and relaxing. However upon starting the game I found the controls confusing, aggravating, nausea inducing and generally sucked all around. Keyboard and mouse, there is no way to adjust or mod the keys, or lock the camera. You can however invert camera and motion pitch, yaw and whatever but it isnt enough. You spend most of your time just trying to turn left without spinning aimlessly, or instead of diving you end up doing a roll. Camera is busily go in its own direction, every motion of the swimmer is met with spinning views in the opposite direction, indeed half the time was repositioning the camera to stay behind the diver rather then taking off in the opposite direction. Needless to say all this pitching, yawing and spinning plays havoc with those with game nausea, there is no way to adjust POV or lock the camera which would have been easy fixes for all those problems. What I have seen of the game is lovely, minimalistic art with muted limited color palettes which still convey a sense of swimming in the ocean. The music is atmospheric but once again no option to mute it separately from the game if you want to just hear the ocean sounds. There is a sense of joy in exploration, being able to catch onto a huge grouper for a ride was so sweet, but the horrid controls for movement ruin that experience. seriously, what dev makes a game that has no player customization options at all? unforgiveable, i would have gotten a refund but cant be bothered.
having been burned by other sites that sold unworkable versions, but was pleasantly surprised when Gogs version worked right from the get go with win 7 64, no tweaking necessary. Worst complaint is there is no way to skip the cut scenes, and as you remember or will find out, this game is all about puzzle solving, and with that comes many repeat attempts to solve, most involving long cut scene animations, should have been a way to tweak this with nowadays. Now onto the game as seen with fresh eyes, the graphics are dated. Static images of oceans and some scenes look blurry and faded, you can see the edges of the Quick Time clips for animations, all can be off putting to new players. Your character moves thru the game via background scenes using the mouse, turn left and the scene changes and so on, the sliding view screen can make one a bit nauseous, or it did me on fastest setting, I chose the mid range level and was fine. You can fast travel of a sort using zip mode which places markers at junctions where you have traveled before but for the most part its nudging ahead via many mouse clicks. no map function, have to draw your own old school style All complaints are quickly forgotten as the story unfolds and you are immersed into this vast, lore rich world with its own created language and numbering system. imagined worlds are beautifully painted while the immersion level deepens with a superb soundscape, you can hear the buzz of insects thru the wind rattling off stumps of trees, or the sharp alarm of some unseen beast, the creak of wood as you step on it. The music shocks in its abrupt arrival, soulful and somewhat despondent, only to fade away leaving the hum of arcane machinery. Npcs are glimpsed fleetingly which only adds to the sense of loneliness and impending doom. The puzzles are excellent, very intricate and frustrating. I have yet to solve one without a guide and am not ashamed of this. One of my favorite games, it still shines today.
When I first started this game I was blown away by how immersive it was, the story was gripping and made me really want to play my main a certain way. Artwork is superb, no dungeon or place looks the same, you can see the love put into it in every area, house, dungeon. The music is also good , fully orchestrated. The voice acting is perfect, and professional. (not all dialogue trees are voice acted tho) . There are many unique classes to play with and explore, some are so darn clever. You have a castle you can rebuild and can hire plenty of help. hidden stashes to find, stealing, different story arcs for different reps and reactions. 90hrs in and I seem to have lost that immersion. Why? combat. Its everywhere, wouldnt be a bad thing if it was good but its very cumbersome. I like turn based combat but if you cant see your chars, enemies, or readily access spells, or see debuffs etc then its a trial of patience, not fun. Horrid camera angles, poor zoom makes the battlefield confusing, spell effects hide chars, battles end up a blob of effects, npcs and party members. descriptions of attacks and spells are wonderfully written but make for hard going when you are trying to find a specific attack due to the wordy tool tips and there is no way to organize your 'hot bars'. journal bestiary is practically useless for figuring out mobs strenths/weaknesses. the same combat music and battle yells repeat nonstop. You can set it to auto combat to a point but once again, if it was easier to micromanage then there would be no need, combat would be fun and strategic. Add in long loading screens and its just a bore. Curiosity for the story and love for my party members still drive me, but in the end I may put it up unfinished and move onto something less irritating or set the difficulty to lame Story Mode. Still worth it for the story, artwork, unique classes, voice acting and truly hilarious party banter
The store page has what looks like a very polished nice graphic game, what I got was a buggy hot mess. From it not recognizing my mouse input, to constant to the desktop crashes (it even signed me out of windows for some reason) to clipping of large object like boulders thru walls, to graphical glitches of disappearing landscape assets. The five minutes I could play was a hoot tho, being a god Darth Vader smearing those despicable rebels into wall grease was a blast. Too bad I didnt research before I impulse bought, forums are full of threads regarding the above errors and a crap ton of player fixes to try and work around it. I expect that from old rpgs like morrowind or fallout, not this relatively newish game. one of the rare times I asked for a refund.
Was looking forward to this game but within the first 5min I had to uninstall and ask for refund. Why? because the dev decided to not allow Head Bob or Camera Shake to be toggled off, or to enable FOV adjustment. Terrible design and I cant believe someone would deliberately design it this way. They are aware of the nausea from this game from beta players and from forums, the only thing they did was allow for motion blur and fps reset. Even standing still the view weaves and bobs like the char just ran a marathon, add in movement and you are rewarded with spinning scenes with discernible lag from mouse look and movement. What I did see of the game was intriguing, Lovely artstyle (with the exception of char faces which are butt ugly) and a gorgeous fully scored music intro with orchestra. I can handle the artstyle and story, in fact I was prewarned of it by many negative reviews and still looked forward to an unique discovery, but apparently devs decided their idea of immersion outweighed a huge percentage of players comfort. screw that and them
Such a beautiful game, lovely handpainted landscapes, each very detailed. The voice acting is superb and the narrator fun and clever. The story is engaging as well, tho a bit predictable and cliche. My rating is really 3.5, held up by the stellar graphics and acting, however, several glitches causing me to restart whole levels (bosses getting hung up in landscape so you cant kill them to progress, walkways getting detached and stuck in gears preventing progress, etc) Gameplay gets old as it repeats the same scenario every time, progress to new area, find orbs, find way out, get cut scene. Would have liked more exploration or break up between levels. Some levels were near unpassable if you had not leveled up a certain skill, though devs allowed you to respec. I didnt want to respec each time a level was difficult, seemed to be cheating. Towards the end I was just tired of the game, at the end battle boss ended up watching a Utube just to get the story completion.
Total time playing this was around 7-8 hrs which includes replaying the last chapter to get a different ending. If game length vs cost is a concern for you that might interest you. I found the cost for it fine, even better on sale. Pros: Engaging story, a nice immersive feel to the spying, nod to voyeuristic tendencies we all have to snoop into what the neighbors are doing and really saying about you, interesting characters to flesh out with lots of flavor text, emails and photos. Different endings depending on your choices regarding what is evidence and conjecture so some replayability, music was adequate, graphics were interesting-kinda washed out theme I guess to reflect a separation from reality vs being an Orwellian spy. Cons: Game froze at the most inopportune times twice, both during the big reveal, causing me to have to reload. It can be very difficult to know what to do next, especially during the end chapter, alot of times I was uploading data that I did not want to upload due to me trying to get the game to progress, many forced progress gating. I watched other players on utube and they had the same problem. Information uploaded sometimes had different reactions then intended, which seemed to me be more forced linear story telling. I hesitate to replay the entire game as I feel you will still end up with the same 3 endings regardless. The endings are very abrupt, there should have been more for the player to do at the end to get the full feeling of accomplishment/shock/awe/whatever. No way to hasten scripts during replays which causes unnecessary length to get to those major decisions in order to see diff endings. Music was a bit too bland and could have used different scores to break the monotony of it. Overall, the game was interesting, with some tweaks it could have been great. I did like how they showed all sides to the story, nothing was black or white in morality. Worth it to get on sale for an afternoon of immersion
