This game has gorgeous visuals and good voice acting. I thought the puzzles were just the right difficulty and the mystery definitely had me intrigued. Unfortunately, the story was where I was let down by the game. The game doesn't really give you many real answers at the end. I finished it and left unsatisfied. Maybe they're trying to set it up for some sequels later, but at this point, I didn't feel like the game was worth my time after I'd finished it. None of the characters besides Kathy achieved any real depth. The "bad" guy was predictable and pretty cliche and hamfisted. I called him from the first few minutes of the game and was right. The weird elements were certainly more interesting, but none of them were really explained. Maybe they were going for a "you decide what it is" sort of approach, but...it felt lazy. I love adventure games. I love the Blackwell series to pieces and was hoping for something like that, but I don't know if this really delivered as well as replaying a Blackwell would have.
I love adventure and point and click games. I especially love ones that have humor, good characters, and put a fun spin on fairytale or folklore elements. This game delivers on all of those fronts. The puzzles weren't too easy, but they weren't too frustrating either. I used a walkthrough a couple times for hints, but that was only because I had a time constraint and was impatient. The puzzles aren't hard enough that you should need a walkthrough. I enjoyed the characters. Anna's voice grated me a little, but I liked all the other voices, and the art was great. This game would get five stars for me, if it wasn't for the ending. Vague Spoilers I don't have any problem with sad endings, and I was very pleased with the development of their villain character, and I liked getting to explore her motivations, but the game introduces a lot of elements and does a lot of great buildup right to the end, and then it just...ends without tying everything together or answering the questions that I as, the gamer, really wanted to have answered. There were other characters who's motivations were never explained, and backstories that you expected to be given, but weren't ever given. The ending was very unsatisfying for me. It felt like it didn't entirely live up to the promises that it made in the previous chapters, and it really felt like the whole thing was solved by a Deux ex Machina instead of the protagonist. End of Vague Spoilers. I really enjoyed this game until the end, but...the rushed and unsatisfying ending really kind of spoiled the experience for me a little bit. Because of the ending, I can't give my full recommendation.
