As you investigate, you learn a little more about the mysterious deaths and begin to form suspicions about who is involved. Madeleine must get information from the very people that she suspects, and this involves caution when speaking to others and even some subterfuge. The more she learns, the more danger Madeleine realizes she is in, but throughout the game she often turns to Nostradamus for advice. I found it interesting (and a little odd) how flippant Nostradamus sounded at the beginning of the game when he tells Madeleine it will be fun for her to help Catherine with the prophecy. His tone changes, however, as more deaths occur along the way. Madeleine also encounters one of the murder victims, a monk named Philibert, in visions and dreams. Philibert was doing his own research before he was murdered, and Madeleine’s brief visions of him help her follow in his footsteps to understand his involvement in the prophecy. I never quite understood why Madeleine was able to have these visions, but they didn’t detract from the believability of the overall story.

The game’s dialogue is not what one expects of 16th century France, but it is well written and the accompanying voices are professionally acted in most cases. If there’s a problem here it’s that some characters, like Jean-Aimé de Chavigny (the former secretary of Nostradamus) and the scribe (a monk traveling with Catherine), have accents that sound British. The synching of the mouth movements and voiceovers is also completely off, which can occasionally be distracting. One pedantic complaint I have concerning the dialogue is the pronunciation of ‘Celtic.’ It’s pronounced using a soft ‘c’ and not as “Keltic,” which is used when talking about the people in Great Britain. Visions of the basketball team and Larry Bird would pop into my head whenever Celtic was pronounced incorrectly.

Exploration is done using the familiar first-person perspective with 360-degree panning as you move node to node. The point-and-click interface is easy to use except for a couple of places where you need to drag the mouse to use an item in the environment. In these instances I wasn’t sure what I had to do at first, as mouse dragging is not an intuitive action for me and dragging it didn’t immediately result in anything happening. The items you collect, like in other Kheops games, go into a holding area until they are organized individually in the inventory, which has an area in which you can observe and/or manipulate them further before they are used in the game. Nostradamus also has a scoring function and your score increases when you solve puzzles and make important dialogue choices, such as whether or not to be confrontational or amicable. While not really relevant to the larger storyline, this scoring feature, along with the ability to interact with others in various ways, give the game a degree of replayability.

The graphics in Nostradamus are very detailed and really show off the environments, consisting primarily of a town in Provence, Catherine’s castle, and the home in which Madeleine lives with her father. Nostradamus’ house was especially interesting to me given the equipment in his observatory, his workshop and all of the papers and books that lay around. Nostradamus is mostly remembered for his prophecies, but his role as a doctor also takes center stage in this game. I had a great time experimenting with the various plants and solutions that he used, and I wish I had been able to interact with even more paraphernalia. The town itself is virtually empty, a fact logically explained as a consequence of the plague, but I found myself wanting to explore more of the buildings. The feeling of desolation is broken up only by a few animations, such as birds circling, flames flickering in fireplaces and the smoking fire pit in the town, among others.

The background music, a suspenseful theme of drums, strings and brass that’s occasionally accompanied by light chanting, is pleasant to listen to and usually plays throughout the game. It becomes a little repetitive if you explore one location for a long time, but not to the point of feeling obtrusive. The tone of the music becomes darker as the game progresses and the suspense increases, but it’s never overwhelming or distracting. At other times the music is absent so you can hear the ambient outdoor sounds like birds and flies or the crackling fire inside the house.

I finished the game in about 12 hours, but as always, play time will depend on how long it takes to solve some of the puzzles. Throughout that time I was both pleased and impressed, as Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy is a solid game with an intriguing story and fun, well-integrated puzzles. For someone like me who loves the past, it was a fascinating escape into another time, offering a rare glimpse of one of history’s most notable characters, if only in a secondary role. Even if you’re not as intrigued with history as I am, the investigation makes for an entertaining adventure in its own right, and I’ll make a prediction myself that most adventure gamers will enjoy the experience.