Keepsake
by Dreamcatcher Interactive
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Video Game Reviews of Keepsake
Customer Review: Fun game, great graphics, cloying dialog.
Summary: 3 Stars
You can't please all the people all of the time, and this game has beautiful scenery and nice puzzles and an easy to use interface. The one fault lies in the cloying, annoying, affected dialog. I literally muted my computer so I wouldn't have to listen to the sugar-coated accented voices. Even just reading the dialog was annoying, it was so boring and staged. Picture Mr. Rogers. Nice guy, but I wouldn't want to spend a day playing a game with him. Fortunately they give you the option to "skip" the dialog as soon as you've read it. Unfortunately the characters in the game need to go through their dialog animations (waving arms, mouths moving strangely) until they think they are done with their dialog, even though you want to skip forward. I'm an adventure game junkie and have run across quite a few games that had bad reviews on the dialog portion and I never really cared.
This game made me care enough to write my first review. If you don't mind horribly annoying dialog, get it, it's fun.
Bottom Line: It's a great game if you're looking for a gentle adventure game with beautiful graphics and fun puzzles to play. I would recommend it for those adventure gamers who want a non-violent game and that aren't annoyed by the dialog issue.
Customer Review: Smashing in spite of the footsteps.
Summary: 5 Stars
How can a company,Wicked Studios make the best adventure game in years, with an intriguing story, a great female character and incredible beautiful and amazing graphics and not work out a little thing like the sound of footsteps? When the character stops walking -- the footsteps continue. I guess because otherwise, the game would be perfect.
In spite of the footsteps this is a perfect game those of us who like fantasy, castles, dragons, magic, adventuresome girls, clever puzzles with hints and the incredible scenes that will have you on your knees wondering why you can't go to magic school.
Young Lydia comes to Dragonvale Academy to study magic with her closest friend, Cynthia. Upon her arrival she finds the school deserted and so begins her quest to find her friend and discover what happened. She has a companion to talk to, Zac, a wolf who was locked up and therefore escaped the disappearance. Zac, is somewhat suspicious -- claiming to be originally a dragon but sounding more and more like a student. Lydia's character is strong and adventurous and she gains in wisdom and awareness as she goes through the trials to qualify as a student at the Academy.
The game play takes place in two castles and a sanctuary. -- But what castles! The designers have evoked the feeling of being in a truly magical world with tapestries, dragon sculptures, gardens, endless corridors with flickering lights all created in a gigantic scale that both intimidates and amazes.
The lushness and construct is beyond human scale and so evokes the feeling of being in a truly magical place. Magical teleportation pads send you soaring dizzingly through the towering heights instead of just appearing from one place to another. The quest for the Oracle will lead you on narrow paths to islands suspended in the mid-air. If everything is magical, anything can happen. The wow factor happens when something exceeds your expectation and I experienced it numerous times. You have to see it for yourself.
The puzzles are many and are all built into the architecture . Many are geometric, a few are mathematical most are required to get something to work, or get an item for a potion. When requested, hints to all the puzzles are given in three steps. One which tells you what you have to do. This answers the question, "What am I supposed to do with this?" The second hint starts you on your way and the third solves it for you. This is the best hint system I have seen and the technique could bring a lot of games into the reach of the "casual gamer"
This is only part of the hint system. Because the game is like walking in a three dimensional maze, there are hints, if asked for, that will tell you where to go next and gives you an image of that space. How you get there is your training in how you find your way and skill in remembering locations .By game's end you can pretty well find your way around. And the footsteps? What footsteps? I don't hear them anymore.