Poe’s for thought…
The Raven – Legacy of a Master Thief is the latest game from The Adventure Company who have made other point and click games like the Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie series, as well as The Critter Chronicles. The Raven is more of a traditional point and click adventure with an Agatha-esque feeling to it as you play Swiss policeman Anton Jakob Zellner who is trying to solve the case of a master thief known only as the Raven. The opening is even set on the Orient Express, sounds like a certain Christie novel doesn’t it?
Only the first episode is available at this point, while the other 2 will be released in August and September so those who have bought it so far have quite a wait ahead. It’s very traditional in its design, the typical “pick up object, use object on another object” method sticks here and it’s always pretty obvious what to do, but having said that I did find myself scratching my head at certain areas, but mainly because some objects were so dark or small that they were almost impossible to see, which was frustrating to say the least. All I can say is God Bless the internet for some of the solutions that I came stuck on.
The characters you come across will give you information and so on, but none of them are particularly interesting. Worst of all, the main character is dull as dishwater and doesn’t have the charm of Sherlock or the cunning wit of Poirot. I did come across a number of bugs throughout my playthrough as well such as getting stuck behind the bar on the Orient Express; Zellner’s animation was all over the place and there were quite a few slowdowns in framerate throughout the episode.
It’s not a terrible point and click game, the standard elements all work…it just isn’t particularly interesting at this point and until the other 2 episodes are released, it’s hard to say wherever it’s worth it or not to stick it out till the end. The bad news is that it’ll be the 24th September before all 3 are out for download, while the second is released on the 27th August. Voice-acting is pretty dire if I’m honest; it’s just not convincing and feels “by the numbers” as does the plot.
The Verdict
The Raven – Legacy of a Master Thief: Chapter One – The Eye of the Sphinx is a nice enough point and click adventure game that sits quite comfortably on the Agatha Christie influences, but it isn’t anywhere near as interesting or as well done as her work. I hope that things will improve in the future episodes, but it’s pretty difficult to say if that will happen…
