Broken Age: Review

The fashionable manner of crushing adventure for episodes sometimes causes a serious headache in the authors of reviews. Is it possible to evaluate the right hand and left leg separately? Is it possible to judge the upper and lower halves of one whole organism separately?

There is something unnatural in this, at first glance. However, after all, you can look at the problem and differently. Advencura is primarily a story that developers tell us. Gameplay, of course, is important, but without a plot, not a single representative of the genre on a shelf with good games will fall. So, while the history has no end, while it is only half told, we again cannot make a full impression of it.

First half Broken Age was wonderful, almost exemplary. The delight of players and critics from this creation Tim Shaifer (TIM SCHAFER) turned out to be a stick about the two ends and responded with cosmic expectations assigned to the second part of the game. The question of whether it will be possible Shaifer And Double Fine keep the equally high bar and in the future, was by no means idle. Almost one and a half year pause between two inextricably linked parts of the whole slightly alarmed. Until the last moment, of course, when the release of the second act put all points over all relevant letters.

It seems to these guys that they wear the same clothes. No, not like, but the same. Maybe they are color blind?

Something ours could not today

Recall in two words how the events have still developed. The boy was safe, but boring live on a spaceship under the supervision of the ubiquitous seemingly artificial intelligence with obvious maternal features. Once he met a giant anthropomorphic wolf named Marek, and this wolf pulled him into work to save unfortunate little creatures, and at the same time set up against his mother-companion and forced him to believe his own exclusivity, chosenness and other same loud words. Around the same time, the girl Vella miraculously avoided eating a terrible flying monster by Chobra, to whom the inhabitants of her region regularly sacrificed young and beautiful girls. Adventures led the heroes to the meeting: Vella tried to kill the monster when it arrived in the next village for the abduction and subsequent hypothetical eating of the next girl. She managed to knock out Choter, only the “corpse” turned out to be a shot down spaceship – thereby, on which Shai flew. An attempt to find out a relationship with the treacherous kidnapper of the girl ended sadly: the girl stumbled and flew inside the ship, and the shai turned out to be outside.

From this moment, the second act begins, which turns out that “in reality, everything is not the same as in fact”.

Attention! Further spoilers are possible that can ruin you the pleasure of the game if you have not yet touched Broken Age: Act 2.

If you think about it, only thanks to the ax from the last act can this tree express the whole depth of its contempt verbally.

The opposite is true

If in the initial part of the story we only got acquainted with the realities of the game world, enthusiastically examined and felt everything around, now we have to run in places already famous. This is an opportunity to see the created Shaifer Universe from a new side. Shai is surrounded by Vella recently “happened”, and the girl is now forced to act painfully familiar, albeit slightly destroyed interiors of the spaceship.

It suddenly turns out that the artificial intelligence “mother”, like the artificial intelligence “dad”, is not at all what we thought about him throughout the first act. Sheifer Overwitted us with hints, forcing us to think about key characters something fundamentally wrong, and now he opened the cards, turning the most obvious and logical option for solving into a completely unexpected. Even the sacrifice of the girls, which at the end of the first episode so easily turned into the salvation of the unfortunate creatures, is eventually a really sacrifice. Perhaps I would like to wait for more units from some soces, but we won’t find fault: the story turned out to be quite coherent, whole and not without subtext.

The motive of growing up, which sounded so distinctly at first, in the second act is slightly fenced by an abundance of events and the need to somehow resolve the main conflicts of the central plot. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that this “song” is not here. Shai finally begins to act independently-not in the greenhouse conditions of the ship and not on the tip of a strange wolf, but on its own initiative. Parents who always seem to the child with certain almighty forces, as he grows up, become living people with their desires, weaknesses and aspirations. So here the boy discovers that the “artificial intelligence”, which has been guarded to the present, is not at all artificial.

How much delight can cause a young romantic person the prospect of his own untimely death!

Everyone loves Mr. Huggage

Gameplay, at first glance, remained the same. Since

both acts are inextricably linked by the common plot line, we begin the second portion of adventures with full pockets. Items seized in the first part will certainly find their application during further events – and the method of their use may be very perverted.

The fact is that gentlemen from Double Fine heeded to the muddy walls and poured complex puzzles to the players. More difficult than in the first act. Significantly more complicated, to speak frankly. Such a sudden metamorphosis finally turned Broken Age: Act 2 into a classic quest, as if emerging straight from the nineties. At our service – non -standard use of objects, real puzzles and cross passage, which suggests that we cannot get to the end of the line of each of the characters without switching between the heroes.

This feature, by the way, is not always guessed immediately: we are used to the fact that Shai and Wella were autonomous! You can endlessly try to understand how the combinations of multi -colored triangles of various shapes on the repair of the robot affect, but you can’t guess that to solve the puzzle we need to leave at rest and help Vella go part of its path. In some cases, the information received in the first act only prevent us from correctly evaluating the situation in the second. Say, the boales, whom the shai calls the “Mr. Huggage”, can suddenly turn from a formidable danger into an absolutely necessary for passing … Detail. To understand how exactly you can use it, we will have to “forget everything that we were taught at school”, that is, in the previous part of history.

A puzzle with a robot repair is capable of drinking a lot of blood if we try to solve it by storm and onslaught.

At the same time, it cannot be said that the decisions of riddles look completely illogical. The main thing is not to be lazy to talk with absolutely NPC. Many of the necessary items will give us just like that – just talk with the right person.

Talk to me!

There are still a lot of dialogs in the game. Broken Age It was worth starting for the sake of conversations and jokes alone. We managed to get acquainted with most characters in the first act, but this does not prevent them from proveing ​​themselves from a new, unexpected side and in the second part of Adventura. Or with the expected, but from this no less sweet. The allegedly blind “druids” are wonderful, which ultimately fly to a sunset on a giant bird. Shai is beautiful, which is indescribable delight when it discovers that the boaver is really dangerous and actually wants the boy to strangle. The delightfully speaking tree, which now hates Well, but loves “tree jokes”-that is, puns built on the game of words and affecting the theme of trees at least.

Sheifer walking ironic over a mass of genre cliches. The theme of “Time Machine”, and space battles, and banal to a toothy rattle, but for some reason, still adored by screenwriters, allegedly able to solve all the problems, got into science fiction. What is the only scene of the meeting of Shai with Alex, the captain of the second of the same spacecraft-monster! Shai thinks that Alex is himself from the future;His interlocutor, in turn, believes that the boy arrived from his past. Their misconception does not last long, but nevertheless manages to deliver to us some very funny minutes.

The only drawback that can be reproached for Double Fine, – too long break between the release of the first and second acts. For a year and a half, it is no wonder and to forgive some details of the plot, and to pass the entire familiar part of the game the second time is sad, although the developers recommend that the solution of the problem. The rest turned out to be quite worthy of the fairy -tale, sweet and deep story, the place of which is in the pantheon of the best adventure of all time.

Pros: Interesting and non -banal plot;dynamic development;vivid characters of the characters;difficult, but logical puzzles;Thin humor.
Cons: too long break between two acts in the absence of any plot introductory at the beginning of the second part.

Broken Age

The best comments

Addict? What RPG, what adventure? This game can not be attributed to any genre in any way. This is a movie, rather, not a game.

Given that the Doblphein Studio Profielili his previous game is the DF9 space base. This game clearly does not deserve amazing.

How other studio projects can influence the assessment? The conclusions indicated above are sucked out of the finger. And, in my opinion, you just have a fucking.

The Erch act of this hack received the best quest last year on Stopgame, when there are dozens of more wonderful quests?

But come on, bring at least a dozen adventure that came out last year and at least comparable to Broken Age.

There is a passive clever between the neck and Vella. T. e. The whole game is just an expression of Shaffer’s love for strong black women.

Here from this I generally lost XD

Given that the Doblphein Studio Profielili his previous game is the DF9 space base. This game clearly does not deserve amazing.

And this is generally nonsense. The fact that Spacebase DF-9 was abandoned is very sad and sad. I personally be sad. But Broken Age from this, as the final product, does not get better or worse.

But come on, bring at least a dozen adventure that came out last year and at least comparable to Broken Age.

Sherlock Holmes – Crime and Punishment
Monday Rendala
1954 Alcatraz
Drimfol Chapters Buk 1 (you also have only part of the game, t. e. Act 1, was considered for a full -fledged game in the top)
Reprinting the knight of Gabriel
Berd Story (formally RPG, but in fact Advenchur)
Shadovheit
The gods will watch
The old city of Leviathan
Silence of the Sleep

And this is only a mespain. Among the hipster crafts you should already look

Anyone is better than a half -hour act of 1 broken era. And do not dodge the answer by joke about the rushing translation, I am just too lazy to copy the original names.

Yes, how so! Amazing? Personally, I only got boredom from the second episode. Why? Yes, because this is the same as the first act, just with another character. I knew in advance what was waiting for me. So I passed the first act, now I need to go through the same locations, the same characters, just with another skin. What do we get from the ending? Just stupidly symmetry. Well, stunned as original. At the same time, there is no development of the plot, 90% of the game is the passage of already walking places by another character. There is a purely formally enemy here. But purely formally. There is a main villain, there is an Empire of Evil. But all! The main villain is just a stupid agent, and the authorities in the person of the ancient race we do not see and do not communicate with them. There are ruins of ancient civilization that we destroy with the help of a bomb, but we do not wander on them and do not study them. We just defeated evil purely in words, without emotional motivation, on paper, t. To. They themselves did not have business in the game itself. And the game itself is a continuous laziness of developments. A year and a half. A year and a half! And we see the same skins and the same locations. And this hack received amazing? The first act of this hacks received the best quest last year on Stopheim, when there are dozens of more wonderful quests? Sorry, but besides a beautiful, really beautiful drawing and animation, there is absolutely nothing in the game.

I will complement that the game can be attributed to the personal fetishes of the Shar. It was written in the credits that the game is dedicated to the parents of Schafer. Parents call the neck in the same way as the parents’. Shei – this is abbreviated from the Schafer. Shei himself is a computer poster-home-home, t. e. Explicit projection of the computer life of Shafer on the character’s neck. There is a passive clever between the neck and Vella. T. e. The whole game is just an expression of Shaffer’s love for strong black women.

Given that the Doblphein Studio Profielili his previous game is the DF9 space base. This game clearly does not deserve amazing.

The second act is very far behind the first: there are almost no logical mysteries, there are almost no new characters and locations, the plot was sagged, and the ending is stupid and with a wretched hint of continuation.

The bottom line is that Broken Age demonstrated all the chips in the first episode. And we already had two episodes of Chapters and the game hardly began. Than everything can end is not clear. At any time, everything can deteriorate. It should be the end of the saga. If they can not worthy of completing the whole series, then the price of a good start to Chapters is worthily.

All these votes are the subjective of pure water. I just say why Chapters did not really have a chance.

I think that after all, an abstract game can become worse because of non-knowledge, because I did not know the necessary info -> did not understand the essence of what has been said -> did not receive the right response. It is advisable to develop so that this is not the case, but I do not think that this is possible at least in the plot -tied games.

But how much it can become worse – this is another question. The same second witcher, strongly referring to the book, in general, you can go without knowledge of the background, because the necessary info in the game will still tell you, you only need to carefully and read a lot. T.e. A completely ordinary player, probably, will not understand anything, attentive and patient – will understand, and the goodbye will quickly realize what to do what.

In general, it seems to me that the following questions will be the correct answer:
a) “Who the game is designed for?”
b) “how much information will not be clear to the beginner?”

If the project is designed for fans and in Laura and previous plots of the game too much information, then you can save on newcomers. Otherwise, why not lure the new audience?

And what did you mean when speaking about RPG? Eating in the role or string of parameters and numbers? I can still agree with the first, but with the second ..

Not in defense of opinions above the unsubscribed, but based on your own preferences: yes, you can and should be compared. For example, I am deeply indifferent, half I have passed the game or only the first episode. All these cases are united by one feature – immediately the player does not receive the ending of them in one way or another, exactly like complete satisfaction from history.
If the money was collected for the release of a full game, but only an episode was given, after which he had to wait a year, then the attitude to the product should be appropriate – as to episodic games.

In addition, it is worth recognizing that a project, for an understanding of which you need to go through two more full -fledged games, is clearly not for everyone. That’s why a slightly different attitude.

On the one hand, yes, your truth, on the other, in a similar situation, we risk sliding down again in the subjective. After all, it was initially about good adventure, not inferior in quality BA? The game in general, and in particular, Drimfol Cepters, cannot become worse only because the player about something is not in the know, and it is unthinkable on this basis to belittle its value.

Evaluate the game. She showed herself in all its glory and it is unlikely that something will change. On the other hand, Drimfol, with which there is nothing clear yet. The first one can already be evaluated, and the second is still unambiguously early.

Well, in fact, the possibility of changing the parameters to its liking indicates personalization, which is a direct part of the RPG-janra.

Yes, therefore they say “with RPG elements”.
Enforcement in the role can be in a jester, the choice can be in the quest, a change in parameters and in football.