Wrath of malachi oozes with spooky charm, it's dark halls and opressive atmosphere makes saving all your friend and family from the horrors of the castle all the more gratifying, and thier loss sting all the more. I am perhaps overly fond of it, it is a little rough around the edges, but the atmosphere drips as thickly as old ichor, and getting to carry around four flintlocks to swap between as you want is something more games should offer.
The first half hour of obduction starts off fairly strong, a strange new world with great visuals and detail littered around liberally, a sense of mystery and potential depth. Unfortunately after this it suffers from the old adventure game weakness of puzzles tying cement boots to the pacing and tossing it into the ocean. Puzzles require scrounging every last scrap of ground to look for what's interactable, it sighnposts where you can go poorly (in several areas, you have to solve multiple puzzles in order to acces a space that any healthy human could climb up and down.). And combine all this with an intolerably slow movement speed and lack of any hint system has left me bored after several hour long attempts to progress. Better signposting, a journel and at least double the runspeed might make this game worth playing, but at present it's a cool world bogged down in tedium.
This game has ome of the most satisfying beatdowns (for the player or the AI), everything feels heavy and powerful, the windup swing of a hammer bringing in just the right ammount of tension before slamming into the unfortunate foe with a bone crunching sound and stagger! Even when moving the character feels like a bulging brick house of flesh and steel, heavily armored boots crashing through furnature sending debris flying as you charge into the fray! Simply, it feels great to play, and keeps urging one more try with smart mechanics like unlocking shortuts and secret passageways to make each attempt after a failed fight that little bit quicker and more immediate, plus if you do die, you'll be given some time to return to where you fell to retrieve any lost experience points.
