Review of Chronicles of Mystery: The Scorpio Ritual by emric

Polish developer, City Interactive, have done 2 games in their ‘Art of Murder’ series and now this is the first of ‘Chronicles of Mystery’. They seem to churn out their titles pretty fast… which is kinda good and kinda bad. Their games are enjoyable and engaging and flow well and are great visually and the soundtrack and voice acting are also pleasing, but the plots—though well implemented—cover the same ground that’s already saturated adventure gaming. So while they are fun as you play them, they won’t become memorable additions to the genre overall. The team certainly have some strong development skills, so it’d be nice to see them be a bit more creative in their choice of subject matter in the future. Until then, their games will continue to feel like they’ve just been churned out of pre-existing formulas.

Having said that, this their third adventure, shows slight improvements over its predecessors. The puzzles here never dwell into illogical or annoying territory which was a minor concern i had with “Art of Murder: Hunt for the Puppeteer”. However, like their earlier attempts, “Chronicles of Mystery: The Scorpio Ritual” is still plagued by subtitles occasionally not matching spoken dialogue, a few phrases which don’t seem to have been translated well, and an embarrassingly awful translation of the English User Manual.

Nevertheless, I still have some hope remaining for City and will probably continue to play the next additions to their adventure series’.

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Time Played: 10-20 hours