OK I finished SH vs JR last night. I liked the little tie-in at the end.
I'm a bit disappointed though, I don't think it's quite as good as the last two. The bottom line is that you'd think a legendary adversary like Jack the Ripper would make this the most epic game yet, and it's just not. I played it almost straight through though, in just a few sessions, never getting bored. So it IS worth playing.
I stand by my statement that the puzzles were largely too easy. I was shocked by how many could be solved by trial and error, a couple of times I did this and didn't even know why I just solved it....that should never happen. Some of them just didn't make a lot of sense either, or seemed unnecessarily forced and not integrated with the story. Some of them were good though.
The hand-holding in the game was annoying to me, too. "Let's go to the cobbler's!", "Take out the map and go to _______", "here's the plan: ______, just fetch me these items." Let ME figure that stuff out! I hate when games give you the answers or the next step up front or make it TOTALLY obvious, and then just make you do the leg work to get there. It's one of the major problems I've had with AGs of this decade. It's also one of the things I really wasn't expecting from this game, as the last ones had a nice hands-off challenge to them and that's why I liked them.
Another problem I have with the game is the atmosphere just isn't there how it should be. The graphics are good, but I didn't feel a hint of dread or creepiness or suspense or real Whitechapel or anything. It was pretty sterile, and the events that happen and the scenes along with them weren't powerful. For the story of Jack The Ripper, you want to really feel the horror and atmosphere, and connection to history.
There was way too much retreading, and no change of scenery whatsoever. It's the same places the whole game, the only difference being time of day, everything else being precisely the same. Just back and forth.
All in all, it just fell far short of expectations. However it's still worth getting, and there's a lot going right with it as it is within the same ballpark as the other games. I just wanted to get these complaints off my chest.
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