Adventure Gamers - Forums

chrissie - 19 December 2021 10:52 AM

chrissie - 08 December 2021 09:39 AM

I haven’t quite finished Day 4 yet – I think I just need to work out the combination for the safe Yes, it does seem to be a lot longer than in the original.

It worked out that there was more needed than I expected to complete Day 4 after solving the safe puzzle

I have now completed the whole game & think that the DC with the additional locations & a few tweaks improved an already very good game. It made some aspects of the story a little clearer & some of my own theories from my first playthrough didn’t seem to be too far off.

Gabe - 08 December 2021 11:35 AM

chrissie - 08 December 2021 09:39 AM

I should be ready to move on to Day 5 by tomorrow. 

Let me know if Lily’s ghost removed from DC ending.

Unless I blinked Gabe yes, I think Lily’s ghost was removed from the DC ending.

Anyway I’m glad I got to play this improved version so thankyou Adv_Lvr for organising this unofficial playthrough & also thank you to the other participants for your interesting comments.

I don’t recall seeing Lily’s Ghost in the DC version either.  I’m so glad people like the DC version, it’s so worth playing. However, I’m not deleting the original game, it’s different enough to be worth keeping.

So glad this play through worked, it was a gamble, but it payed off and look - we have an excellent CPT of The Dig, what more can you ask for!

Krusbert - 20 December 2021 03:25 AM

Thanks for playing, everyone! Glad that you seem to have enjoyed the improvements in the Director’s Cut version

As for other games that deserve a DC version, I’d definitely agree about Full Throttle. That game is great but a tad short. Would love to see a bit more content.

Now that we know you are still, here, tell us in detail about the ending of the game and improvements you made to day 5. And what about Lilly’s Ghost?

Krusbert - 21 December 2021 03:27 AM

Adv_Lvr - 20 December 2021 08:58 AM

Krusbert - 20 December 2021 03:25 AM

Thanks for playing, everyone! Glad that you seem to have enjoyed the improvements in the Director’s Cut version

As for other games that deserve a DC version, I’d definitely agree about Full Throttle. That game is great but a tad short. Would love to see a bit more content.

Now that we know you are still, here, tell us in detail about the ending of the game and improvements you made to day 5. And what about Lilly’s Ghost?

I try not to comment in detail on specific plot points to encourage the audience to draw their own conclusions, but I’ll say this:
All the story changes I made to the game was to improve overall plot cohesion, fix pacing problems, tie up loose ends in the narrative and to establish a stronger background lore for more stories with Kathy Hopefully that doesn’t feel like too much of a cop out, but trust that each cut was made deliberately and after careful consideration.

Overall, I’m happy with how things turned out, but something I wish we would’ve had time for would be a bit more meat on the gameplay side. Something that immediately comes to mind would be to include active map plotting by the player rather than Kathy doing it on her own.

I also think the metal detector puzzle ended up overly simplistic. Maybe we could have done something more interesting there, like randomizing the position of the box and adding some other metal objects around the area that would be picked up by the metal detector. Maybe you’d have to calibrate the detector to filter out all the contaminants and only pick up the box, or at least have some kind of process of elimination and Kathy would have some funny comments about the other random junk buried on the cliff.

There’s always Kathy Rain FC (Final Cut).

I just finished the Director’s Cut. Never played the first one.

Good game that I was expecting to be better and which could have been better.

Yeah, all the accolades this has received for being on of the best point & click games since what’s called the Golden Age perhaps set my own personal bar too high, and is also perhaps indicative in the decline of the genre, or at least the adventure gaming community’s standards for greatness in the genre.

Spoilers below.

There were some good puzzles and some over simplified puzzles and some telegraphed puzzles. The voice acting was excellent across the board, but the writing was only average across the board, and the storytelling was poor. I never cared about Kathy or a single other character in this game. The set up in the early stages is promising and then disappoints. What seemed like an excellent conspiracy theory style plot in the making dwindled into a narrative that uncomfortably straddled the fence between Kathy’s internal crisis (coming to terms with her past) and the town’s external crisis (hallucinogenic flowers that may not actually be hallucinogenic).

We could chalk up the often overly simplified puzzle design to catering to what seems to be the majority of today’s audience, which leaves us with the element that transcends ages, and what really separates KR from the games it is obviously in love with (Gabriel Knight, Full Throttle. et al): The writing. Put this next to a Jane Jensen, Tim Schaeffer, Christy Marx, Francisco Gonzalez, or Ron Gilbert game (among others), and it’s a literature to a 9th grade fiction essay comparison.

Most of that sounds very harsh, but despite it all, I still enjoyed the game and am glad I played it. Absolutely worthwhile adventure game. But current-gen masterpiece? Not by a long shot.
So, the harshness is really just borne of disappointed expectations, as I was looking forward the this for a long time.

Dude, I won’t argue your review because you explained your points very well, but “I never cared about Kathy”? Sorry, you crossed the line there. It’s one of the best female characters ever written and an adorable badass.

I will stop following you in Instragram.

Adv_Lvr - 19 December 2021 02:28 PM

I don’t recall seeing Lily’s Ghost in the DC version either.  I’m so glad people like the DC version, it’s so worth playing. However, I’m not deleting the original game, it’s different enough to be worth keeping.

Whether is was Lily or not is a matter of conjecture. But there was definitely a young-ish female ghost that I presume was Lily. She appears just before or after the unborn son appears. Neither appearance, to me, added anything to the story.

I kind of agree with Blubba, though I do think it indeed sounds pretty harsh.

In the end the game works well, it manages to have a charm and pull, even when it’s not Gabriel Knight.

But I was also just a tad disappointed, because in my mind there was even more potential. My first playthrough I think I really fell for the charm and felt the suspense of the mystery - especially when I didn’t have much expectations. And this time around - even though there are improvements - my expectations were higher, and now I’m left with this slightly hollow feeling, that the game could have been awesome, not just good.

I’m glad I bought the DC though, because I probably got the original game from some dirt cheap bundle, and at least I threw some coins towards the makers now. And I also liked Whispers of a Machine. I believe there might still be the instant classic masterpiece coming some day, because these both games are solid.

Walas: Kathy seemed to me like a mid-20 year old who never grew out of her mid-90’s Hot Topic stage. Immaturely aggressive and edgy. She’s written to be cool like that, and it’s a major swing and miss for me. Look at me, I smoke and ride a motorcycle and say ‘fuck’ a lot. I wouldn’t enjoy her company in real life and I didn’t enjoy her company in the game. More objectively, she’s a shallow caricature. I might not mind that if I was fonder of the archetype that she was a caricature of, but since I’m not, I do.

Millenia: Yes, a lot of squandered potential. This is more subjective, but I don’t like sign-posted puzzles that remind me of things instead of asking me to remember them. “I need to find a metal box. My what a big area this is. I’d better find a metal detector. Oh, now where did I see one of those before?”
Too many such instances, making the game way too casual and afraid to challenge the player.
Ironically, the very last puzzle in the game asks you to remember something unfairly, with no point of reference to puzzle it out, and no way to progress unless you happened to remember a specific pattern.

All that said, there were some very fun puzzles, even if they weren’t particularly tough. I enjoyed the timeline assembly through crayon drawings, and the code puzzle in the mausoleum was fun, too. The Scrabble board in the fridge was decent, but I feel it should have been embellished. Somewhere in there is a great puzzle that was scrubbed for a much easier ‘just there busywork’ puzzle.

By the way, did anyone else notice how many of the game’s screens right out of Gabriel Knight?
Police station, lakeside, granny’s house, graveyard, motorcycle, right at the start of the game…and there might even be more.

Baron_Blubba - 22 December 2021 04:15 PM

By the way, did anyone else notice how many of the game’s screens right out of Gabriel Knight?
Police station, lakeside, granny’s house, graveyard, motorcycle, right at the start of the game…and there might even be more.

For me, the game is kinda a Gabriel Knight 4. Anyway, the game is well loved and has a following. For a small indie game, it has spirit and was a real treat when it was released.

We are the ones who made a typical indie release a game of mythical proportions:

Aggie Award winner of
Best Writing – Drama
Readers Choice’ winner of
Best Adventure Game of the Year
Best Traditional Adventure
Best Gameplay
Best Character
Best Story

What the official 4.5 star review says:

The Good:
Sharp and witty writing throughout
Interesting investigation with lots of drama and supernatural mystery for flavor
A strong-willed female lead who’s incredibly realistic
The Bad:
Subpar musical score
Some elements feel uncomfortably close to the games that inspired it
Story goes a little overboard near the end

Baron_Blubba - 22 December 2021 04:11 PM

Walas: Kathy seemed to me like a mid-20 year old who never grew out of her mid-90’s Hot Topic stage. Immaturely aggressive and edgy. She’s written to be cool like that, and it’s a major swing and miss for me. Look at me, I smoke and ride a motorcycle and say ‘fuck’ a lot. I wouldn’t enjoy her company in real life and I didn’t enjoy her company in the game. More objectively, she’s a shallow caricature. I might not mind that if I was fonder of the archetype that she was a caricature of, but since I’m not, I do.

Earlier in the thread I talked about kind of disliking Kathy, mainly for the same reasons you mention.

Some aspects of her really remind me of myself, especially when I was younger. I bet I would’ve thought Kathy very cool if I had played the game in the actual 90s when I was in my teens. Now many things feel kind of cringe to me, but again I’m not completely sure if they’re cringe because of Kathy herself, or because how cringe I was.

Though, like other people pointed out here, Kathy’s “toughness” is probably a necessity, she did have a screwed up childhood, and hiding behind edgy and tough exterior is not an uncommon result.

Baron_Blubba - 22 December 2021 04:15 PM

By the way, did anyone else notice how many of the game’s screens right out of Gabriel Knight?
Police station, lakeside, granny’s house, graveyard, motorcycle, right at the start of the game…and there might even be more.

I noticed, and mentioned some of the similatiries, including plot ones. Probably not all those locations, but I did think about them too.

Though, like other people pointed out here, Kathy’s “toughness” is probably a necessity, she did have a screwed up childhood, and hiding behind edgy and tough exterior is not an uncommon result.

My thoughts exactly, she does a great job of hiding her true emotions until later in the game.

She is one of my favorite game characters due to her being more human than most.