The amount of grammatical and spelling errors in the game was astounding and kept me from really being immersed most of the time. All of the letters and notes seemed like they were written by an elementary school student and sounded like they were written by the same person (because in reality they WERE). There was little to no character distinction for me. But despite that it also felt like I was being spoon fed all of the answers.
For example in one of the letters from "doctor O" (which i can only assume stands for Obvious) he points out that to make a key I need steel from something like, say, A SPOON. Well, I certainly don't know about any spoon but here is this conveniently placed knif... what a second.
I felt the puzzles were just overall too easy and that the game was difficult in all the "wrong parts". Like the aforementioned "Self made key" puzzle, I ended up tearing the room apart till I accidentally hit something near the fireplace which ended up on the key appearing.
Or the broken ladder puzzle. I stacked the boxes up and managed to jimmy myself halfway out of the hole. I was confused as to why i couldn't just use the remaining piece of ladder to hoist myself out, but that was neither here nor there as that freak "Ben" never despawned! So after swatting me once I fell back into the hole and guess who came in with me. Yup, and after he killed me I get insultingly asked if I know how to use the space bar.
I am also spiteful about how often I would have to wrestle for control of the camera in the game, like during the dungeon encounter when you forced me to stare at the creature and watch him walk away. It should be MY decision to watch the candles go out in one place, and MINE to peek out of the door to see if the monster is gone.
Puzzle gripes aside, I still found loads of bugs scattered throughout the game including:
- Most notes picked up were not automatically pulled up to be read.
- After the encounter with the "aquaterror" it still sounded like I was walking through water (even through the ridiculous "use fire once" trap)
- Lighting errors
- Objects not leaving my inventory (Namely the self made key)
- A door in the Dungeons area swings erratically when you attempt to open it
- Standing in darkness does not cause sanity to drain
I also didn't understand some of the basic plot elements. From what I got there are four "main" characters. Me, some unnamed "Polish Lord" who wanted to be really good at the piano. I can dig that, but what is with all the talk later on in the game about rockstars? A Polish Lord rockstar? Even compared to the monsters it feels unbelievable. And why even include the part about the piano being sabotaged? It has absolutely nothing to do with my I'm at this castle. And WHO THE HELL IS MAKSYM? The bad guy is Wiktor, and the two monsters are tai and ben. SO what the hell happened to the Lord of the castle? And why in the bloody hell does Wiktor want me to fondle him so much? Not only did it NOT serve any in-game purpose, it was uncalled for and completely unnecessary. If there is an explanation for it, it should have been given in-game.
There was one thing I liked and that was the ability to solve puzzles by manually using items; e.g. The hammer and boards puzzle. forging the key with the hammer. Most CC games (and even the original game) would have you pick up the hammer into your inventory, select it, that click the boards; *yawn*
The size of the game felt good too, not as simple as "go in these portals, get the pieces in them, fight the boss"
Those are not enough, however, to make up for a game that feels like its still in it's beta stage and needs a lot more thought and work put into it before released to the general public.
My rating for this game would have to be a 3 out of 10. It seems like you have the ball and now you just need to start running with it.
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Castle Maksym (Full Release!)
