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Petra might be the worse of them all, her cynic and sarcastic comments sound exactly the same as her regular speech. Witty, nervous, suspicious or charming characters come off dry as the voice actors deliver their lines without even a hint of emotion. Music score is quite forgettable, but the one part of the audio that will stay with you for the whole grating experience is the voice acting, which is thoroughly terrible. These pop up every time you get or complete a quest An additional gripe, new and completed quests come with an overlay (as does each item you collect), a big square taking up the middle of the screen with the quest message and stopping all gameplay while it’s there, completely disrupting what little flow the game had.
Emerald city confidential 2 how to#
In ECC, the quest system is extremely specific, often the objective right-out telling you how to move the story along, the “Take advantage of Cutter” objective being the worst one, since not a second before the Quest pops-up, the character in question is asking what he can do for you in lieu of payment. In all P&C Adventure games you have general and specific objectives, sometimes jotted down somewhere in the UI, but they’re vague enough so you have to FIGURE OUT STUFF ON YOUR OWN. The only puzzles in the game actually worth something, and fun, are the magic duel, in which you have to actually use a few items and spells to overcome it, and last act of the game, Phanfasm Island, and only a couple of puzzles at that, and using the last spell you are given.Īccompanying the simplistic puzzle design is the handholding Quest system. At first, I wasn’t bothered, thinking the game difficulty would ramp up, giving you a few easy puzzles as a tutorial, but I was extremely disappointed to find the same low difficulty level in the entire game. Speaking of puzzles, the ones in this game are painfully simple, with most of them revolving around exhausting all conversation options, talking to someone else and maybe, just maybe use an item or a spell, all of which have very particular and obvious uses, which in turn make all puzzle solutions obvious. Items don’t just go to your inventory, they also invade the whole screen, making you want to swat them out of the way… You select and drag items as is expected, though there are no instances of item combinations or more than one item needed for a particular puzzle, with the exception of the Duel. Unlike other adventure games where depending on which button you click you either interact or observe, in ECC you only left-click, if it’s meant to be observed Petra will comment, otherwise she’ll interact with it. There’s a bar at the bottom with your inventory to the left, your current quest display in the center (with a quest-progress count included, pretty much letting you know how far you are from finishing the game) and your magic spells to the right. Thankfully, you can set the walking speed in the settings, and if you ever find yourself playing, this game, just set it to max.Īs for gameplay, the interface is extremely simple. Characters often take more time than they should in performing actions. Character animations, which you’d expect to be very fluid in a hand-drawn style, are instead extremely stiff. Visual style looks extremely on the cheap side, reminding me less of Wadjet Eye Games and more of an old Flash browser game, like those you can find on.
Emerald city confidential 2 series#
You play as PI Petra, a deserter from the Ozian army in this post-war Oz.įor a while, as I played it, I thought, “this must have been one of their first games”, because of the glaringly bad design choices, but this is a 2009 game, a couple of years after their first Blackwell game, which I thoroughly enjoyed (and I’m waiting for the next episode in the series to release in the near future). It’s a noir-style detective story set in the Land of Oz. Characters are too noir, and too little Oz.Įmerald City Confidential is a Point & Click adventure games by Wadjet Eye Games, makers of the amazingly good Blackwell Chronicles series.The World of Oz doesn’t feel even remotely “Wonderful”.Quest-based gameplay takes you by the hand during the entire experience.Quest and Item overlays are annoying and in the way.Puzzles, if they can be called that, are too simple.You can set the walking speed in the options…thankfully.The Magic Duel with Mombi, the only fun part of this game.