The Dark Eye: Memoria: Review

This German studio could be suspected of attracting humanoid robots to adventure production – so often developers from Daedalic Entertainment release their creations. Yes, one could doubt the protein nature of the quest production forces if the games were stamped, slurred and generally mediocre. But over the past few years, Dedaliki has not created, perhaps, a single project in the genre that would not deserve at least an “commendable” score on the Stopgame scale. What is even more amazing, the developers are very different for the developers – both in spirit, and in the letter, and by visual embodiment.

And now: we did not have time to survive the wonderful, wise and slightly naive The Night of the Rabbit, as it was already on the way Memoria – a product of a completely different kind. The game continues the storyline begun in The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav, and again returns us to the kingdom of Antenturia-the world is a little gloomy, but truly exciting fantasy.

If a person digses a relatively fresh grave, he is a criminal, and if he climbs into an ancient burial – a hero. Where is the logic?

Sphinx of a local spill

The main character of the story at first seems to be Geron birds, whom we met closely in The Dark Eye. At the end of the previous Advencura, his friend-Feja Nuri turned into a crow, and now the young man intends to do everything possible to return the “poultry” to the human form. On the recommendation of his friend, Jakomo Geron goes to the forest – to talk with the mysterious Fahie merchant, capable of teaching an unlucky lover of fairies to a very strong witchcraft – the transformation of some forms of life into others.

Fahi confirms his readiness to help, but not free: the hero must first solve the riddle. It turns out that not the first night the merchant sees a dream about an ancient tomb, several robbers of graves, adventurers and young princess.

This is where it turns out that Geron during the path from The Dark Eye to Memoria managed to slightly regret his “mainness”. In the sense, he, of course, is an important person, but on the horizon he painted, as Prince Hamlet said, “Magnit is more visible”. It is worth starting to talk about our dreams, as we immediately endure four hundred and fifty years ago, at the time when Aventuria fought with demons. The heroine is Princess Sadya, who dreams of becoming a great warrior and enter his name in a dusty archive of history in gold letters. By the will of fate, the girl falls into a detachment going to the crypt for a super -agency mask, becomes the owner of a very unusual speaking staff and suddenly buys into the mission to save the world.

The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav was released in June last year. The world in which adventure events unfold is borrowed from the popular board game The Dark Eye.
When we met the hero in the previous part of the series, he was a young and very unsuccessful pupil of an elderly bird. Each meter of Andergast was saturated with a public dislike for the hero. IN Memoria Some townspeople are already respected by the hero, although he still does not complain about him at the Academy of Mages.

Two in one

However, do not think that https://sistersitescasino.co.uk/casinos/jaak-casino/ we forever say goodbye to the hero literally on the threshold of the game. His problem has not gone anywhere: Fahi really makes a riddle to the guy and leaves only three days to search for an answer. In the process of solving birds, he understands that the dream about the princess was very for a reason – too much in the present is connected with this distant and dark past. In addition, from time to time, the hero has visions that again transfer us to the era of the sati and temporarily transfer the princess’s control to our caring hands. It turns out that we simultaneously see the deployment of two at first glance independent lines.

Both of these lines in the dynamism and surprise of plot turns may well argue with a good adventure movie. It is worth the hero to promise Nuri by a quick healing, as it turns out that even physically getting to Fahi the next time it will be very difficult. As soon as the satuya finally crawls to the city, in which she stomped the entire previous half of the game, she has to find that she had done something directly opposite to the desired all this time.

It is not surprising that the game is running out in one breath: the developers are great to keep our interest in what is happening for those few hours for which the passage is designed.

Subject creative

It is unlikely that we could seriously captivate the adventures of Heron and Satya, if we had to “hang” for a long time over the decision of the riddles. Memoria In this sense, quite democratic: a more or less experienced player will calmly cope with the obstacles of the adventure sense.

The main features of the gameplay remained practically unchanged. We are again locked in the framework of one or two screens, give a small number of objects in their hands and forced to come up with these subjects not always traditional use. Иногда упрямство персонажей, не желающих выходить за пределы очередной комнаты, немного раздражает. But, if you think about it, such spatial limitation is very convenient from the point of view of the gameplay: we do not have to run in circles to choose a button that we forgot to put in our pocket five screens back.

Skipping the item, by the way, is not so simple, because the backlighting of active points on guard of our peace. For those who are not enough, the developers have stored a diary. In it you can find the main goal of the character at each stage of passage and a hint to achieve this very goal.

Normal princesses love little animals. And the evil sati is ready to catch and fry a sweet rabbit without a twinge of conscience!

Sometimes the creators of the game openly make fun of us: the tasks with which we are used to acting in strictly in a certain way, suddenly turns out to be a completely different, alternative solution. What will the average adventor lover do when the NPC asks the main character to look for a locking mechanism hidden in the bowels of an ancient burial? It will sigh and go to explore the tomb, touch all suspicious walls and columns, feel every stone that can be felt at least in theory.

Of course, all these standardized body movements will not lead to anything. The heroine just needs to choose one single, never an epic, but quite even a household object and give it to his teammate on the command. There is a castle right there. In general, pass Memoria It is not too difficult, but the brain is constantly turning at some new angle, thereby providing a pleasant massage of the pronunciation.

Professional repair of primuses

An additional share of the variety in the gameplay introduces spells. Geron is still a loser in this sense: he can only break and repair some objects. The ability, of course, is weak, but nevertheless becomes the basis of a pair of elegant solutions. It is difficult to imagine what pieces, it turns out, can be fulfilled with the help of a petrified rat, if you use this skill of the hero wisely.

The princess is still more funny. Her staff has not only an ironic understanding of things and a bad character, but also with magical power. At first, the girl can only turn on and turn off the lamps with magic. After some time, it already easily saturates visions and turns small animals, plants, human hands into stone ..

In fact, the wooden satellite of the Sadi is beautiful not because of some of its super-capacity there, but because of conversations with the mistress. Sometimes it seems that he was brought straight from Deponia – So he contrasts with his joke manner of conversation with the general seriousness and gloom of entourage. The bulge of the characters and the naturalness of the dialogs in Daedalic Still on top.

Perhaps only the characters’ replicas in response to the wrong actions delight are slightly less than usual. There are simply few of them – there are few options, there is little connection with what exactly we do. If in Deponia Almost any statement of the protagonist could be quoted with pleasure, then in Memoria We just listen to the standard “no”, “will not work” many times in a row and the like formulas of universal refusal. Sometimes the objections of the character are generally perceived as a mockery: what prevents him, for example, to pour fluid from one container to another, despite the fact that both tanks are mobile and stand two steps away from each other? By the way, the options for answers in the dialogs are also screwed as if “for a checkmark” and mask the real absence of any choice with paraphrasing. Anyway, the hero will say that the plot is rolled down according to pre -drawn rails – so why this is the illusion of freedom sewing with white threads? If the dialogs were simply turned into videos, the game would look more honest and more solid.

Scatter

Small defects for developers can be forgiven. The world of Antenturia appears before us so diverse, alive and deep that it remains only to be surprised: how the creators of the game managed to give this picture volume, designating it literally a few strokes? It seems that not least thanks to the visual side of the matter. The drawn landscapes are very expressive – looking at the screen, we believe in a tomb with stone guards, and in mountain waterfalls, and in a blurred forest, in which the heroine wanders for a long time before finding a way out.

The situation is not so good with people, because here we can’t do with beautiful statics, and the drawn little men are still not convincing in the dynamics. Animation and especially facial expressions limp on all facial muscles. Well, the standard disease of low -budget adventure did not bypass Memoria, Despite all her other undeniable virtues.

Memoria not perfect and, possibly, is somewhat inferior to other games Daedalic, like Deponia, Edna and Harvey, The Night of the Rabbit. However, the fresh Adventure still remains a very worthy representative of the genre and simply the long -awaited continuation of the history of Heron and Nuri, who loved to the Dark Eye: Chains of satinav.

Pros: dynamically developing plot;lovingly written out game world;original tasks;natural dialogs;Beautiful art.
Cons: Animation curve;repetitions of negative sentences;clumsy selection options in dialogs.