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<
