I do not own this game on GOG, but I own it on Steam. I already made a review there, you can read it if you want to (but it is in Portuguese): https://steamcommunity.com/id/umTrovador/recommended/320820 Here in Brazil, this game was advertised as the greatest national game ever made, the game that would bring AAA quality to games made here. It was a bit desappointing. But still, it is a good game. Toren has a great story inspired by mithogies in general. It has that feeling of an old story that try to explain the natural phenomena at the same time it discourse over the human nature. In the case the natural phenomena is the creation of the Sun, the Moon and the solar eclipse. The art style is very beautiful. In most of the game the soundtrack sounds a bit generic, but it still create the perfect environment. The major flaw is the gameplay. IMO games are all about gameplay. The soundtrack, the story, the narrative, everything needs to fulfill the necessities of the gameplay. Toren goes on the oposite direction: the gameplay fulfills the necessities of the story. The result isn't so good, the gameplay is pretty boring and unoriginal and if you do not follow the exactly path the devs intended you to play, if you miss a thing, the story will be ruined. There are also some flaws such as some minor glitches and minor bugs that don't help the gameplay. But I still recomended it. I think Toren deserves a chance, and if you play it focusing more on the story than in the gameplay itself I think you might like it.
I heard once that, in a race, the one who get the first position is the happiest racer. The one who gets the seccond position is the saddest. The one who gets the third position is happier than the seccond. That's because the third looks to everyone who's behind him and gets happy for finishing the race in a good position. But the seccond is always thinking if he was a little better he could have winning the race. Well... Toren was the seccond one. When Swordtales made the game, they were aiming high... even highest than they could. They wanted to make a hight standart AAA game. But Swordtales is a small indie company. It is almost impossible for a company so small make a project so big and make everything right, but they tried and almost nailed it. WHAT THEY DID RIGHT: The story is really good and well told. It appropriates from tarot elements to show us a legend. The narrator is an man whose oldness, mistakes and regrets gave him wisdom. The art is really good. It is beautyfully inspired by Fumito Ueda's works. The soundtrack gives to the game an unique atmosphere. The space where the action happens is well limited, since it is a short game. WHAT THEY DID WRONG: The lack of polishing is the keyword. Everything else they missed out in this game was results of lack of polishing: *As I sayd the art is really good, but could be breathtaking. *The soundtrack lacks a remarkable theme. *It still has some minor bugs. *I don't know about the English edition, but in Portuguese it has some gramatical mistakes. *They gameplay isn't that great. They tried to create a unique and memorable gameplay inspired by ICO, but what they did was boring and forgetful. FINAL THOUGHTS: As I said before: if it were a race Toren reached the seccond place. It is not a bad game, but it could be much better. It is good but its little mistakes shows up more visible than what done well. It could be awesome, but it is no more than good.
