Recent reviews by clebec

Inventory management (quite the mess), scaling (rule of thumb: don't engage opponents on a higher level than your party, even one level difference is a huge difference), UI in general, main quest design, loot system (feels more like a Diablo-like than a cRPG) etc. is all over the place. I _really_ hope that the second game has improved in these regards. Characters, dialogue, side quests are usually better, but that is just not enough to keep the game together over its (rather long) story arch.

Honestly, I suspect that a lot of people praising this game to the skies didnt actually play it to the end (looking at the story achievement percentages seems to corroborate that impression - the fraction of ppl getting to the end game is quite low). According to steam I'm 67h in as of now, of which the last 10-15h rly became tedious and increasingly annoying - the story just takes turn after turn and drags on endlessly while not having enough substance for that.

I uninstalled after the game told me I need to go look for more star stones / blood stones in order to enter the inner part of the last dungeon (Source Temple), even when I think I collected every single one listed on lists etc. in my playthrough. Also used every blood stone, didnt change anything. Might be that I actually need to keep the used up 'inert stones' (which I didnt) even when the consensus seems to be that you don't? Whatever - I rly tried to see it through to the end, but I just can't be bothered anymore...

Nice & clean puzzler that builds upon an easy to understand mechanic and then explores the intracies of it. There are 78 levels with more or less increasing difficulty (most of the puzzles have a quick and elegant solution, even if it might sometimes be hard to spot) which took me a little over 4h to finish. Achievements are reached after 10/20/30/40/50/55/60/65/72/78 levels respectively.

-> Safe buy for anyone even remotely interested in puzzle games, especially at this ludicrously low price of 1€.

My only (very minor) gripe: You can't replay finished/solved levels again. I would have loved to revisit older levels in order to better understand the solution or test out alternative and/or shorter solutions. (Sometimes you will stumble over the solution or rather stop 1 step before completing it w/o consciously knowing how you reached that state. You still might want to solve the level and move on as you dont want to risk 'losing' the solution. Being able to replay the level _after_ solving it would have been great! After you complete the game, you restart at level 1 again and have to replay all the levels in order again.)
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Edit: Typo

I found the controls to be rather clunky and imprecise, which was a pain from the very start. Many ways to insta-die (suddenly and often unexpectedly) in combination with manual saves at certain savepoints don't help either, and neither do poorly clued and rather obscure puzzles. -> Nice artstyle alone is not enough; stopped playing after ~30min & can't recommend. :(

Another typical Shadowrun Game:
+ Great Writing (and quite a lot of it :) - be prepared to read easily the equivalent of a short book in this game)
+ Memorable and unique characters with plausible background story and motivation, both for your (regular) team members as well as for pretty much any NPC you encounter and can talk to in the game (That really stood out for me, in that regard I would rate this game the best of the three SR games!)
+ Atmosphere / world building really fitting for the world of Shadowrun

- UI / Inventory / Party management are not rly that great
- Fights are sometimes kinda buggy (stun grenades and flanking system didnt seem to work reliably)
- Decking was especially anti-fun for me, somehow it was both harder and more tedious than in the earlier SR Games (SR Returns & SR Dragonfall), not least due to the moving opponents and the boring mini-game
Spoiler / Helpful hint for those who are not above using cheats: ALT + F1 will open the debug console that also lets you kill those pesky little ICE thingies, sth I learned rather late in the game but helped me esp. in the final mission's decking part

In short: If you are interested in a great story with unique characters in the SR universe and are okay with some janky details here and there, this game is for you! However, if you're in solely for the fights, expect voiced dialogues / dont like to read a lot or expect a technically clean and completely polished game, you might be disappointed.

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edit: typos

Wow - what a gem! Extraordinary artstyle, beautiful graphics and an outstanding soundtrack make this game an experience to remember. If you have the slightest interest in platforming games, this is as close to being a 'must play' as it gets!

A word of advise for those who have - like me - rather poor platforming skills: Don't hesitate, go play it anyway! 😊 Personally, I switched the difficulty settings at the first escape event from normal to easy (which gives you more save checkpoints) and found the game still challenging (esp. the longer platforming passages looking at you, thorny wind passages and lava puzzle room with disintegrating platforms ; enemies are not that much of a threat), but manageable after that. It also helps if you visit already cleared areas once you have gained new abilities and look for additional life / energy / skill cells. (In fact, I kind of enjoyed that sometimes more than actually progressing the story since you can breeze through the area and appreciate your surroundings etc. more - I probably spent easily more than a third of my ~17h playthrough of the Definitive Edition doing that.)

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Edit: typo

Interesting! I was aware that this game is not exactly considered the pinnacle of the Broken Sword Series, but it still managed to disappoint me! :( It's not due to making a great example why 3D adventure games never got a hold. Rather because it's more a Jump'n Run than an actual Adventure game. Imagine a poor mix of old Tomb Raider Games (at least the jumping and climbing part of them) and Sokoban (feeling like pushing/pulling some crates around?), with some quick time events thrown in, but with very clunky controls and awkward to useless automatic camera angles. Actual riddles? Come on, be content with pushing and pulling crates...over and over again! The story was quite ok (-ish... I'm trying hard to find something positive to say about that game, ok?) for the most part (and the only reason I kept playing, as I wanted to have the complete Broken Sword series covered), until they managed to ruin that as well with a ridiculous ending. Cannot recommend!

So far, I'm at the end of Day 1 levels (~3,5h playtime), and although I really wanted to give it a chance, I can not recommend this game.

Pro:
+ it looks nice (if you don't happen to play the night-levels that is, where you practically see nothing at all and have to trial & error your way through the level more often than not)

Cons:
- clunky 'controls'
- more rng- than skill-based
(those two might be connected...)
- no real puzzles
- rather tedious & frustrating

For me, this game does definitely not qualify as a platformer, let alone a puzzleplatformer.

Not sure, but taking into account the ingame highscores (i was surprisingly top 10% (??) just after playing for 2-3h and completing around half of the Day 1 Levels) and the fact that only 2,2% of the player-base manages to reach the 10h playtime mark (-> Hidden Achievement 'Total Dedication'), I would assume that a lot of players only give this a short try and put it quickly aside.
There seems to be a lot of fan-made levels as well tho, so if you really like that game, there is a lot of content waiting for you.