I am very glad I bought this game when it was on sale, otherwise I would be very annoyed. The story is interesting, the settings is great, the characters are very good. BUT there is much too much walking and running around and far too many senseless screens as intermediate stops where you can not interact with anything and that can not be skipped. This really sucks. :( If you can acquire this game for less then 5 euros and you like running around for hours: go for it!
The game has a great story and really great graphics, and the riddles are challenging, but by far not as difficult and ridiculous to solve as in "Nemesis". Although this game is tagged as "point&click", and can be played using keyboard and mouse, it is much better played using a game pad, giving you more control over the movements, especially when the game changes the camera angle. The only annoyance in this game to me was Dr. Watson, because he is always standing in your way. As soon as you stop walking and try to look at something or to use an item, he will walk into front of your face, and the default action will be set to talking to him. Many, many times he positions himself so badly, that Holmes can't move at all, neither forward, nor backward. Whoever programmed that part of the AI, should reconsider their doings.
The good news first: the graphics are great, and the steering / controlling of the characters is much better than in the succeeding game "The Testament Of Sherlock Holmes", where Dr. Watson can become quite an agony, because he is always standing in your way. This issue is much better in this game. The not so good news: although the game has a 3D look, you can not use a controller. Now for the really bad news: the riddles really suck! I am sorry having to say this, but if you loose patience quite lightly, this game is no good for you! Example (SPOILER!): you're inside Tower Of London and the guard tells you that the combination to a coded lock has something to do with the ancestors of the owner of the lock. So you walk into his private place, and search for some clues, e.g. a family history, pictures, etc. But you will find nothing! It went around 2 hours(!) inside the Tower, looking for clues, until I gave up and read the solution in a walkthrough: you need to examine the outside(!) of the wall around the complete Tower area to find some cravings, giving you the code. WHAT??? Honestly: who would come up with such an idea? And this is just one example. There are plenty more of these badly constructed riddles. Luckely, I bought this game as a special offer for ony 2 Euros, so I can delete it without a financial loss, I am so thankful to GOG that they do these special offers every other week!
I just finished the game and I feel a bit depressed due to the abrupt ending and the fate that seems to be waiting for the main character there. Apart from this non-happy ending, this game has several issues, that don't make it a good game. On the plus side: it is one of the longest games I ever played, the graphics look great and the story is a good one. BUT on the other hand, there's this terrible and ugly user interface, which really kills a lot of fun. Although the game is tagged "point&click", you will notice right away that the UI was written for a gaming console, and if you play it on a PC using a mouse, the character is hard to steer. Every now and then she will run into a wall or manoeuvrer herself into some corner where you need to use the keyboard to get her going again. Worst thing is: I couldn't use my game controller, which would make directing the character much easier. Also there is no way of changing the camera view manually. The game changes the view automatically, which will very often lead to staring at a wall or a tree, without the possibility to click any where else to get the character going again, or your point of view will move backwards while the character moves towards you. And the name of the main character, Kate Walker, gets a hole new meaning when she has to walk miles and miles to get just from one room to another and you will have to do a dozen clicks to get her there. This kind of game controlling really sucks! :( Regarding the characters: I like the fictional tribe of the Youkoles and their way of life. They are really cute! But I do not like the cliches of the portrayed Russian characters: they are shown as stupid, devious, malicious persons, ugly on the outside an in their soul. That I do not like at all! All in all, I can rate this game with only 2 stars!
This is a very fine example of how a point&click adventure should work: there are no quick time elements that force you to react in a split of a second, and even when the character says you should hurry up, e.g. because the bad guys are coming, you don't need to hurry at all, you still will have all the time in the world to finish that scene! Furthermore, there is no need for senseless travelling around the world because you forget to take an item in one city. Every thing and all the objects you need are always to be found within the scene or the chapter you're actually in. The graphics are stunning, even thought they are from 13 years ago! And you don't need a high end video card to get to see those stunning graphics either! I played this game on Linux with the help of Wine, using an onboard graphic card, and I did not face any difficulty whatsoever, and I never had the feeling that the graphics are poor. A specially delighting scene to me was the chapter in Germany at the Wewelsburg in Büren, a castle in the shape of a triangle(!) near Paderborn. I used to live next to that town, and I can tell you that the makers of this game did a dammed good job when they did their research for this game and gathered information about that place. Both the outside scenery and the interior are very precisely reflected! Absolute superior work! :) If I could, I would give 6 stars to this game!
I love games with cartoon graphics and humour like this one has. The story, the characters and the looks are fantastic! But there are some elements in this game that drove me up the wall: about a dozen times you need to react very, very fast in order to gain control of some item or to make something work. And you not only need to be very, very fast, but you also need to be able to position the mouse very, very precisely within a very small amount of time! And this required technique is absolutely crazy some times. For example: you need to cast a spell on a person, to make this person drop an item. Then you have less than half a second to position the mouse very precisely where the very small item will fall, and right click and choose "take", before that person will lift the item up again. After that split of a second you will have to try the hole procedure again! I would not call this an "easy user interface"! If you're suffering from any handicap concerning the use of a mouse, this game will not be much fun to you! Even if you're not physically impaired, but your mouse is slightly lagging, like in my case, these situations will drive you crazy! So be warned: Yes: it's a "point & click" adventure with funny riddles, cute characters and very much humour! No: the game can not be played very relaxing all the time! It requires a very good coordination of your hand and and your eye and you need to be able to react very quickly in many cases!
I enjoyed this game a lot! Nice graphics, nice characters, nice story, and a really nice kind of humour. A detective called "Don R. Ketype" - yes, I like that! I am sure there are a lot more funny names in the game, but I did not get them, because English is not my native language. Although I consider myself having a good knowledge and understanding of English language, I really wished there was a German voice track, because many of the characters you meet are speaking terrible accents. Sometimes I had to guess what they where saying, and without the German text I wouldn't even have had a tiny chance of understanding. Apart from that language problem: a great game! Hmmm... the ending... *sigh*... well, it is some sort of happy ending, anyway, and everyone will live happily ever after, although not quite the way you would expect, I guess. Nevertheless, it made my eyes wet. So be prepared and have your tissues ready! Only one question remains: will Mr. "R. Ketype" ever be able to keep his shoes for more than one scene? :)
Shortly after I had started the first part years ago, I fell in love with the game: the setting, the graphics, the characters, the humour. It all attracted me very, very much! So I really wanted to play this part, of course. And boy, was I looking forward to it! But soon there was a bit of disillusion because of the time critical riddles, which became absolute fun killers! It is ok if you need to hurry in some situations and you don't loose any progress you made so far when the clock reaches zero. You just go back, hit the button again and try again. But there are a few situations in which they exaggerated this kind of game play a lot. Without making a spoiler here, take the chase on the habitation zone, for example: there is so much to explore, there are so many elements you have to combine, there are so many ideas you have to let in your brain in order to accomplish this scene that it's very hard to complete all of this before time is up. Because in this scene, you loose your progress completely when time is over and you have to do it all over again from scratch! This was very frustrating! Another thing I totally disliked are the scenes where you need to do some rapid clicking on the mouse in order to simulate strength and achieve progress. After all, this game is meant to be an adventure game, not a arcade game from the 80s, where you need to apply rapid fire on the enemies' space ships in order to survive. And then there's the ending... It's ok if the creators don't want to go for another Deponia game, but did it really have to end like this? This is like a stab in the back after you feel happy to have made it. I don't know who came up with these ideas at Deadalic, but I am sure there would have been better solutions. That's why I can only vote for 3 out of 5 stars.
