The prologue to Eternium remade with far superior mapping, optimization, better gameplay and design and a more immersive experience.
Mapping/Setting:
For starters, there is a lot of of great mapping in this mod. Hallways are well detailed with no shortage of interesting room designs. There is also a great deal huge set pieces which frankly are not all that often seen. Nothing much more to add, because it's just flat-out good in most areas.
Scares/Atmosphere:
There is a new(?) monster in this mod, and I think his disturbing appearance greatly contributes to the fear factor in this mod. His disturbing design is one of the main things that I dreaded facing while playing this mod, and one of the greatest sources of my fear.
There is no shortage of ambient music, and sounds in Eternium. A lot of which is custom it left me wondering if some cues were pre-scripted, or just coincidentally aligning with my actions. Either way it caused me no small amount of paranoia.
Storytelling:
The story is told primarily through notes. There is a surprisingly good amount of clever writing in many of the notes, and at least one line had me chuckling at how clever it was.
However the story just doesn't feel like it has any life to it. The concept of the story is a good one, but when you only almost have text as the only way of telling your story explicitly, then it loses charm when there's nothing much to haul it up besides notes. Voice acting, or events in the world may have greatly strengthened this aspect.
Gameplay/Puzzles:
The monster timings in this mod I feel were very adequate for the most part.
There aren't really that many complex puzzles in this mod, and many of them are quite straight-forward rarely having a huge twist, or turn.
I will have to say though that quite a bit of the level design, particularly in the second half, can be extremely confusing. I sometimes would find myself lost, and have to circle around for a very long time.
Got it! Nevermind the question about the sulfur and acid! Made it!
And since I finished it, I am going to write down my opinion.
The CS is really nicely done! I see some integration from Amnesia II - MFP.
The lantern - poor light.. As I said before, almost never really used it,had plenty of oil left till the end.
The enemies - Their route is pretty one dimensional. Maybe make it a bit more challenging? After I went down the shafts, and came up they were gone... Why? And speaking of those long shafts - it would be AWESOME to implement monsters there too! Like the ones in "Dark Case" that crawl slowly, but surely! It would add really much!
The puzzles - they are pretty straight forward, I had no problems (till the acid at the end, but that's really my own fault). But what I DON'T like is that I am forced to completely do everything in one section of the game, to be able to exit. I'd suggest to do something about that, it will confuse gamers with less mileage on Amnesia.
And I REALLY missed voice acting! That'd be icing on the cake!
Hope this will maybe help to any future patches.
Cheers! :)
I am giving this mod a generous 8/10, really more like 7.5 but I am rounding up due to the limitations of the rating system.
Pros:
-Detailed, spooky environments
-Mysterious, enthralling lore
-Largely intuitive puzzles
Cons:
-TOO DARK! Even having gamma at 1.25 it was too hard to see without the lantern, which itself was quite dim with not enough oil throughout. It felt like the lantern drained faster than normal too.
-Overly-labyrinthine level designs sometimes. I had to look up a video walkthrough for how to make sulfuric acid because I had missed an item in the crouching maze before the lab.
-Story is too open-ended, leaves too many questions unanswered.
The atmosphere of this one is really what elevates it for me. Nice work!
Okay... this seems to be a paste of an old story called "Eternium Prologue" I laoded my save game to see if that door bug was fixed, it wasn't. so... here's my original review:
Seemed really good, until I just got stuck in the mine, I got to the point where I needed to trap the Suitor, but I tried every item, everywhere, and couldn't figure out what to do. Also I decided to barrel glitch through the door down there, and I think I found an unfinished part of the game lol, there was some items and a blank note in there, I thought it was a bug at first and that I needed to get through there, oh well. The level design and scripting up until then was great, a shame really.
Good things:
-Great level design
-Nice monster sequences
-Good scripting
-Creativity
-Not to long, not to short
-Decent atmosphere
-Custom models
Bad things:
-Not a lot of story
-Some parts of this are pretty boring
-Ambience is slightly lacking
-Bad ending
-Very simple puzzles
This has great level design with nice scripting and cool monster sequences but there's not a lot of ambience nor is there much story and the ending was a bit upsetting. This did however have lots of creativity and detail and the monster sequences were cool.
Next time, just add a bit more story and please don't end it like that where the player really wants more and then it just ends.
RECOMMENDED!
7/10 Good
Good had some potential
but had a few flaws
-lack of concrete story
- Very short
- Bugs (in the cellar after the suitor killed me after I picked up the cellars key I spawned on the wrong side of the door back in the cellar instead of outside TWICE!)
Good level design and lantern
Not bad would like to see more of what you can do \
Mapping: 9/10 - Mapping was great. It made sense, was logical, and extremely well detailed.
Sound: 9/10 - Music was nice, whether it was custom made, or grabbed from a royalty free site.
Story: 5/10 - I couldn't find much to piece together other than what was given in the description on the ModDB page. It wasn't very deep beyond that.
Grammar: 9/10 - Exceptional. Been a while since I played a mod that has extremely good grammar. I don't recall a single error.
Immersion: 3/10 - Didn't really exist. The lighting was nice, however I didn't find myself using the lantern much. It was a little too bright, I would suggest turning down the lighting to make it darker, and force people to use their lanterns (which had very poor light, might I add, don't know if that was intentional or just the lamp being rude). Also, there's a blank note in one of the halls.
Scares: 2/10 - Predictable. Solve a puzzle and a monster appears. The monster was easily caught when running through halls, therefore easily evadable. Wasn't as scary as it was amusing to see the thing twitch whenever it got caught on floor debris and corners.
Puzzles: 3/10 - Simple and linear. No challenge at all and, sorry to say, not unique in anyway. There were minimal key hunts, however hunting for chemicals made up for it.
Other: That ending though. If I had to rate the ending, it would be a 2/10. Took me half an hour to get through this only to have a giant bolder dropped on my head. I assume to leave room for a possible sequel, however I was expecting something a little more... classy, I suppose. The ending disappointed me to say the least.
All in all, while the concept was interesting, the story was shallow. Mapping, music and grammar were all high points, however the lack of immersion, the simple puzzles and the not so scary scares are huge negatives.
It was an okay play, but it definitely could have been better.
The only great thing about this CS was level design. Maps were pretty well made. Unfortunately story was lacking, there were several bugs and ending was petty obscure! This CS had potencial but there would have to be much more work done to get higher rating.
As long as Sins of the Father is a debut it's 10/10 without a single doubt. Patience, talent and artistic taste are priceless and Sins of the Father highlighted those capabilities of yours, Robosprog.