Recent reviews by Sakuranohime

Imagine you are on summer vacation with your friends. It is a starry night. The weather is warm and you go out into the forest and fields to play a little bit hide and seek.
This cozy feeling is the feeling that I sometimes have while playing hunt.
On other times, you just shout at your screen.

It is what it is and it is fun!
(I got 15 achievements in my first run.)
Felt invincible and then died in 2 seconds.
Will play again!

I love all the Frogwares Sherlock games! And one combined with Cthulhu is even better.
I love the atmosphere and had not a single issue streaming it, so it is well balanced (no bug or crash for me).
And my picture made it into the game, what an honour (kickstarter). :D Can only recommend this game!

If you liked Dorfromantik, this game is for you, It is very similar, but yet different.
I think for the price it is worth it, even though I might get bored of it quickly. (But that is just me.)
I still like the look and feel of this game and will pick it up from time to time.

Your buildings get points, based on the landscape and surrounding buildings you place it at.
You can play in "story" mode, where you get medals, if you achieve a certain amount of points.
The other is free game. But more modes are to come. (Review from early access)

So far I encountered no bugs and the game is easy to pick up and play.

Positive
The story keeps you wondering, what is happening and why.
Try not to spoiler yourself and enjoy the ride.
Negative:
Co-op sometimes does not work porperly.
And you cannot skip cutscenes (which is ok for the first playthough, but not for the next ones. And yes, you would need to play it more than once to have all achievements).

Story is captivating.
German and English voice acting are really good.
It somehow missed the surreal tone of LiS.
And I did not like the "funny story"of Gabe and Ryan
laughing about a dead goose, really?
But overall I would recommend it, if you like the other LiS games.

It is very similar to the Room series, but just not as good in my opinion. Would I still recommend it? Yes. Why not as good: some puzzles are not as logical with some trial and error, which gets annoying, because the camera moves in a small "video", which just takes sooo long, if you want to just search for something quickly. I would say rather buy the room series, but if you finnished it and search for something similar, this is a good choice.

I love the whole "The Room" series and this one as well. The riddles are not very hard in this one. I had one bug here, where the video sequence would not trigger although I had the puzzle solved correctly. Going back to the menue and starting again helped here. I also had the bug that the object was always in my hand and I could not place it. Same here, going back to the menue once solved it. Otherwise no issues, lovely game and I enjoyed it very much. Thought it was quite funny that (with a small break ingame) it took me 4:44 to complete the room 4. :D

Price and time:
I got it in sale for below 5 Euro and finnished it in less than 4 hours. Would not pay more for this short gameplay.
I could have done it faster. It felt very short to me. No replayability for me. More in gameplay below.

Gameplay:
You walk very slow. Running is not helping much.
And then you can barely do anything. Some objects you can watch from close by,
but there is no use in doing so (no interaction or comment).
Let me give you two examples:
If you interact with the bell on the front desk, you don't ring it, you see the 3D model of the bell.
There is a rose in one room key box, you see the 3D model, but no comment from Nicole (and you cannot get in this room as far as I know).
There are no puzzles (just finding some objects again later).
But the hotel has a nice old feeling about it and the voice acting is good.
Grafics are nice too.
I encountered no bugs.

Story:
I dont want to talk too much about the story, but for me the characters in this game do not make a lot of sense.
Nicole's character was not well written, although we do not get to know her very well. In the end, I did not like her at all and could not feel with her. It feelt like something is missing. The end does not make a lot of sense either.
However I think Irving was nicely done. I'll explain both in below texts with spoilers.

Nicoles character seems to jump between multiple characters too much, too fast. I mean that one time she just runs around and says fu** this and fu** that, angry at Irving and the next second she says thank you and flirts with him. With her attitute in the beginning, she would have normally be more wary about Irving, not trusting him this easily. She also wants to stop Irving from suicide and one second later tries it herself, although she was a very strong and curious person before. So it does not make a lot of sense. Although it is weird how she wants her father to love her and how she is jelaous of Rachel, who had an affair with him.. (she 16, he 49 I think) But the game does not reveal a lot of Nicoles thoughts to us. The relation of her father to a 16 year old is called a scandal, but somehow also weirdly romatised..

For me, Irving was very interestingly writen. Saying that: in the beginning I thought he was so weird. He was studdering at first and later casually flirting and I got goosebumbs, wondering what his secret is, as he did not seem to be what he said. In the end I think he faked it all very well from the shy studders to the flirting. Although I had the feeling they made him commit suicide so they do not have to program any character interaction, it does go well with his twisted mind, being alone in this hotel for so long, weirdly obsessed about his sister.

I will try to cut this short, but the list could go on and on..

I am really thrilled about the effort and that there might be a next Gothic.
But this demo did not feel like Gothic at all.

One non Gothic related comment:
- - Who decided this motion blur would be good? I felt sick after a few seconds and it looks horrible. At least give us the option to turn it off.

- - - The main character is so unlikeable. He sounds and feels off. Weird voice, weird face, constant weird comments, when he talks to himself. Seems helpless in comparison to the hero of Gothic 1 and 2. Totally annoying guy.
- - The world is too shiny and colourful
- - The dialogues could be written in a better way. Shorter, more rough. They are too "nice" and staged
- Fighting feels to much like a 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 1, kinda "staged" and so on. In Gothic it was more "open"
- Objects shouldn't be highlighted and there should be more objects to find

+ + I really like the music
+ It is good that they didn't give the hero a name