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Tales - by Ape Marina / published by Screen 7

Fizzii

Crystal Shard
Developer
Joined
Sep 26, 2013
Messages
185
Tales is a traditional point and click adventure with English voice acting and music by Luigi Di Guida.

Alfred Walsh is the new librarian, but on his first day he will accidentally unleash a dreaded curse upon the shelves within. He must fix things fast - but how will his tale end? With the help of Merlin and some other familiar faces, Alfred must solve puzzles in the strangest of places if he is to succeed and stop the curse of Oblivion!



AVAILABLE FROM
Official website: http://www.Taaales.co.uk
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/416250
Humble Store: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/tales
Screen 7: http://www.Screen7.co.uk

tales_shot1.jpg

tales_shot2.jpg

tales_shot3.jpg


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Above text is pretty much copied from the AGS forums - I've played a little bit and have found it fun so far, since it explores different settings and myths/tales of yore.
 

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
I finished the game. It's not extraordinary, but it is fun. You're a librarian jumping from a tale to another, solving some issue in a tale and eventually requiring the help of a character from another new tale. The choice of settings, locations and tales is decent, you'll quickly meet Merlin (and I like Merlin) but, don't worry, not every character in the game is some character who's used everytime, everywhere. Overall the story and the dialogs are not transcendent but they work.
- The game is lighthearded, I'd personally say that the situations and dialogs could have been more absurd sometimes.
- The puzzles are inequal. Some puzzles requiring hints are cool. Items are not automatically carried from a tale to another, and only a few items can be (manually) carried from a tale to another ; I'm mentioning that because my favourite inventory puzzles were those where I had to look for an item from another tale. The game is mostly easy, not offensively easy but the inventory puzzles could have been harder, you never have many items and the locations are small. Besides I also thought that compared with similar games the puzzles themselves could have been funnier. There's a well made hint system in case you're stuck, Merlin will give you a vague enough advice.
- The music is nice.
It's also worth noticing that the game is not expensive and its length is correct. It's not the best game out there but it's a decent one.
 
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CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
It's almost completely linear, you never have a big playground with many puzzles to solve at the same time. I didn't even realized that before you asked the question, but it may be one reason I didn't like the game as much as I could.
It's not exactly true, but except for the most important location you solve more or less each location one after another.
 
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Fizzii

Crystal Shard
Developer
Joined
Sep 26, 2013
Messages
185
I finally got around to finishing this, and I think it's worth a play.

Positives:
- Different settings (first time I had heard about Gilgamesh or Pantagruel)
- The background art is charming (I really think this style of art would have been even better at a higher resolution).
- Animations are good (albeit, the sprites are a bit blurry - they again would have benefited if the game was at a higher resolution, especially if the frames were created in an animation program).
- Light hearted story, and the overarching story and puzzles have enough to keep you going.
- Good length, and given that you won't get bored or turned off from playing it, I think it's therefore worth the price tag.

Cons:
- Puzzles were logical enough, though I sometimes wish there were more responses or flexibility with puzzles. E.g. a cup can function in a similar way to a bucket in that both can hold liquid. Me being nitpicky, as most adventure games don't have the level of interactivity that I usually like.
- Many of the puzzles ended up being 'Here's another locked door/chest/gate. Work out the code or find the key.' which becomes a little bit repetitive after a while.
- The mechanic for carrying items between stories is a bit clunky and becomes tedious, especially since you can technically bring all items from one book to another by taking multiple trips.
- Voice pack isn't great, both in acting and sound quality (and I say this even though I was involved with cutting up the lines). I did mention that a number of lines (which I didn't have copies of) needed their volumes equalized to match, but for some reason that didn't happen.
- It seems as if the game was originally written in the developers' native language, then translated to English. There are some grammar issues with the translation, and I'm not too fond of how so many characters go around calling each other 'Dude', but it seems the developers thought it was funny to have.

All in all, if you like point n click adventures, there's no reason why you shouldn't give this one a go :)
 

Tramboi

Prophet
Patron
Joined
May 4, 2009
Messages
1,226
Location
Paris by night
I agree with your review, nice little game that really deserves a play.
And it's very nice to have our very own Rabelaisian reference in a video game :)
 

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