I will review the game, not the nostalgia. I am a big fan of Cryo games, especially the famous Dune, from which this game stems. Unfortunately Lost Eden does not stand up for the quality of its predecesor, aside from the great music by Stephane Picq who made the Spice Opera album, the soundtrack of Dune. Lost Eden has some great graphics for its time, with pre-rendered graphics and animations. The artists were quite talented, creating some unique characters. The plot is about humans and dinosaurs working together, which might seem silly for some. But hey, it's a game, and this didn't make me enjoy the story less. There are many similarities in characters and story key points with Dune. You play Adam, a human who is destined to unite man and dinosaurs to face a greater evil. Yes, you need to rally tribes the same Paul Atreides rallies fremen troops in Dune. And with some twists, you get them working for you. Unfortunately the strategy and economy elements from Dune are gone, the progress of your rallied tribes is very linear and involves repetitve traveling and item finding. The story has alot of potential that could have been used better. The artists created some very interesting "races", tribes of people, which are not used enough, while interacting with dinosaurs is rather underwhelming. Traveling is not very intuitive; each zone has a grid like layout made of pre-rendered 3d locations which has to be explored throroughly, sometimes more than once in order to find items, creatures or points of interests. This part of the game is the most annoying and repetitive. There are a few differences in the way you interact with the new tribes, such as miniquests, but that's all. Gone is the amazing globe/planet view from Dune, replaced with a simple 2D map which does not show you the progress of your zones/tribes. I am only saying this because the game could have been so much more. The story ends somewhat abruptly, but the ending is OK. Get this game when is discounted.
This game is much like a story, like a book with wonderful illustrations, because it has almost no animations (besides cutscenes). It has good voice acting, nice puzzles, and a lot of varied places to visit. One of the lasting memories of this game is the magic system, much like a puzzle in itself. I played this many years ago, and I still remember some of the plot twists quite well. It is a great game for those who love point and click adventures!
This game is a masterpiece because it continues everything the previous game (25th Anniversary) has done right, with a better polish and some improvements in gameplay. The best thing about this game is, like in its predecessor, the voice acting by the original Star Trek cast. Since many of these great actors have passed away :(, the game has a high collector value for any Star Trek fan. The graphics are good for their time and the missions are quite interesting, with lots of twists and many options. The crew will face certain situations when you have to decide a course of action or a certain dialogue. At the end this will count towards a mission score, which also means more replay value. There are a lot of details in this game, you can interact with almost anything, by looking or by analysing with tricorders, a great feature for Star Trek geeks. What I also love about this game is that is so true to the classic Star Trek philosophy. You will feel more like a diplomat than a warrior. Today most SF games are dark, violent, and in many cases dystopian, unfortunately the case for the recent Star Trek movies. But Star Trek originally started with this unique positive vision of the future that you will experience in this game, a vision that I really want to come true one day. And in this game you feel part of that future, which is great.
This game is a gem, because not only that it is based on the Star Wars universe, but it has the best and most rewarding light saber combat system from all the SW games. It is a story driven action game in which you get to be a Jedi apprentice at Luke Skywalker's Academy. You can customize your Jedi hero by choosing the gender, race, clothing, and then choose your light saber (hilt and color). Only the Jedi colors (no red) are available in single player, including Mace Windu's purple. The saber can be upgraded later on to staff or dual sabers, which is awesome. By doing missions, you get to choose between light and dark force powers, like heal, mind trick, force lightning. These can be upgraded with time, while the "core" powers (jump, push, pull, etc), upgrade automatically with your in game progression. After several missions you become a jedi knight and you can upgrade your sword to Darth Maul's staff, or dual wielding light sabers. Again you get to pick the colors, you can have a blue and green sword if you like. Each saber style has it's own combo moves, the jedi can do lots of acrobatics with the saber which need some time to get used with, but after some practice they add a lot to the combat system. The missions are varied, you even get to ride creatures or vehicles. Some missions are quite long and you get to kill lots of imperial troops. However they aren't boring because with time you get to fight more and more sith. The light saber duels are the best part of this game. Sometimes these fights can be quite unpredictable, you can die quite fast or waste two sith warriors at once in a spectacular combo in Matrix style slow motion. You also get to meet several key figures from the Star Wars universe, like Luke, Chewbacca, Kyle Katarn (from previous SW games), and Boba Fet. In the last missions the sith you will meet can be quite challenging, but this only makes the game more interesting. The music is of course the music from Star Wars, it is epic...
I am disappointed that people are so biased with this game because of their great memories with it. This is a common problem with the reviews on GOG. Stop reviewing your nostalgia! This was a masterpiece of its time, but now it feels dated like a black and white SF movie. The story is good, but the missions are boring for several reasons: one the scenery is to dull and dark, like there is no daylight, and second the controls are to complex and not so intuitive. Third, a big letdown, the stealth system is also poor. The tranquilizer darts approach is not stealthy at all, because the enemy will shoot back or activate alarms before falling. Also you don't really know if you are hidden (which makes sense, but for a game is annoying). Some games age well, but with most you will just see their flaws get bigger with time, as game technology evolve. You need to review it as it stands today, not how it was when you were a kid and had a blast with it. Deus Ex is the game you return to because of nostalgia, and besides story has little to offer today.
The wait is over! This game is for those who love point and click type adventures. The 2D graphics are very nicely drawn by Disney artists, and the characters look even better (especially Nico). If you liked Broken Sword, this is a must because the game follows up quite a lot in the footsteps of the first game, even the voices are the same, or at least for the main characters! The puzzles are not very hard and if you feel stuck or clueless about what to do next, there is a nice hint system for every place you are in. One minus is that there aren't multiple solutions to certain puzzles, but this wasn't a feature in the previous games, so it isn't a big deal. The story is the type of medieval mystery/conspiracy that George is likely to get involved in, so this is a big plus, even though I think the lore with the gnostics is a bit mixed up. Anyway, I rate this 5/5 easily, with the excitement that this kind of games can still be made and get substantial backing on Kickstarter.
This game has some great points, but it fails to take five stars because of the repetitive and almost frustrating game play. The backbone of Privateer 2 is the good story with fine acting, even though it is quite linear, is nevertheless interesting, probably the only reason to play this game now. The characters are great, but your interaction with them is rather limited. The universe is also captivating, with enough planets and places, each unique and memorable - ranging through artificial super clean planets to super polluted ultra industrialized planets and remote mining colonies. Earth, now Anhur, is like in most games, a post apocalyptic doomed world. (sad) However, most of the time you will spend in space, fighting pirates and trading commodities between places. You start with some credits, enough to buy the weakest ship and some cargo, and with time you can buy better ships and weapons or equipment. However, there is a downside to this - the game difficulty will increase with the amount of money you have (ship value + remaining credits), meaning you will encounter more and more pirates in space. After a while it becomes harder and harder to trade, because your cargo will often be destroyed by ambushing pirates and traveling becomes annoying due to all the repetitive fighting. The game also has bugs, like if you chose to pay Taffin in a main plot mission, the next mission and the whole main plot will be broken.
