It got rave reviews at the time it launched, It got even better later - they said! It's buggy. It started to freeze randomly for me. Just ALT-F4 and load the save, play a couple of seconds and encounter a freeze again. Repeat. Oh, now the freeze happened a minute in, but I forgot to save again, so back to square one. It's unplayable in the end and it's a shame.
All of the murder mystery games that I've played and seen focused on some far-fetched series of puzzles that you should solve to move the story. You should complete one puzzle after another in exact order to progress. Some times these games will hold you by the hand and scream some clues at you like: " MISSIS SOANDSO HAS BLOOD ON HER BOOTS!!! HER HANDS HAVE BRUISES LIKE SHE WAS KILLING THAT MAN LAST NIGHT WINK-WINK NUDGE-NUDGE!!!!!" Sometimes these games will have some puzzle that you just don't understand or maybe you can't spot something which ultimately resolves with pixel hunting and other silliness. The point is that this "genre" of games pretty much was defined and it was (IMHO) stupid. And Lucas Pope did it again... The author of this magnificent game may have been known to you by his previous game "Papers, please" which was a genre-bending or even genre defining experience in game design. Return to the Obra Dinn made by exactly this habit of the author - to ignore conventions and barriers of genres. It almost seems like he was mad as me by this void of proper games that will make you feel like Sherlock Holmes or some other great detective. And he made this game as if to fix and revitalize this dreadful and un-dead genre. PROS: - The game will show you the whole story (except for one chapter) of what happened regardless of how good you are as a detective. No stream of stupid pixelhunting puzzles that lock your progress. - No stupid hand holding and screaming clues at you. There are some clues that are blunt, some are very subtle, but nothing is in-your-face press-e-to-sherlock - You have one and only one thing to worry about. The main game mechanic is simple to understand and the game builds on it effortlessly. No new out of the blue and far-fetched puzzles! - Music is superb! - Sound design, voice work and the direction is godlike. CONS: - The opening of every new scene may drag a tiny-bit at times :(
Look at other strategies with streaming economies and big armies. The king is old. We all love him and we will play him (or, maybe we'll just think that we will) from time to time. PA is flawed in its core. I wanted to love it but I just can't. I own it anyway and I want more games like that and I want more players to play them... And then there's AotS:Escalation... The game has some things in it that I think should be improved. And it grows slowly and forms in a much better game all this time. It has a lot of room for improvement because it has potential. It's not perfect, but if I compare it to the other titles, considering budgets and monetisation models, and the moves made by the companies - my money is on this game. I am playing it from time to time and a single tear drops from my cheek. It needs more players, to become that game we all wanted (not really, but really). It is the best one around if you ask me. Let it grow into something bigger. Buy it.
