Recent reviews by SinOfHeart

Very solid CRPG, probably the closest I've ever played to actually emulating pen and paper combat. There are almost always a variety of ways of accomplishing any quest which is really cool, and makes the game feel very free form. The story has its moments but never really wowed me and the ending feels like a huge exposition dump. I enjoyed the side characters I picked though.

Amazing single player that perfectly captures the feel of the original games while still modernizing elements of them. The game runs perfectly and looks amazing as well, can't ask for much more.

As a huge fan of the Myst series I feel like this game did a really great job of capturing what I loved so much about that series. I think I kind of wish there had been a few more puzzles or complexity, although I did enjoy that the game never felt overally complex (it always felt like the solutions were right in front of me most of the time, even the few times I got lost). The game introduced a very cool mechanic but it felt like they could have taken it further than they do in the game to create some really cool puzzles (what is in the game felt like it only scratched the surface of what could have been designed). The only truly negative things I have to say are the performance wasn't great as even on a good system the game was chugging at times, and the loading times, both between locations as well as the couple that are built as walls in a couple places which were even worse because you froze in place until it loaded.

Basically if you're a fan of the Myst series I'm fairly confident you'll enjoy this game as well (assuming you can get over the performance hitches and loading times), but you might be left like me wishing the puzzles had been taken just a bit furrther.

The story sequences look really cool, but the voice work is kind of too campy, and the plot is perdictable. As far as gameplay the controls never quite feel right and some of the ways the jumping physics work is really annoying (like having to be literally right under stomething to grab onto it, or having some fences that you have to slowly climb up). Those control issues then translate into deaths which are aggravating because the game has no way to skip in-game talking sequences so you get to watch and hear the same clip a bunch of times until you figure out and/or get the game's controls to cooperate. One other slight annoynce was that some later parts of the game just have entire buildings falling apart for no reason other than to create challenge in the game.

I'm a bit mixed on this game, although it was certainly enjoyable enough that I would recommend it to the right kind of person.

The game is basically a stat oriented Visual Novel game, where you spend time studying 2 different subjects each week in order to help prevent and avoid future things that will cause your demise (which take the form of stat checks). Overall the gameplay is rather basic, and there are many instances where you will see the possiblity for replay value to see what happens if you pass certian stat checks (although from some I saw it seems that the checks have no real effect even if you pass them). I will admit I've only seen one ending so far, so it is possible that some stat progressions may change some of the major events that I don't know about.

Stuff I enjoyed:
-The artwork in the game is adorable and fun (although there is no animation).
-The game also has a good sense of humor which lightens the feeling of getting into a dead end you can't get out of.
-The plot is well paced and fun.

Stuff I kind of disliked:
-Because of the nature of the game it heavily encourages save-stating and redoing to see if you have actually put yourself in a position you can't get out of (although the game does provide a dialoge skip feature if you press TAB).
-Some aspects of the game like how exactly mood affects stat growth and how outfits work aren't fully explain and will require a playthrough just to learn (but since you have no idea which stats might be good anyways you are going to be learning that too, so it isn't that big a deal).
-The game is very linear (there are some randomly placed events, but they don't seem all that important) so you know when major events will hit (which is nice in that it makes figuring out how to beat the game easier, but also makes the game super predictable, save for figuring out a different sequence of skill progressions to reach the ending in a different way).