I bought, played and finished Dark Tales - Edgar Allan Poe’s Metzengerstein. I’ll give it a solid 3/5 stars. Certainly not the best game I’ve ever played, (even from this series,) but it is certainly not the worst. (Again, there are worse games in this series.)
As I was unfamiliar with Poe’s original story, I can’t tell you how close this game hews to the storyline. That really doesn’t matter since it’s all new to me. The plot is simple. There are two competing families. (Think Montague v. Capulet.) The son of one family falls in love with the daughter of the other, and she reciprocates. The girl’s father is opposed to the union, to the point of irrationality. The son apparently dies in a fire, sending the girl into fits of depression. She is also visited by strange visions. One of which is surprisingly physical, as the vision is capable of abducting her.
You arrive at the scene in your usual role as aide to Inspector Dupin, who has been invited here by the girl’s family. You are tasked with finding out what is going on, and, hopefully bring things to a happy conclusion.
There is all sorts of backstory going on which you discover during a narrative that takes place during a few of the hidden object scenes. There are also notes giving additional backstory scattered throughout the various locations you visit. There is some variety in the hidden objects scenes, but nothing you haven’t seen before in ERS games. There are a few scenes, though, where I honestly didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. In those instances I had to use the Hint button to get me started.
The puzzles are of moderate difficulty. There is a Skip button that can be set in the options menu to refresh in as little as 30 seconds to up to several minutes. Because many of the puzzles are what I call “tedious”, that is, you know how to solve the puzzle, but the number of steps just takes too long, you will be hard pressed to keep your finger off the Skip button if you have it set for a short duration. There was one puzzle that requires you to find the code that will help you solve a numerical puzzle on a device. I had the device in inventory, but could not find the code. I eventually had to use a walkthru to solve it. And, even after reading through the entire walkthru, I still don’t know where the code was hiding. Frustrating to say the least.
The graphics are top notch, which is what I would expect from an ERS game. Music and sound are above average. Voice acting is OK, but you have heard these voices before.
As with other games in this series, Inspector Dupin is in charge of the investigation, but you do all the heavy lifting. It gets irritating to be told so many times what needs to be done, only to have the Inspector disappear while you go about finding a way to do it. Dupin is really an un-needed character in these games. Either he should be the protagonist or you should just do it all.
I played the SE version of the game. The ending was satisfactory on its own. My impression is that the CE version’s bonus game material gives you more backstory. That might be nice to play, but isn’t really necessary.
A better game than I expected it to be. I’m glad I bought it.
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
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