No idea about the story, but the gameplay is mind blowing. It's a must buy for puzzle game lovers.
Dear Esther is basically the grandfather of all walking sims. It single-handedly kickstarted the whole genre - so as a piece of video game history, it's definitely worth cheking out. What can easily end up frustrating the player though is the eye-rollingly forced writing and the annoying limitations. I get that the Chinese Room had a story they wanted to tell, it's just they told it in an arrogant way. It's an equivalent of a dement grandfather not letting a kid away till he hasn't yet listened to his confusing war stories. Which is a shame, because the environment and the sound design is beautiful. I wish there was a separate game mode without the narration...
I get that this is a game from 2007... but most of my favorite games are even older. Tried to give it a try back in 2017(?) when it was given away for free - hated it. Tried to give it another look with a fresh mind in 2024... *sigh* Maybe I'm just not the target audience and therefore can't overlook it's shortcomings, but it amazes me in how many ways this game is not good at all. It's buggy, janky, occasionally crashes, the combat system is a joke, the inventory system is pretty bad, navigating in the game world is tedious... The story has some intriguing aspects and the graphics look pretty decent, but that's all. Oh, the dice poker minigame is okay as well.
Raises quite a lot of questions what made Frictional Games thinking The Chinese Room was going to come up with a competent sequel despite the fact that basically most of the gameplay aspects from The Dark Descent were thrown out of the window. I'd even say the game looks far worse, the developers had seemingly no idea how to use lighting and image effects. Watch a walkthrough on Youtube instead, or maybe a video essay covering the story.
