Reviews - Grandpa's mansion redone mod for Amnesia: The Dark Descent

I'll be as fair as I can.

What's good:
-Some interesting ideas scattered about.
-While their aesthetic design isn't great, many levels had interesting layouts, if a little too corridor-y.

What's bad:
-Level design as a whole was dull. Most notably, there was a lack of detail and polish, and the lighting was downright hideous at times. Everything about it had such a sense of lifelessness that immersion was impossible.
-Monster encounters weren't exactly predictable, but out of all the ones I encountered only one felt interesting or intense, even though it was *heavily* scripted. For the most part, ESPECIALLY in the Wine Cellar, they were just plain annoying.
-A general lack of originality. I'm normally lenient on that sort of thing, but what really killed the mod for me was that I felt like, if I stopped playing it dead in the middle, I wouldn't miss a single thing. Nothing was particularly surprising or stimulating.
-There wasn't really anything scary about it. A few moments of intensity, but terror was scant. Nothing atmospheric or psychological about it, only monsters being hurled at you.
-Puzzles were over-simplistic and generally "meh".
-The story as it was presented felt lackluster and disconnected from the actual gameplay world.

To put things plainly, I didn't finish it because of the aforementioned feeling that I wasn't missing anything, a lack of feeling in the least bit scared, and not really having an ounce of fun. It wasn't *agonizing*, but I was bored and annoyed.

Excellent mode. I like it. Full walkthrough of this mode on my Youtube channel: Swankest CZ

Oké szóval, eljutottam ide is, hogy véleményezem itt is, és nézd el nekem, hogy nem angol :D

Én azért eléggé részletesen végigkövethettem a játék készítését, sokszor ott voltam mikor csináltad, és kérdezgettem róla. tudtam hogy egy ijesztő játék lesz, és nem mondom, hogy jó döntés volt azt mondani hogy játszok vele, csak, hogy bevágódjak nálad :D

Segítettem ott ahol tudtam, és fel is használtad aminek tényleg örültem.

A játék annak ellenére, hogy nemsoká 10 éves lesz, és elemileg elég kis bénus (egyéni vélemény) te nagyon jól saját képi világra megcsináltad.
A dolgok sokszor nagyon el voltak rejtve, és mondhatom elég sokszor körbejártam a szobákat, ugyanis nem találtam ki onnan.
Kreatív volt, mert sok minden nyílt sok mindenből, ezt is megtapasztaltam, mikor már 2-3x jártam ugyanabban a boros pincében.
A szörnyek iszonyat ijesztőek voltak, mikor futottak felém, és természetesen az összes helyen ahol csak lehetett találkoztam velük. A székes rész volt talán a legeslegesleg idegesítőbb, ott én már kb sírni akartam, mert full tehetetlen voltam azzal, és nem ment oda úgy ahogy én akartam, és sok időt eltököltem vele.
A leveleket nagyon szerettem, remélem mindet megtaláltam, mert sok mindenben segítettek, viszont kérdéseket is felvetettek, amiket szerettem tőled megkérdezni xd.
Még mindig azt vallom, hogy több olaj, kevesebb fáklya, mert sajnálom a fáklyát meggyújtani, így inkább a sötétben futkározok :D
A puzzle jó volt amúgy, ameddig tudtam csinálni, bár a dobozosat még mindig nem értem, de a Bibliás amúgy király volt.
Ja a másik legrosszabb hely, ahol fél órákat tököltem az a doboz egymásra rakás volt. Sötétben menni a dobozokért, majd egymásra pakolni. Lehetett volna egy csapocska pl :D
A boss fight-nál nagyon tetszett a zene ^^ és külön köszönet, hogy ott már nem volt semmi ijesztő. Én azt hittem lesz még valami, de csak "elköszönt" a szörny.

Tetszik, hogy 2 irányból lehet megcsinálni, de azt nem fogom :D to much ijesztő, és a két napban kaptam én elég szívrepedést. :D

Amúgy meg örülök, hogy valamilyen szinten részese lehettem a játékodnak. <3
Megérdemled a 10-est.

I don't have much to add to the Shyrtexx review. The finish is a bit trivial, confusing. A little disappointing. The crank puzzle is a non-puzzle. I expected a different ending. Or more endings.

NOTE: This review is written without completing the final map due to error and lack of autosaves

Positives:
-Average-good design
-Scary at times
-Good puzzles
-Nice atmosphere

Negatives:
-Although the design was mainly average-good, some areas severely lacked details and events
-Writing in notes could be a lot better
-Some logical flaws (read below)
-Wine Cellar was annoying
-Story was a bit of a mess
-Massive quality loss near the end

Neutrals/Nitpicks:
-Some minor lighting & design flaws at times
-I could use the filled water bucket to the empty well in Control Room with a message saying the bucket is full already, despite the well being dry
-No autosaves. I could have saved myself too, but the crash near the end made me lose all my progress.

Story: ⁓

I have read worse, no doubts. However, I can not say I am entirely satisfied with the storyline. It is not the most unique there is, and it contains lots of clichés (alchemists, guards, etc).

While a cliché story is better than no story, it was not the most impressive I have read. 5/10

Level design: ✔

Mostly good, although I did not really see anything I have not seen before. Biggest problem was the lack of detail at places, for example the map after the second elevator and the torture chambers. The billboards were also so-so, at times they looked great but sometimes very random with their sharp edges.

With better detailing the score would be higher. 7/10

Puzzles: ✔

I loved the majority of the puzzles. Although in the beginning they were extremely easy and a bit obvious, they got more difficult near the end. I loved how some of the puzzles actually required logical thinking instead of just doing the first and the most obvious things that comes to mind. Extra kudos from the Office lever puzzle- loved solving it. What I absolutely adored though was the Outer Sanctuary puzzle, with the four books and movable crates. I have never seen that before in Amnesia. What made it better though is how it all connected to each other- you got two boxes from each puzzle solved and you needed four to proceed. Other puzzles were fine most of the time. 9/10

Scare factor: ✔

Although this was nowhere near the scariest mod I have played, certain areas scared me quite badly and gave me chills. 7/10

I mentioned above that the mod has some logical flaws. For example:

-The water bucket usage was odd. I could use the bucket thrice at one point for three different goo areas, but at certain situations I only could use it once and then I needed a refill

-Some mementos and item descriptions predicted the future. This is a common issue. For example, the description of the lever I found in the Offices read "missing lever from the water machine" despite me not being near that machine, or knowing its a missing lever.

Final verdict:

It is a great mod I enjoyed playing. The score as I'm writing this review is 3.5/10, but this is definitely better than what the score suggests. I can recommend this mod for those looking a good core-vanilla Amnesia custom story experience. However, if you are looking for something more unique then you should avoid this mod.

Final score (calculated from the four scores above): 7/10 - Good

This mod was completed after using debug mode to go through the blocked gate bug.

While this mod has potential, it is pretty much a try-hard ripoff of the vanilla maps.

The creator clearly copied puzzles and chunks of scripts from the original game, it was very noticeable in the archives maps (which was structured almost the same as the original map).

While copying script as reference isn't a bad thing in itself, it's no good to base your whole mod on it, especially when you copy map structures and puzzles.

There are tons of ghost enemies in the mod, but for some reason they can actually attack the player anyways, which makes zero sense.

The creator just spawned them every few seconds, breaking random doors and whatnot.

There are so many notes and huge walls of text with weird way of wording that honestly made it difficult for me to care about the story or even understand what the hell is going on. This is over-complexifying your story, and not in a good way.

From what I've seen, this mod tries to have multiple choice maps, which is a nice idea, but it all falls short because of everything else, which is clearly unfinished and again - rips off the original game maps.

I suggest studying some more techniques of level design, because currently the lighting and level of detail are just not acceptable.

And try to be more original with this mod, it has potential.