Liebe Entwickler, dieses Point& Click wirkte am Anfang Spannend und interessant. Jedoch nach wenigen Spielzügen, hängt man fast bei jeder 2. Szene fest ohne dass man sich Hilfe aus dem Internet holt!!! Katastrophaler Aufbau und unnötige Teilschritte!!!
Bsp: Willst du einen Knopf drücken musst du dreimal in die Nähe klicken bis du ihn richtig betätigen kannst!!! Was soll dass???
Und hält man nicht genau die richtige Reihenfolge ein um eine Aufgabe zu lösen, ist es unlösbar. Teilweise total verbugt!! Einen bestimmten Gegenstand kann man einfach nicht anklicken obwohl es ein Fragezeichen davor hat!!! Diese Faktoren nehmen enorm den Spass am Spiel!!! Betreffend der Reihenfolge wird man auch im Dunkeln gelassen, keinerlei Hinweise vorhanden oder logische Folgerungen!!! Habe jetzt 11h mit diesem Spiel verjubelt, und es ist noch lange nicht fertig. Fazit: Dieses Spiel ist ohne Tipps aus dem Internet unspielbar! Schade!!

City Interactives Adventure-Tiefpunkt

Also eigentlich habe ich hier ein gutes Spiel erwartet, da die beiden „Das Vermächtnis“-Adventures von City Interactive doch recht gelungene Spiele waren. Und da Die Kunst des Mordens: Der Marionettenspieler zwischen den beiden Vermächtnis-Spielen herauskam, setzte ich nun einmal gewisse Erwartungen an Nicole Bonnets zweiten Fall. Dummerweise entpuppte sich das Spiel als bislang schwächstes Point & Click-Adventure von City Interactive. Erstmals musste ich für ein Adventure-Spiel vom polnischen Trash-Entwickler eine Komplettlösung zu rate ziehen. Erstmals wurde ich mit groben Programmfehlern konfrontiert. Und erstmals hat mich die Story wirklich komplett angeödet. Keine Ahnung was hier schiefgelaufen ist. Immerhin schafft es das letzte Spielviertel einen vernünftigen Spielfluss aufzubauen, aber das kann den Daumen nach unten auch nicht verhindern.


Pro und Kontra:

Pro:
- schicke Renderbilder
- gewohnt einwandfreies Point & Click-Steuerungsschema
- zumindest das letzte Spielviertel macht Spaß
- Spielfigur kann rennen

Neutral:
- der Schwierigkeitsgrad wurde seit dem letzten Teil angehoben, das kann Frust verursachen, ist dafür aber nicht so langweilig wie der Einstieg von Teil 1

Kontra:
- vereinzelte Schlampereien trüben den Spielspaß (einmal wurde ein Hotspot nicht angezeigt, einmal ist das Spiel abgestürzt, einmal …)
- die Story ist langweiliger als im letzten Teil und gerät zweitweise aus dem Fokus
- lächerlich niedrige Auflösung von 1024x768 Bildpunkten
- absolut vergessenswerter Soundtrack
- trotz kleinerer Backtracking-Kniffe kurze Spieldauer von ca. 6 Stunden

"Art of Murder - Hunt for the Puppeteer" repräsentiert den zweiten Abschnitt in dieser Adventure-Serie. Beeindruckt von der Handlung des ersten Teils, fand ich es unumgänglich, auch diesen nachzuholen. Aktuell im Jahr 2023 festigt sich jedoch die Erkenntnis, dass sowohl dieser Titel als auch sein Vorgänger beträchtlich gealtert sind. Bereits im ersten Teil fiel auf, dass die Auflösung und Präsentation nicht mehr zeitgemäß sind, jedoch immer noch akzeptabel für aktuelle Spieler. Es scheint jedoch fraglich, ob junge Spieler von solchen Adventure-Spielen noch ebenso angezogen werden können wie jene, die damit aufgewachsen sind.

Leider ist das Frustrationsniveau bei "Art of Murder - Hunt for the Puppeteer" deutlich höher im Vergleich zum ersten Teil. Während ich den ersten Teil noch positiv bewertet habe, fällt es mir schwer, dies bei diesem Spiel zu tun. Hier traten bedauerlicherweise mehrere Spielfehler auf, die den ersten Teil überlegen ließen. Das Rätseldesign war schwächer, und das Spiel zwang dazu, sinnlos hin und her zu laufen, um die Spielzeit zu strecken. Auch die Synchronisation wies Mängel auf, wobei Sätze oft abrupt endeten.

Besonders frustrierend war das Mosaik-Rätsel, bei dem ich beinahe die Geduld verloren hätte. Die fehlende Option zur schnellen Lösung solcher Rätsel verschärfte die Unannehmlichkeiten. In den Steam-Foren findet man zahlreiche Spieler, die im Laufe der Jahre ihre Frustration kundtun und nach Hilfe suchen. Kurz bevor ich das Spiel frustriert beendete, gelang es mir schließlich, das Rätsel zu lösen.

Der letzte Abschnitt des Spiels schien wie eine Ansammlung bereits durchlebter Szenen, was ich als unpassend empfand. Die gesamte Handlung entsprach nicht meinem Geschmack, da der Einstieg zu schnell erfolgte und es keinen Sinn ergab, dass die Protagonistin ohne Befugnisse direkt an einem Tatort agierte.

Während mir der erste Teil noch gut gefallen hat und sogar spannend war, muss ich bedauerlicherweise feststellen, dass hier viele Dinge schief gelaufen sind. Sicherlich kann man das Spiel auch heute noch spielen, und für Spieler mit ähnlichen Vorlieben mag es durchaus seinen Reiz haben, alle Spiele einer Reihe zu erleben. Dennoch lässt sich nüchtern betrachtet feststellen, dass "Art of Murder - Hunt for the Puppeteer" kein herausragendes Adventure ist. Die handgezeichneten Hintergründe, insbesondere die Darstellung von Kuba, mögen fantastisch sein, vermögen jedoch nicht das gesamte Spiel zu retten. Daher kann ich es bedauerlicherweise nicht empfehlen.

if there is one word to discribe this game and it's predecessor it's annoying. amost everything needs to be done in a specific order, where items cannot be picked up until you find out you need them. a good example of why this is infuriating is about halfway where you need to fix a tire.i know it needs a patch and i happen to have seen a rubber patch in an area in the game high up. so i use various long pole like items in i inventory which don't work. there are some items that may be of use in the next room but the game doesn't allow me to pick them up. evetully i take the wheel to the person that needs it at which point he tells me it needs a patch. suddenly that item in the next room is able to be picked up and i can get that patch. this is a game where you need the walkthrough because you need to follow a very obtuse logic all the way through (need a sharp item to cut some bonds and think the edge of a key is enough? nope needs to be something different). the conversations are quite badly written with tone jumping all over the place sometimes with main character jumping logic all over the place. story just as bad. one second someone has a gun pointed at my head, the next we're partners for some reason. overall the game just feels really unpolished

Thumbs down! This game is the second in the Art of Murder series. It’s not much different from the first game. It’s another disappointing point and click adventure game with really weird moon logic and timed puzzles, but without an instant travel map or even a regular map. There’s also a sliding puzzle, but that didn’t bother me as much as the timed puzzles did.

When you write a story, you need to have some idea of what you want the story beats to be. You also, kind of need to be a good writer. This game has a bad writer, one that probably didn’t get through college.

The education level might not matter too much when it comes to writing compelling stories, but if you’re doing a detective investigation story, you kind of need to understand logic. Some understanding of dialogue would help as well.

This game was written first in, I presume, Polish (where the dev team is based) and then translated by the cheapest independent translator available. That was then signed off on, and we get this disaster. Throughout the game, basic English errors are frequent, for example ‘where’ in place of ‘were’, which is frankly stunning to see.

The dialogue is absolutely nonsensical, borderline hamfisted in an attempt to portray sexism, and completely disjointed. Logic flies out of the window as well.

The story goes, FBI agent Nicole Bonnet, is sent to France to liaise with French investigative teams as they hunt down a serial killer called the Puppeteer. He’s had a spree in America, but new cases in France have the same M.O.

The intro has us arguing with a ‘frog’, who thinks Nicole should basically sit down and drink wine in Paris and enjoy some nightlife and not be a lady dealing with murders. In short, already the French are blocking off this supposed co-operative endeavour. And then, when you, as Nicole find some trivial evidence (like swabbing substances on the body for gods sake), the French police act as if this is a phenomenally impressive method of investigative police work.

To show how stupid the logic gets, at some point in the game the French are sick of Nicole butting in, even though she’s there in an AGREEMENT with the French-American investigative forces for gods sake, so they decide to arrest her and send her back on the first plane to “Hot-dog” land. (Seriously, I know I like to take the mick out of the USA, but this is pretty poor).

She gives them the slip from her hotel, which is fine, I can get behind that. A few hours later, she is going back and forth to this hotel using it as her base of operations. The police? Nowhere to be seen. Like, you’re asking me to believe that the French police are so incompetent and thick that they wouldn’t post someone to wait for her to come back? For gods sake.

Just don’t bother with this, gameplay is limited to absurd moon-logic puzzles. The first puzzle for example is to hotwire (dangerously) an antenna to a lamplight because Ms. FBI genius over here didn’t think to bring an adapter plug when she flew from Hot-dog land to Frog land.

See what I mean? If you write a story, you need to be at least as intelligent as the smartest character you’re going to write. The writers are so dense, that our Genius FBI Agent comes across as a few fries short of a happy meal, and everyone else as barely functioning human beings. Only bother with this if you want a ‘it’s so bad, it might be good’ sort of experience, because it’s crap.

Stop this annoying slider puzzles! Espacialy if they are that big! I spend over 1.5 hours on that and I was nothing than frustrated at that point!!! This is the big thing, why u get a negative feedback. The other things are a really boring story, I couldn't really see a plausible connection...
And I was also one of the persons, who needed a walkthrough some times, because lot of things had be done in a specific row and you didn't get enough informations for that.
And sometimes you need to run to diffrent places to pick an item, which she didn't want to take with earlier in the game... Ok, maybe this should be a kind of a realistic touch, but that's not really an expectation to P+C games, and there is so much more what isn't realistic in all of that kind of games.
I would have given a good review, if the slider puzzle wouldn't be part of the game and if you would give at least the possibility to skip that kind of riddles.
What I like on the game is
- Text and Voices in diffrent languages
- graphics
- I didn't had any bugs or crushes with the game
- I like the humor of the game
- Nicole is able to run, so I didn't need to spend hours of watching her walking slowly over my screens :D

But the slider puzzle destroys all the good points this game have... Because it is really really really frustrating, and it is (like many other riddles) random, so you can't watch a walkthrough to solve this riddle fast!

I want to say yes play this game, especially if you are a fan of point and click mystery games such as Nancy Drew. Sadly, I hit a major bug in the game where a slot machine, that is necessary to win to continue the game, will not pay out even when i have wont multiple times. I even tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game and replayed part to get back to this point and it still is bugged. Sadly this means I cannot finish the game and therefore cannot properly recommend it it anyone. Makes me very sad.

I have already beated the game. Steam did not register my hours of gameplay due to some sort of bug.

I have mix feelings with this game do to lack of widescreen support. This game plays like Syberia, except it is a lot harder. Especially the slider puzzle. If you can get the game working you might enjoy the game. But, the game has some lighting issues where it can get too dark, this might be because it has issues with modern graphics cards. I had to turn my brightness setting all the way up to see some items. I cannot recommend this game if you cannot get it to work. They should seriously remaster this game like what Syberia did and fix the compatibility issues.

Game also crashes every time you click the phone. The good thing is, you will never ever going to use the phone like the first game(Art of Murder FBI Confidential). So this game can be finished.

SLIDER PUZZLE(hardest part of the game).

NOTE: It is highly recommended that you save before and after you do slider puzzle. Make sure you have left the key on the library door or the bad guy charges in and kill you. I had to do slider 3 times because the game crashed twice. in the library.

You can complete the left side first before you try to complete the right side as you are holding the missing piece on the bottom left. You do not have to move 1/4 any side of the puzzle out of position. You finish 1/4 left, then 2/4 left and you can do straight to 4/4 puzzle finish as you have to remember where the 1/4 of the puzzle on the right should go.

3/10

It's like a couple of 17 year old wrote this game....

I can't really recommend this game, even for a point n click fanatic.
This game is clearly made by someone that don't know English.
I'm surprised the voice actors didn't try to correct the dialog.

There are so many things that I can criticize....
For example:
you can't put fuel on lighter "this is just stupid" (she says something similar).
But put lighter on fuel.... aaah the lighter is full now...

I'm not going to waste more time talking about this garbage.
I got this game for less than a dollar..... it's not even worth playing for free.