Alenee's Profile
Stat Summary
- Average Rating:3.3
- Helpful Votes:302
- Reviews Submitted:64
- First Review:October 14, 2015
- Most Recent Review:January 4, 2020
- Featured reviews0
Status:
The fate of the realm depends on your ability to reunite the five races and remind them of their vows!
Overall rating
2
/
5
1 of 1 found this review helpful
I'm giving 1 star for every chapter I enjoyed
PostedJanuary 4, 2020
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
5
/
5
Level of Challenge
1
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
Another absurdly long game with zero plotline to fill out the completely unnecessary and draining final three chapters. Another game that started off promising, had nice visuals and sound but soon turned out to be completely empty behind the eyes.
You're saving a fantasy land from a broken truce, and as I mention in the title of this review, there are at least two good chapters of constant forward movement. Then, like so many games these days, it nosedives into dark, uninspiring scenery with zero plot progression and endlessly - and I do mean, it felt endless - repeated tasks. Finding a handle for a spike, axe or trowel; putting an eye in a relief.
If the devs would care to know what I AM looking for in these games, it's face to face interaction with characters, which are developed and whose presence forwards the plot. And I want references to them, and the changing action, in every second or third scene. If you're even thinking of putting in a string of four, five or six scenes with zero interaction with any character, aside from fairy tales read from a book (a tired cliche by now), cut half of them out and add more action.
At the end I skipped and hinted my way through about a dozen scenes in a row because they were that tedious and, well, I am prone to migraines when I frown at the screen for a long period of time. Needless to say, if a game gives me a headache, the dev's doing something wrong and I cannot recommend it.
I gave it a solid 2-3 months of repeated attempts to finish this, too, so I really tried to like it but there's just no reason to go on after the halfway point.
I don't recommend this game.
Can you rescue your brother from an ancient and deadly fate?
Overall rating
3
/
5
5 of 6 found this review helpful
It's OK, but not quite market ready.
PostedDecember 2, 2019
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
3
/
5
Level of Challenge
3
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
I'm almost finished the demo and while the concept is good and the action is constant, the quality is just too rough for my tastes. It's more like an unfinished beta than a new release, with sluggish transitions, constant delays after one clicks on anything, and unnecessarily drawn out, semi literate dialogue that should have been translated and edited by an English native instead of merely being spell checked by one, which is what seems to have happened here.
I'm thinking it might be worth a free ticket if you are a very patient person and/or a slow reader. For me though, the gameplay and mechanics are just too slow! They drag down the action considerably, which doesn't make sense considering the adventure style game. I imagine the slowness was added intentionally to stop people from getting past the demo, which makes me fear the worst for the rest of the game.
Buy at your own risk!
Buy at your own risk!
I don't recommend this game.
A family hike through the woods takes a terrifying turn!
Overall rating
2
/
5
4 of 5 found this review helpful
Added 2 stars for the first chapter. Deducted 3 because it's all downhill from there
PostedNovember 26, 2019
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
2
/
5
Level of Challenge
5
/
5
Storyline
2
/
5
Well I have tp say that whoever gave this five stars probably didn't play past the first or second chapter before they rushed their review in to Big Fish, because the game goes way downhill at that point. the action loses all its coherence in terms of relevance to the storyline by the time you get to the second chapter, where you play as the husband.
Please people, tell us when you're reviewing a game based on the demo alone, the first chapter alone, etc. Because the reviews were so good and the demo was quite strong, I bought the CE and man, what a waste of money. I should have gone for the SE and even then, only in a sale.
CE "bling":
The extras are the usual items you need to find scattered around each scene and this was so hastily and badly executed that it's added nothing but frustration - the morphing objects are a bit of a challenge to find but the audio discs are impossible. absolutely impossible. I've found a few just by randomly clicking around the screen but that was by accident... they must be invisible, right? Where's the fun in that?
Action:
At the end of the chapter where you play as the mother, there is already a sense you're just doing filler tasks and waiting for a development in the plot. When that comes it's arbitrary and adds nothing to the action, like most of the other 'plot developments' that occur thereafter.
Scenery:
I would mind all the above less if the scenery was up to scratch, but that takes a nosedive by halfway through the Dad chapter, when the colours turns monotone and the tunnels of the mine are so dreary that you want to do anything but look at the game.
Eipix, here's a free tip: when you release a game in WINTER, the dreariest part of the year, it's best to set it somewhere opulent, exotic, vibrant. Why would someone who's just come back from streets with grey skies and skeletal trees wanna faf around in a grey toned, monotone simulated environment? Seriously??
Plot line:
As for the cleverness, that's vanished by the second chapter as well. One task involved me openig a locked box whose lock is sawed off by two miniature loggers, who break it into pieces. What the heck? Who'd spend hours banging out the metal components for a lock that's destroyed on its first use?? This is par for the course, as you use a miner's helment to magically dredge unwieldy items out of a vent and other totally improbable tasks.
Minigames:
And the minigames are also unnecessarily complicated: one game involved a square where the tiles had to be slid around to leave a gap at the center. I was so bored I pressed skip and then was glad that I did when I saw that around 20 moves were required to get them into the right position. 20 moves by someone who knows what to do? That could easily mean 50 or more moves by someone who's making mistakes. Do the devs really want us to spend hours on a single mini game? Well, yes, actually they do, because there's no plotline or action in this part of the game at all.
When is Eipix going to stop trying to fool us into thinking we've had a decent game and start actually providing one? i suspect the other reviewers were deceived by the start of the game and wrote their reviews before the first chapter ended, which is their bad since it skews the ratings for the rest of us, but at some point all of them must have ended up feeling almost as bored as I am now. So I'm warning anyone who buys this not to do that just based on the demo. Wait until it's on sale or you have a free coupon to purchase. And maybe don't waste your money on the CE.
Conclusion:
I would get bored playing this in the waiting room for the dentist, so my final verdict on the game, after two and a half chapters, is that you should give it a pass.
I don't recommend this game.
Get on board the spaceship with Hercules, explore distant planets, find extraterrestrial life and save the galaxy from a dangerous monster!
Overall rating
3
/
5
1 of 1 found this review helpful
Good except for one thing
PostedNovember 3, 2019
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
5
/
5
Level of Challenge
5
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
There have been times in the past when Hercules was far too easy to be fun for someone competitive, like me. That's no longer an issue - this was challenging. Added to which, the devs haven't made the same mistake as others, in that they haven't changed what ain't broken. It's a challenging game with a fluffy storyline and bright graphics.
My only beef - and this is something you won't know until you're done the demo and gotten into the nitty gritty levels of the game - is the developer's time. I'm on level 2.2 and have been trying to beat dev's time. That is my usual, hyper competitive goal when playing these sorts of games (lol). Yet despite me doing the level significantly faster than any of the 'expert' walkthroughs I have seen, I'm stuck at 7000-8000 points out of a possible 11000. At one point I discovered a technique to finish quicker and, I kid you not, my points went DOWN overall.
I don't want to sound like a sore loser but it's clear something is very off about how this game scores you. Maybe it's a bizarre trick like those birds in the older games, but to me it's clear as mud what one has to do to beat the already insane developer's scores, here. So I'm deducting a point for that, because it takes a lot of satisfaction out of the game when I can't get the top scores no matter what I do. If you're competitive, be aware that this game will not be so impressive but if you're just a fan of Hercules and want to carry on as before, this is a good buy.
I recommend this game!
Can you save the Heavenfall campers from a malevolent force in time?
Overall rating
2
/
5
11 of 17 found this review helpful
What was THAT all about?
PostedJuly 20, 2019
Fun Factor
1
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
2
/
5
Level of Challenge
1
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
I downloaded the trial based on the 2 excellent reviews that were posted here, at the time. Unfortunately, I couldn't disagree more with their ratings.
I couldn't figure out what was going on in this game: the main characters are some sort of weird fox human hybrid that was an elvin or fairy breed.... interesting concept, except in every other respect they were like normal teens at a normal summer camp, dealing with a normal... er... Golem that was after them for no good reason that I could make out. From what I could fathom, this hybrid teen theme was slapped on to avoid unflattering comparisons being made between this game and another highly successful one, featuring campfire horror tales.
Getting on with the story (for lack of a better word): you play some sort of detective or hero who has an unspecified relationship with the hybrid creatures - it's never made clear what. These misguided youths or whatever they are, have unleashed a curse. It's not really clear how or why they did this, or what the curse even is. Before you have the chance to get your head around all these plot holes, Golems appear and start trashing everything. Also without rhyme or reason.
This was as far as I could make it into the demo before I got fed up with the garbled progress of the story (and again, it seems a stretch to call it story at all) and stopped.
An odd feature here was that the characters would inexplicably freeze in mid-action whenever I had to do go off and take care of my filler tasks, e.g. collecting a telephone shaped token to open a booth and what not. They would literally freeze, and stay frozen until I'd completed my task. It was creepy.
(Has anyone else here ever thought of how funny it would be if action films incorporated some of these typical HOG tasks into their plot lines? Imagine if the Wolverine has to drop everything in the middle of confronting Sabretooth just so he can go glomming after some oil to remove the rust from his claws... only to find it's locked away in a cabinet... that can only be opened with a bunny-shaped token... that has been dropped in the back garden... that he has to swipe from a zealous, hungry, squirrel, using some nuts? Might be a good plot for a SNL skit. But, I digress!)
I tried my best to like this game, restarting it three full times before losing patience. Each time, I forced myself to get through each scene, teeth clenched, mind boggled by the lack of continuity. In the end I deleted it, before the trial was half over. That is saying a lot because I think very carefully about downloading anything, given that it takes ages on my computer, and I only very reluctantly delete games I've downloaded. And even then, I only delete them after a full trial. But this candy coloured mess was unplayable and unrelatable in the extreme, and it was a waste of disk space.
Elephant, take a holiday. Reflect, relax, get centred and focus on being your best self. Then, please make some great games for us to play again!
I don't recommend this game.
An ancient evil awakened in the kingdom. Travel through the four valleys on a strategy adventure and
save the kingdom on the brink of destruction.
Overall rating
5
/
5
If it ain't broke, don't fix it... and they haven't!
PostedJuly 7, 2019
Fun Factor
5
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
5
/
5
Storyline
5
/
5
Like the other reviewers who recall the first two instalments of this game, I am pleased to see that the devs have carried on with the original adventure story, and have left all the other enjoyable parts of the game intact. All too often these days, the relentless drive to modernise for modernity's sake ruins classic gems, but not so in this case! The storyline keeps progressing from game to game; as a result, you feel like you're being drawn along by a mini saga. And I do mean 'mini', as in the characters in the game are absolutely tiny! That makes it seem like even more of an accomplishment that the devs manage to keep you engaged in their dramas.
You'll just need good eyes to find all the necessary supplies here, but you're given all the time in the world to do so. So even though you're challenged, you can relax!
As with the first two games in the series, I only set out to play thirty minutes and am already neck deep in the story... and I can't imagine being able to stop until the end. Addictive! Be sure to save it for a rainy day or a long haul flight, otherwise your plans for the day will be laid to waste.
Good, old fashioned point and click adventuring at its best!
There is a shadow hanging over New York City and time is running out.
Overall rating
1
/
5
1 of 8 found this review helpful
Would love to have played it, but...
PostedJune 13, 2019
it did not work on my computer. This is the 5th game that does not work despite having the right specs for Mac.
I don't recommend this game.
Solve the disappearance of a rising theatre star and discover the secrets behind the curtains of the Parisian theatre.
Overall rating
2
/
5
3 of 8 found this review helpful
Too bored to finish the trial
PostedJune 12, 2019
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
1
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
Artifex Mundi used to be one of the best devs but increasingly, all their offerings are so predictable, it's like they're being churned out on an assembly line. This game is no exception.
You are a reporter sent to take photos of a singer's performance in turn of the century Paris. No one speaks French, nor has a French accent, but hey I can let that go. The sequence of actions makes sense at first but after the performance starts and the singer is abducted, it deteriorates into absurd levels of busy work. After half an hour, I still hadn't gotten two rooms into the theatre building, despite performing a dozen or so tasks of the run of the mill, pointless "repair a doll for a crazed maternal monkey" variety. Who writes this stuff? And what are they being paid? Whatever it is, it clearly isn't enough... and their lack of motivation and inspiration shows.
I am literally too bored to finish this; it's obvious that the story must be incredibly thin if the devs need to resort to these time wasting tricks to pad the story out. I am also annoyed that I wasted bandwidth downloading this trial. So, for the sake of customers who pay by the gigabyte, I am vehemently NOT going to recommend this game.
Pull up your socks, Artifex Mundi. I think I'm not the only one here who is getting fed up with your low quality work.
I don't recommend this game.
Researching the cause of a mysterious supernatural epidemic will have wildly unpredictable consequences...
Overall rating
2
/
5
1 of 1 found this review helpful
No challenge, no storyline, very little fun
PostedApril 23, 2019
Fun Factor
1
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
1
/
5
Storyline
2
/
5
This is one of those games that's making me seriously doubt that I'll ever buy another HOA ever again. I had to force myself to finish it because not long after the demo ended, the plot left the building and never returned. Thereafter all I was doing was collecting pieces of magical artefacts from all around a very attractive but meaningless landscape, and nothing made any real sense. Few of the tasks made any real sense either. The developer tried to patch the many holes in the plot with ancient documents containing long winded explanations of why this random magical object had to be assembled in that random order and applied in some totally random way to fulfil a (you guess it) purely random task. All of this as a means of killing time between the arrival and departure of the Evil Tree, which still takes far too long since there's nothing resembling a real storyline to hold it all together.
Lame, lame, lame. And a waste of money, if I'm frank. I keep saying this but if devs spent a quarter as much money on *writers* as they did on graphics, they'd have far more loyal and devoted customers. I personally have no interest in cruising through beautiful but pointless scenery for hours. Maybe it's because I live in a pretty area, but I can't rationalize staying in to play a game that lacks character, a narrative, plot twists and coherence.
I don't recommend this game.
A visitor arrives through Prof. Bennett's portal, seeking help.
Overall rating
4
/
5
4 of 4 found this review helpful
A solid fantasy game
PostedJanuary 18, 2019
Fun Factor
4
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
5
/
5
Level of Challenge
3
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
This was the first Eipix game that I played and to be honest it was the reason why I became interested in trying other games from them, too. I assume the low ratings come from people who have tried a lot of Eipix's stuff, but don't be deceived by them: this game has bright, interesting scenery, a unique storyline for the most part (even if it does dovetail into the usual 'rescuing people from a mysterious evil' style of tale), and a fusion of fantasy and sci fi elements.
If you want something bright and fantastical but not too hard, you could do a lot worse than spending an afternoon on this game. As I recall, I liked it so much I replayed it all the way through once again once it was over, which is something I've definitely never done again!
I recommend this game!