Reader reviews for The Samaritan Paradox page 2

The Samaritan Paradox starts on a relative high note. However, a terrible interface, poor scripting and some very contrived puzzles chip away at this misleading first impression until you reach the rushed, ridiculous ending.

From the demo, I expected a lot of code cracking. That was optimistic. Besides applying a simple substitution code, there aren’t really any more “code cracking” moments. There are some nice riddles to solve, but some ridiculous ones as well.
The game has frequent timed sections, rewinding upon failure. Often, they’re of the trial-and-error variety, i.e. you need to fail several times to even learn what obstacles you should anticipate after rewinding. Those sections are really bad, and feel a lot like padding. They’re poorly clued (you don’t always know what your ultimate goal is) and one of them features a double interface screw (an area of the screen is interactive despite not being shown as a hotspot, and you can control Ord during an animation, despite the cursor disappearing). In short, it feels like those sections were added because just featuring the good riddles would’ve made for an even shorter game.

The interface is atrocious. Every action requires multiple mouse clicks. This is actually used as some twisted puzzle mechanic at some point.
A good illustration of this issue is the dialogue mechanic. You have to scroll the list of topics (by clicking on arrows, not using the keyboard), then click on the topic of interest, then move the cursor over to the “ask” button. It’s not unplayable, but it’s just unwieldy, and after a while those small issues really get to you.
There is no hotspot highlighting, and there’s some pixel hunting. Ord is also a hotspot so after clicking on anything, he obscures the object and you have to click to make him move before you can interact with anything in the vicinity again.

The plot starts out strong but becomes silly in the end. All plot threads are abruptly tied together with a ridiculous twist and some off-screen narration promising us all has ended well. It’s difficult to describe just how jarring this is, it’s one of the worst pacing failures I’ve had the misfortune to encounter, and it really feels as though they just ran out of money and had to ship.

To summarize, a couple of good riddles can’t make up for the multitude of flaws. My advice would be to play this with a walkthrough for all but the riddle parts - then it’s worth the price of admission (about $2 currently).

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Time Played: 2-5 hours

First,I must say that I really enjoyed playing this game although it have some flaws,but
first the good things.
Some of the puzzles are really great.Music is good and fits the mood perfectly. 2d pixel graphic adds to the atmosphere and gives strong nostalgic early 90’s feel.Story is gripping and holds you until the very end.
And ending is where I was disappointed. It’s not that it’s bad,but it feels quite rushed and leaves some questions unanswered.Too bad because if the developers worked on this a little bit more it could have been one of the best adventure games in 2014.
Some of the voice actors were annoying,but voice acting as a whole is solid.
Difference in graphic style between real and fantasy world could have been a little more distinguish,but that’s only my opinion though.

I think every adventure gamer should give The Samaritan Paradox a chance.It’s not a perfect game but you might end up enjoying it,just like I did.

P.S Sorry if you find some grammar mistakes,english is not my native language.

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Time Played: 5-10 hours

Ok just finished playing this game. I have enjoyed the plot especially the parts where you change from reality into Bergwall’s fairy tale. I really liked the fact that the graphics of the game are retro seeing that the whole story takes place in the 80’s, and it sorta makes the whole thing more realistic in a way.

With regards music, i found it at times a bit too loud and it drowned the voices of the characters, so I just lowered its volume from the settings. No biggie.

At times I was not sure what I need to do next and got quite stuck and had to look up a walkthrough.Puzzles require a bit of head scratching and thinking things over and over, seeing they are mind games and not normal puzzles…. but on the whole, nothing impossible. Very engaging and enjoyable actually.

I recommend this game to any retro adventure game fan

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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Hard

Good:
- Fun,logical puzzles except the four riddles ( I had to resort to puzzle “cracking” until i got the right answer and three out of the four answers did not make any sense!)
- Great locations (the trams moving in the background),voice acting and graphics.
- The fantasy book chapters is a really great idea: basically you have to finish a fantasy book chapter before you can progress in the story (e.g. defeat a dragon,etc) Also short but very fun.
- Profanity was limited and used in the right situations.
- Great notebook system
- Average game length

Bad:
- Terrible way how the story jumped! I got the impression the creator was stuck and completely went into a different direction. The ending was plain ridiculous! It ruined the game’s story for me and i felt cheated.
- When you “die”, you get “reloaded” and sometimes you need to repeat all your former moves (pick that up,etc). So it’s best you save as often as possible
- Disappointing villains, the biggest one has something to do with the jump the shark bit.
- You cannot decide how the story ends, you have no say in the moral choices, it’s all scripted (which is too bad, it could’ve easily been implemented).
- Rushed cliché confrontation, i’d like to see boss battles in my adventure games (you know, a la secret files).

Conclusion: i give it a 3,5 stars! I def recommend the game, the mood,the puzzles, the presentation of the game makes it worth it! Too bad about the story though.

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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Just Right