Adventure Gamers - Forums

zane - 03 May 2015 01:15 AM

^what was “overpromised”? I got exactly what i hoped for. A very solid schafer adventure. They were wrong about time estimates (just about everyone is). But they never promised the best adventure game of all time…. thats what people projected onto it. And i like this game better than a number of the “classics”.

Yeah, all I remember hoping for was an old-school 2D point and click adventure with that classic Tim Schafer humor, and we certainly got that.

I think it stands up well to his classics, in fact. I wouldn’t put it on Day of the Tentacle’s level, but certainly better than Full Throttle.

Tad - 03 May 2015 08:40 AM

I don’t like scores, but I’d say BA is an okay game overall. It had a bonkers story (in a good way) in act one, but act two it just fell apart.

for me the first act was semi-bonkers, and it was hard to say just how bonkers the story was going to get. And the 2nd act was totally bonkers… they throw a hail mary of logic, and its either easy to just accept it (what else were they going to do with this set up? it was bound to get weird and iffy) or it just doesnt work for you.. because it really is hard to take this plot seriously (the villains plan is insanely obtuse and relies on intangible ideas like shay’s “instincts”). In the end I decided to not take the logic very seriously, and just enjoy it for what it was. But I completely understand that analyzing the story seriously leaves a lot to be desired.

the one puzzle that still bugs me.. can anyone explain why the music puzzle works the way that it does? I get that it corresponds with the high and low notes.. what i dont get is why im supposed to assume it works that way. Shouldnt the pattern for prima doom logically be the thing that takes vella back to shellmound? Maybe the tune is what worked for the music nav…. but the scarf nav is still the scarf nav….right..?

zane - 05 May 2015 11:03 AM

the one puzzle that still bugs me.. can anyone explain why the music puzzle works the way that it does? I get that it corresponds with the high and low notes.. what i dont get is why im supposed to assume it works that way. Shouldnt the pattern for prima doom logically be the thing that takes vella back to shellmound? Maybe the tune is what worked for the music nav…. but the scarf nav is still the scarf nav….right..?

If you look at the music sheet inside Alex’s ship, the code written there is exactly the same as the scarf one you used for tricking the space weaver to go to shellmound in act I, hence you can work from that that both ships use the same codes, while applying them within a different framework. The tune Alex plays is just a “go back to last destination” instruction, as he explains, so it doesn’t imply any specific place. It can be still be used by Vella though, since we know the last valid destination of Mom’s ship, having inputted it as Shay.

^Im still not a fan of that puzzle because the sheet music strongly implies you should be using the same pattern to get to the same place. That “last destination” bit is easy to miss.
That does make more sense though, thanks.

I just finished Broken Age in my tablet (Android) and I must say that I was positively impressed. The world remained as colourful as ever (I did encounter a couple of glitches), the voice acting was excellent too, the characters really likeable, the story went on well and the overall difficulty was much higher this time. There were a couple of occasions (other people mentioned it too) where the solution to one story came from the other character’s knowledge, (the wiring puzzles and the correct nav. knitting pattern ) which is something highly illogical and certainly a minus in my books, but that was the only thing I disliked. A 9/10 for me.

EDIT: Took me around 12 hours. 2 hours to replay the first half and the rest for the 2nd (at least an hour in that cursed knot puzzle).

zane - 02 May 2015 08:30 PM

I dont envy the DF devs on this one. First act was puzzle-lite, everybody complains about the difficulty being too easy. Second act significantly ups their game on the puzzles, lots of people still complain that the puzzles are too hard and distracting. And same goes for whether the plot is silly or takes itself seriously… they just cant win.

I completely agree with you. It seems like with gamers, you just can’t do anything that pleases everyone. I haven’t watched the documentary so I’m not 100% sure about this, but my guess is they upped the difficulty in Act 2 because of all the complaints in Act 1.

As far as the game goes, I LOVED Broken Age. The puzzles in Act 2 were ingenious, and so rewarding when you figured out what to do, without being unfair. The game is totally charming, and I was watching the credits roll with a huge smile on my face. By far the best adventure game I have played in years.

zane - 05 May 2015 03:13 PM

^Im still not a fan of that puzzle because the sheet music strongly implies you should be using the same pattern to get to the same place. That “last destination” bit is easy to miss.
That does make more sense though, thanks.

You are right that the Prima Doom space chart would have taken Vella back to Shellmound, but the problem was that there was no way for you to carve Prima Doom from the space chart you had in hand. So you had to find an alternate way to go back, and that’s where the “last destination” bit came into play. I got stuck on it for an hour or two, but after I figured it out, I thought it was a brilliant puzzle.

Beat it today. Definitely worth all the hype surrounding it. It’s really only the wiring puzzles, that depends on the other characters knowledge, without them communicating that taints a bit. Otherwise, it’s definitely worthy of being mentioned among the old classic LucasArts titles.

It has the same kind of enjoyable puzzle structure that you expect from such title, is challenging without being unfair, containts a whole bunch of really memorable scenes, and has one the genres most distinc and fantastic art styles.

By no means flawless, but among the most enjoyable and memorable adventure games I have played tha last 15 years. And of the few computer games overall that contains laugh out loud scenes.