An excellent and engrossing P&C game with a lackluster ending.

Cloak and Dagger Games and Wadjet Eye Games have made some of my fav modern P&C games. This title certainly has all their respective marks of quality and attention to detail.


-Good use of quality-of-life features (double click fast travel exit, object highlight function, autosaves, color blind text option)
-Retro pixel style with up-to-date features makes for a nostalgic yet modern graphic experience (note to self: start writing wine reviews)
-Excellent cutscene animations with rotoscoped elements
-Professional Voice acting
-Atmospheric soundtrack and excellent use of ambient sound effects.
-Engrossing Pseudo-Lovecraftian story and gameplay
-Good game flow. Very few "what the hell am I supposed to do" moments.


-I liked the original title for this game, Incantamentum, better.
-I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I F****** HATE AGS SETUP!!! A BOX TO SELECT HOW I WANT TO PLAY MIDI MUSIC?!? WTF IS THIS, 1992?!?!?!?...... But I digress, this is an issue with AGS not this game.


-The ending, Period. For a game that had such an engrossing story, I found the ending to be a shock and not in a good way.
-Related to the ending, there were several loose ends / unexplained events that never get a resolution. I find adding things like to this to an engrossing story only to not resolve them to be a faux pas.
-Overall game play time for me was around 6 hours including getting all achievements. This is about half of what I would have liked it to be. I think there was room in the setting to pack in an additional few hours of gameplay.


I want to reiterate that I enjoyed this game and I think any P&C afficionado will feel the same. When I look at the list of pros and cons, it makes me think that this game might have suffered from a case of "Deadline-itis".

Let’s look at the facts from this point of view:

-Game has a title change seemingly late into development. This is not rare but is a strange sign.
-Several unresolved events in game that go nowhere and are never explained.
-Signs that there was potentially going to be more gameplay/features but did not get included (things like all the extra buildings you can knock on the door but no ones there for example).
-Gameplay should have been extended by at least 2-4 hours.
-And again, the ending.

People think that because these are retro pixel style games that they are cheap. They are not. They also think they should take less time than a more graphicly intensive game. They do not. I'll also point out that the development timeline for this game overlapped significantly with that little pandemic we went thru...

That being said I have no idea if I'm right or not. I also don't care. This was still a fun game and I recommend it to all my fellow P&C fans.

---

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• Coalition of Point & Clickers Main Page
• Coalition of Point & Clickers Curator

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[h1][b][u]BottomLine at the Top:[/u][/b][/h1] An excellent and engrossing P&C game with a lackluster ending. [h1][b][u]Intro:[/u][/b][/h1] Cloak and Dagger Games and Wadjet Eye Games have made some of my fav modern P&C games. This title certainly has all their respective marks of quality and attention to detail. [h1][b][u]Pros:[/u][/b][/h1] -Good use of quality-of-life features (double click fast travel exit, object highlight function, autosaves, color blind text option) -Retro pixel style with up-to-date features makes for a nostalgic yet modern graphic experience (note to self: start writing wine reviews) -Excellent cutscene animations with rotoscoped elements -Professional Voice acting -Atmospheric soundtrack and excellent use of ambient sound effects. -Engrossing Pseudo-Lovecraftian story and gameplay -Good game flow. Very few "what the hell am I supposed to do" moments. [h1][b][u]Meh...:[/u][/b][/h1] -I liked the original title for this game, Incantamentum, better. -I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I F****** HATE AGS SETUP!!! A BOX TO SELECT HOW I WANT TO PLAY MIDI MUSIC?!? WTF IS THIS, 1992?!?!?!?...... But I digress, this is an issue with AGS not this game. [h1][b][u]Cons:[/u][/b][/h1] -The ending, Period. For a game that had such an engrossing story, I found the ending to be a shock and not in a good way. -Related to the ending, there were several loose ends / unexplained events that never get a resolution. I find adding things like to this to an engrossing story only to not resolve them to be a faux pas. -Overall game play time for me was around 6 hours including getting all achievements. This is about half of what I would have liked it to be. I think there was room in the setting to pack in an additional few hours of gameplay. [h1][b][u]Final Thoughts:[/u][/b][/h1] I want to reiterate that I enjoyed this game and I think any P&C afficionado will feel the same. When I look at the list of pros and cons, it makes me think that this game might have suffered from a case of "Deadline-itis". Let’s look at the facts from this point of view: -Game has a title change seemingly late into development. This is not rare but is a strange sign. -Several unresolved events in game that go nowhere and are never explained. -Signs that there was potentially going to be more gameplay/features but did not get included (things like all the extra buildings you can knock on the door but no ones there for example). -Gameplay should have been extended by at least 2-4 hours. -And again, the ending. People think that because these are retro pixel style games that they are cheap. They are not. They also think they should take less time than a more graphicly intensive game. They do not. I'll also point out that the development timeline for this game overlapped significantly with that little pandemic we went thru... That being said I have no idea if I'm right or not. I also don't care. This was still a fun game and I recommend it to all my fellow P&C fans. [hr][/hr] [b][u][i]For more point & click goodness, check out our P&C fan Steam group, The Coalition of Point & Clickers!:[/i][/u][/b] [list][*] [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/CPANDC] Coalition of Point & Clickers Main Page [/url][*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34690626/] Coalition of Point & Clickers Curator [/url][/list] 👑 [b][u][i]Powered by HoI 4 Deu Curators group in German / English[/i][/u][/b] 👑⠀⠀⠀[list][*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/30388691/] Follow Main group [/url][*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40282064/] Follow Second group [/url][/list]