![]() Modern and medieval settings are evoked well, the architecture in particular showing a modern town built up from parts of its history, but the empty streets feel lifeless and reduces the believability. The effect is interesting, but superficial. Medieval Germany is tinted brown, populated by grey-faced peasants, and the 1900s receives receives a black and white style that becomes more colourful as the century progresses. ![]() Time periods all receive a different graphical flourish. The abundance of cutscenes isn't the only suggestion of the game's cinematic pretentions. Despite Eike's mild mannered nature, surely he can break off a trivial conversation when his life depends on it? Dying as a result of spending too long talking is both frustrating and breaks the illusion of the game's fiction. They eat up precious game-clock time which discourages triggering them, and limit the amount of plot players can experience before Eike's demise. Also, many of the cutscenes' context in the game is questionable. Replays are encouraged, and necessary to fully grasp the plot, but these features can contribute to a mild ennui before the game's content is exhausted. Choosing a different solution or dialogue option can uncover previously unheard dialogue and new events, but the tedium of watching a previously seen cinematic with a single, cosmetic difference or an inconsequential line of new dialogue happens too often. Any variation (however slight) caused by the player's decisions removes the skip option. If Eike dies outside of his own time, all progress is lost, the title-screen reloaded, and the chapter (and all cutscenes within) must be replayed. Also, while making them initially unskippable seems a wise decision given the amount of important information divulged in them, every eventuality is not accommodated. While always interspersed between sections of gameplay, the high cutscene ratio remains very noticeable. Mostly connected with the implementation of cutscenes. What the game does well, apart from character development, is imbue the mundane and the supernatural with an equal sense of drama, tragedy, and mystery weaving them together into a deeply personal tale of a town and its denizen's past.Ī daring concept and unconventional structure such as that employed here invites problems, and the game shares some of those that many story-driven games are accused of. ![]() Despite the confusion of parallel timelines, the plot remains intelligible and rewards the player's curiosity with additional storyline content which reveals new details about the characters and the plot rather than being trivial non sequiturs. Intriguing moral dilemmas are introduced throughout the course of the game, but along with the periods Eike lands in, are never fully explored. The complicated plot splits off into several possible timelines, requiring six playthroughs to reveal every possible outcome. This chapter sets a general template for the game: after foiling one plot, Eike is killed by some other means and must rescue himself again while trying to find information about his assailant. And what follows as he puts off the first attempt on his life, manipulating the past to secure his future, makes up the first of ten chapters in Konami's 2001 PS2 adventure game, Shadow of Memories (Shadow of Destiny in the US).
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