Shadow of Memories

This game is a time traveling type game that progresses more like a choose your own adventure book rather than a game. I would say it is more of an interactive movie than a game per se. Granted you do wander the small town and talk to people and such, but you must also watch numerous scenes of the protagonist talking to others trying to figure out what time he is in and what he can do to prevent himself from dying in the present. He is given the power to time travel by this strange person known as homunculus, he is given this power because the fates have decided that Eike (the protagonist) is strongly fated to die this day. Finding out ways to survive the present day and trying to uncover the clues as to why Eike is fated this day make up the majority of the game play. It is fun on the first play through or two, but to get all the endings you must do the same things quite often, with only slight differences to change up the pace, most of the main points of the story are exactly the same every time you play. Suffice to say I was only able to get two endings then I was kind of bored with the game. As for the game, it looks rather good for an early game on the playstation 2 and the game play consists mainly of running around town and talking to folks and getting certain items in your inventory that may save the character's life or perhaps doing something to change things that may save your life. Some of the death scenes are interesting, but some are bad as one has a vase falling and striking you from a distance and this occurs even if you are nowhere near a tall building. The two endings I got were not all that great, I suspect there is a good one in the mix, I just did not have the patients to keep playing again and again. Overall, an okay game with a somewhat interesting story that gets very repetitive when played multiple times.

Ok, so this is not really a game: the puzzles are really easy, and the cut scenes are usually longer than the game time. This is, in fact A MOVIE in a videogame disguise. The main plot concept is excellent (a man is killed many times, and he must goes back in time each time to try to stop the killer... and guess who he is and why does he want to kill him), and it develops very well, creating, as in a good time travel movie, many plot twists to keep you interested. In fact, one can spot some plot holes, but the main thing about this game is that the tight combination between game-times and movie-times makes the viewer feel a lot more 'inside' the screen than in any 'real' movie. Even though the dialogue is not great and the choose of shots for the scenes could be better (not being so the great -for being subtle- music score), I felt more moved by this 'movie' that for any other good film in the past months... May this be the future of movie making???

What an amazing game! one of the very few games that is so emotive that it actually touches you, with several endings each ending exposes a different element in the storyline each remarkably moving! The storyline is very intense with several major story lines involving the protagonist and other main characters, there are also several minor storeylines, some of which are remarkably humorous letting the game/storyline flow very easily and removing the boredom present is many generic adventure games! The game could easily be adapted into a film with such a rich and creative storyline, touching the human mind, and with a conservative leaning storyline as in many games! Only downside is some of the cheesy diologue at the start, but besides that, an excellent game! MUST BUY FOR ADVENTURE OR Psychological GAMING LOVERS!

This game is truly a unique one. You can see some resemblance to Shenmue, but this is a new fresh-up of the concept. If you´ve got PlayStation 2 and likes adventure-games, then Shadow of Destiny is the game to get!

Up to this point I was completely Visual Novel-virgin and I still am quite a RPG-virgin (one of closest genres). But I surely am not Adventure and Puzzle-virgin. Considering this, I was quite pleased that I felt familiar with this genre, which I played for the first time.

Game-play: In general, game-play of this game consists of elements from Adventure (walking around beautiful areas, streets, buildings from middle ages, finding items, pathways, etc), RPG (talking to non-playable characters, gathering of information, help, items, etc) and Puzzle (puzzle solving, of course) genres and these elements are melded together in excellent manner and pace, and the result feels naturally flowing and enjoyable in the field of game-play, which is pretty easy in terms of difficulty. I didn’t stuck in any part of the game. Also, one can see the Trial-and-error game-play mechanics here. Yes, there are these elements, but they will be accessed only if you wont manage to solve your puzzle in the first time, which was quite rare occasion for me (happened once, near the end of the game, where I replayed one puzzle for some 3 times, until I solved it correctly). So, game-play is very easy here and even the gamers, who are not familiar with aforementioned genres, could beat this game without much trouble, in my opinion. I managed to complete this game yesterday and it took about 4 beautifully spend hours from my life.

Story: The storyline and plot here is easily the strongest part of this game. I caught myself often laughing, feeling for the characters, even for the non-playable. And I caught myself often thinking about the depth of this story too. This is a truly beautiful, twisted and gorgeous story about man, who gets the opportunity to defy his fate and Death itself. Multiple times. A story, where Death teaches the way to live, where Death is the guide through life. A story with many beautiful and twisting side-stories, dealing with love, philosophy, history, film-making and other interesting things. Ahh, even now I do long for this absolutely well done story – after all I have 5 more endings to achieve!

So, if we combine the before discussed way of game play with such well done storyline, we will manage to extract from this title a quite unique experience – like interactive book or story-based avant-garde film with stylish visuals! This was a superbly enjoyable experience for horror fan like me.

True piece of art. Well done, Konami!

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>originally written for uk.gamespot.com<