PROS:
+ Good atmosphere
+ Intriguing story
+ Interesting puzzles
+ Decent graphics
+ Passable music score
+ Adequate voice acting
+ Fair length

CONS:
- Annoying movement system

I just finished this Welsh point-and-click adventure game. You find yourself in a desolate farmhouse in Wales and get to investigate strange ghost-demon related activity there. Let's begin with the fact that it was fun at some times and some of the puzzles were enjoyable. Some moments of the story, too. On the other hand, many of the puzzles were very typical (find a light bulb to enter an unlit room etc.), some of the puzzles were randomly stupid. Many of the parts of the storyline are boring and they feel really random and illogical.

The game was made in 2008, but it feels like 1997. Graphics is OK at times, but most of the time it feels like a high school project, same goes with animation (but there isn't much of that). Music is almost non existant and when it's there, it feels like MIDI made by a single person over a weekend...

Rhiannon was made by a three person development team with Wintermute - freeware amateur software for creating point-and-click games. I got it in a game bundle, but I wouldn't recommend paying more than $1 for this game.

Also, there are bugs. Sometimes inventory items disappear. Sometimes menu buttons (MAP) disappear. If you save afterwards, you'll never get them back. It is a known and never corrected issue.

To sum up: if you ever played a point-and-click adventure game, you probably won't enjoy Rhiannon. If you haven't, you may enjoy it. I wouldn't recommend it though.

GRAPHICS: 4/10
AUDIO: 3/10
GAMEPLAY: 3/10
STORY: 2/10

This remains one of my all time favourite adventure games. If you enjoy a slightly spooky atmosphere, and enjoy figuring things out on your own (but with a bare bones journal which will help point you in the right direction but does NOT hold your hand) then this is the game for you.
Largely overlooked, yet on the same level as Barrow Hill and indeed The Lost Crown,
it has a fascinating plot which features a relaxing game play (no running and hiding from enemies) and yet the plot is equally challenging, at the same time. You will be learning(at a simple level) about the branches of the Mabinogion ( a series of Welsh Mythological tales) and it's prevalence through many generations but you will also be learning about a few types of alternative medicine practices such as homeopathy(oh and alchemy, and ancient celtic texts!) I personally love learning in a game ... and I love mysteries, which this game has, in abundance. Full of puzzles and sleuthing, this is a long game, and one that I heartily recommend. (I have about 4 copies of this game and have played it many times.. )

A lovely but flawed hard adventure game. Would be especially attractive to fans of Myst/Riven.

The story is very engaging, and the puzzles are "realistic" in that they are never obvious. There is no hand-holding: it's very challenging. Not quite Riven-challenging, but you better take care to look closely at every clue. The puzzles are fair, but sometimes the clues are extremely subtle. For fans of hard puzzles, it would be greatly rewarding to solve them through patience and sheer perseverence. If you're looking for a casual point-and-click, however, this is definitely not it. With a walkthrough, though, it could definitely be a more casual experience.

The UI is annoying: many times you have to click in a very small area, but there is no indication if you get it wrong. Too many times I had the right idea, but thought I was mistaken because I didn't click at exactly the right place. That felt quite unfair.

Another problem is the rather weird pace. You would think that puzzles would get harder towards the end, but suddenly they become easier. It almost feels rushed. Well, except for the very last puzzle ... those always have to make no sense, right?

The good

Tells a deep and involving story
Excellent use of Welsh folklore and mythology
Challenging puzzles
Automap fast travel is a great touch
Occasionally eerie
Good addition to the adventure game canon

The bad

Moving around can be problematic
Minimal music
Graphically nothing special
Lots of reading (if you don't like that)
Arguably no replay value

I was very surprised and please with this game. I don't play point and click games very often because is seems like we've moved on since that era, however, Rhiannon is an exception. If you like puzzle games, you'll may want to give this game a shot.

Pros:
Unique and challenging puzzles
Engaging story line
Decent graphics for the day
Most of the puzzles are good logic puzzles
Clues are scattered about forcing you to find and put them together
Different areas become available as you progress through the game
The map lets you jump from one place to another saving time

Cons:
Two or three of the puzzles don't make a lot of sense
Too much reading (there is a lot of filler in the journals, information you don't need)
Using the maps jump feature may cause you to miss important information

At the time of this review, this game was selling for $5.99. Well worth it in my opinion.

I think this is only worth the buy on sale. No matter how much I love adventure point n' clicks and how much patience and tolerance I usually have, in my opinion this game had a great start, an excellent overall setting, but it just failed to deliver. What could have been an astonishing spooky mystery story turned into a hardly believable fantasy novel with zero hand-holding, which all-in-all became boring really fast. You basically just keep running around the grounds, looking for something to have changed since the last time you visited a certain location, and then you're supposed to find something randomly placed there using the "pixel-hunt method". Add to that the horrible camera controls and you're in for a bad time. I honestly once walked back and forth multiple times in the same place just to find the perfect spot where I could click to be able to turn left and interact with some cupboard. And when you finally grind through this process and progress the story towards its conclusion, the ending is also a real let-down.

So if I sum this up... yeah, you're most likely better-off playing something else. And it's a damn shame cause I really wanted to like this.

Once again I find myself in the situation of wanting to give a neutral rating, not being able to do so, and then having to decide whether to recommend it or not. I finally decided against recommending it, for there are some things that bothered me in this game, and that I believe should warrant a bad rating. I'll comment on everything I found worth noting while playing this, and end with a small rant on the thing that bothered me the most xD.

Story: it started quite bad, and didn't improve much, but at least got up to a "meh". The main story is easy enough to understand, but there's a "myth" that's quite difficult to grasp, reminiscent of those old myths full of battles for foolish reasons, and magic with ludicrously specific rules that allow you to do almost anything, but only after you've performed a task that makes no sense whatsoever. This whole game is you, carrying out some nonsensical rituals which require finding a lot of random stuff that while ultimately combine, allowing you to go further. It's standard enough, I came here after playing Dark Fall and Barrow Hill, which follow a similar premise, but those were much more entertaining and well though out and put together. Most of the time, I found myself bored, simply going from one place to the other, trying to remember where that item was that I now needed for some reason. It's pretty chore-y, and not in a good sense. The ending is really anti-climactic, adding to the "meh" feel.

Gameplay: it's fine, not good, not bad. The map is not that big, and you can jump between important locations, making backtracking much much easier. Items that you find but are not needed are not picked (because you still haven't seen that thing which would make picking it reasonable), which is a nice touch, but grows old fast, because you need to remember where everything was so you don't have to go through it all over again once you see something new. Movement is not square (some arrows are diagonal) which makes it a little less standard, and yet doesn't add much, and can even be confusing and bothersome, because you want to get to that specific place, and it's not that easy. But I was still mostly ok with it. One thing I don't get though is optimization: the game made my computer hit 60 C, permanently, which is not much, but enough to make my cooler stay permanently on; it definitely seems unreasonable seeing as it's a static point and click game, with bad graphics (I've played many games like this, and this has never happened).

Visuals and Sound: the graphics are not good by today's standards, and apparently not by 2008's standards either. However, I wasn't bothered by that at all. I was a bit bothered because of how bland it all was. Dark Fall and Barrow Hill have some interesting locations that really caught me by surprise. They were really well done. However, here, I didn't feel that at all. New locations were pretty "meh", and there wasn't much to really appreciate. The soundtrack is good, but really scarce. Most of the game has no music. Additionally, it has some voice over, but it's even scarcer. You mostly just read. And that brings me to another low point: you have to read a lot, which is not a problem for me, since I like that in these kinds of games; but what makes this one fall short is that a lot of what you read is either redundant or irrelevant. At one point in the game you read a bunch of emails that basically tell you the same stuff you've read in a diary, except for the very last email, that has one new thing (and is required to be read to go further). But you have no way of knowing this beforehand, and therefore end up re-reading a lot of stuff you already know. And it's not the best story ever written, as I've previously pointed out, so re-reading it will definitely get you bored stiff.

Bugs: there's a small dialog bug at the start of the game (some lines are spoken over previous lines), but that was all I could find, luckily (I understand some people had other problems, but not me).

And now, for the rant:
Even when taking all of these flaws into account, I was still thinking that it wasn't as bad as to say something like "stay away from this", and I think steam ratings are not that fair, with a lot of people ignoring games with "mixed" reviews. I was going to give it a positive review so not to discourage people and get them to give it a chance. However, one final element got me to change my mind, and it is this: this game praises pseudo-science. I am a scientist, and as such, I feel a certain ethical responsibility to not give a pass to people trying to promote false information. This may sound funny, seeing as I played this game and mentioned other games with supernatural and paranormal elements. Why am I not bothered by those, but was bothered by this one? Because this one includes claims that are exactly the same as pseudo-scientists use in real life, includes mentions to real people promoting these false claims, and actually says "according to scientific evidence...". Thing is, I LOVE supernatural or paranormal stories, even though I don't believe in any such things; I love thinking about "what if" and imagining myself in those situations. I love ghost stories, in games, movies, series, books, you name it. And I don't see a problem with liking any of those things, or using those elements in stories, games, etc. But I do take issue with saying those things are actually real, and especially that "science says so". Without giving out much of the story, I can say that one of the characters is an homeopath, and while researching the house, you find stuff saying that water has memory, that it was "proved by scientists", along with mentions to that one Japanese guy who took pictures of ice crystals and said they were actually influenced by speaking to the water, or even thinking good or bad thoughts. In the game, you use those "properties" to perform the tasks, and it would be totally fine if they didn't include those claims that are actually made by real people to convince others to pay them for treatment that doesn't work beyond the placebo effect. If anyone is interested in knowing more, you can read the wikipedia article on homeopathy, I believe it also includes mentions to this Japanese guy (I don't remember his name), who was confronted by scientists, and performed two experiments suggested by them, proving by himself that he was wrong (and of course, he later ignored the evidence he himself found and went along selling books and praising the stuff he made up). Later on, it was said that scientists today believe that ghosts are actually recordings of previous events replayed in the present, which is total bs. Scientists today don't have any evidence of any paranormal phenomena actually existing outside of the minds of the people who claim they do, and there is an increasing amount of evidence of different kinds of cognitive biases, perceptual illusions, and varying effects of suggestion that explain every single instance of paranormal phenomena reported (most of those phenomena can't be reproduced and amount to anecdotal evidence, but every systematic investigation into recurrent apparitions yielded these revealing results, very interesting for psychologists and neuroscientists, but not so much for "believers" or charlatans). In any case, I would have been ok with this game using those elements if it hadn't gone as far as to saying science supports those claims, and using the same arguments real pseudo-scientists use to get people to fall for their claims. Anyway, end of rant xD.

I'll leave by saying: totally meh game, boring at times, with some potentially problematic claims that go beyond the fictional reality this game is trying to create and could actually induce people to believe in false claims in real life.

“Transmutation isn’t what it’s cracked up to be”

Rhiannon Curse of the Four Branches is a budget-made, spooky adventure inspired by Welsh folklore and Mabinogion legends, and made by a small team of three developers in an aging Wintermute engine. Story revolves about an ancient curse and a family gravely hit by it, along with a very angry ghost.

The entire game is placed on a sprawling farm of Ty Pryderi as you’re trying to remove the dangerous curse and its incorporeal inhabitant, and will last you for about 10 hours. Rhiannon COTFB is designed as a Myst-clone, meaning there is almost no character dialogue and minimal voice acting, but there is a heavy emphasis on solving puzzles and uncovering story by reading diaries and journals scattered around the estate. In the first three chapters out of five, puzzles are interesting and well-designed as they rely on chemistry, musical knowledge, association mixed with a bit of history, homeopathy and alchemy. Yes, you’ve read it right: you’ll use the forgotten knowledge of alchemy to change ordinary objects into sources of power that will help you in breaking down the curse. The problem is these puzzles get to be a bit too repetitive in the last third of the game. Sound and visuals are decent, they won’t wow anyone, but they do have a quaint and pleasing feel to them. The major issue with the graphics is that the game is locked at 720p resolution, so playing this game on 4K monitors will be very taxing to the eyes, since there is no in-game option to switch resolutions.

Considering this game was created at the time game engines were very modest in what they could do and indie developer teams were extremely rare and had to fight with numerous technological and marketing limitations, Rhiannon manages to surprise the player with its decent execution most of the time. If you are looking for a game like Myst or a HOPA, do consider giving this game a whirl. As such, Rhiannon Curse of the Four Branches gets a cautions recommendation. You’ll have some fun plus you’ll learn a bit about Celtic culture as a bonus.

A beautiful and enchanting game divided up into 5 chapters. It requires a lot of reading, logical thinking and generally will more than a few hours to complete. No direct NPC interaction, but you're too curious about what's going on in Ty Pyderi to get lonely and soon enough, you're not truly alone in the house.

Loved:
. Graphics: ghostly animations, ocassional jump scares; beautiful trees, old and new architecture
. Sound: good voice overs when necessary, excellent sound effects
. Story: deep but cohesive, with clues hidden in the text of books, papers, etc
. Mechanics: objects easy to select and mostly easy to figure out how and where to use
. Map: click a place already opened/visited on the map and teleport there
. Humour: there were hippies living there as squatters before, growing their own plants. Let's stop there.
. Ending: Definite conclusion and happy to boot! ^_^

Challenging:
. Navigation: The directional cursor is literally like walking - step forward, look left or right, possibly up or down. Reading the help menu in game helps somewhat. It's was dizzying in some places, like the Terminus.
. Memory: There are some cases where it's best to write down things, to avoid jumping back and forth for info., like the elements which cover the horoscope signs.
. Notebook cues: You're not necessarily completing tasks in the order they appear here.
. Items: The symbol is the key! You may have to think quite literally to figure out what you need. There are different kinds of 'fountains', for instance.
. Focus: Seriously, read all the things!

Cons:
. Text: Some of the handwriting scripts were kind of 'scratchy' and bit too small as well. Same goes for a few of the typewritten ones.
. Item Glitch: In one case, my puzzle items clean disappeared when used incorrectly. Another players says that if you had saved, they don't come back. Advise saving before trying these 'matching puzzles'.

Pure adventure games are very challenging for me, as I'm accustomed to the hand holding that comes with HOGs. Admittedly, I needed walkthrough help to get unstuck at times. This game was a learning curve going along, but it was fun, intriguing, well planned, storied and executed. Aside from the few drawbacks, I'd replay this again some day.