Another great Dave Gilbert adventure game, in lore with his Blackwell pentalogy, which is just fantastic. Its paranormal investigation plot is absolutely packed with meaningful choices that shape your endgame, and party composition also drastically alters the puzzles you face in order to solve each scenario, which adds immediate replay value, not a common feature of point&click adventures, also aided by the multiple endings.

Production values are excellent as always, with great music, voice acting and pixel art for backgrounds and portraits, though character animations could have used some more work.

On the negative side, the silent protagonist is a bit lackluster and the three characters system tends to get in the way on occasion: you will sometimes spend minutes looking for an interactive spot, only to discover one of your guys was standing in front of it, hiding it from view. It would have been better to study a few safe spots where the teammates could stand out of the way on each static screen, sidestepping the issue entirely.

There is also a downside to the efforts made for replay value: at the start of every chapter you are required to select two characters to accompany you, with the problem that some characters are simply much more interesting than others, so some you'll never want to bring along, especially since one in particular doesn't apper to have any paranormal ability and only seems to know how to use a gun. Maybe that was a funny jab at X-Men's Black Widow but considering you cannot change your party mid-mission, this can lead to some frustration when you find a puzzle that could be solved if only you brought someone else along and you cannot go back to get them (unless you load an old save). You don't need to, since any party composition can solve all scenarios, but it might be frustrating to some.

Small niggles aside though, this is an excellent adventure game that all fans of the genre should play.

Reviewed on Aug 18, 2021


Comments