Month: March 2020

Game Review: True Fear Forsaken Souls (Switch)

One thing I love about the Nin­ten­do E‑shop is that it’s not plagued by reviews, so you choose and buy games based mere­ly off of your own opin­ion. It’s the best way for indie games and most games to make it. Unjad­ed deci­sions. How­ev­er, that means you always run the risk of buy­ing a bad game.

True Fear Forsaken Souls: Part 1

Rat­ing: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Price: $9.99 Nin­ten­do E‑shop, also avail­able for mobile and Steam

While search­ing for games to try, I found the demo for this game. I love escape and puz­zle games over­all and this seemed awe­some, though I was hes­i­tant on the hor­ror part of it. You have the choice of doing escape style puz­zles or find the items for por­tions of the games. I went with escape (it defaults to this). The hor­ror por­tions were most­ly cheap jump-scares, but the sto­ry it paint­ed def­i­nite­ly held on to the creepy, Res­i­dent Evil‑y vibe. So while I was­n’t hor­ri­bly afraid, I was kept mild-mod­er­ate­ly creeped out dur­ing the play. Many of the steps seemed unnec­es­sary, but it pro­gressed the sto­ry with var­ied puz­zles and the casu­al mode I played on was very gen­er­ous with hints. It sup­ports touch or cur­sor play which his awe­some because I’d switch back and forth between the two. Creepy fac­tor increased towards the end and it kept a nice­ly detailed diary with clues and such to help out. Per­haps it’s the lim­i­ta­tions of the pro­gram­ming, but the con­stant appear­ance of the pro­tag­o­nist’s 3D-style, sta­t­ic face dur­ing cut-scenes annoyed me tremen­dous­ly.

Over­all, it is a sol­id game, albeit short. Puz­zles aren’t TOO hard, with a gen­er­ous hint sys­tem, in-game achieve­ments, col­lectibles and a healthy dose of the creepy, though pre­dictable atmos­phere and cut-scenes. Demo pro­gres­sion is saved, so when you buy the whole game you don’t have to start all over again. There is also bonus con­tent that makes up for the rel­a­tive­ly quick game­play. As part of a tril­o­gy, the cliff-hang­er real­ly did make me buy the 2nd one after mulling over it for a day.

True Fear Forsaken Souls: Part 2

Rat­ing: 4 out of 5 stars

Price: $9.99 Nin­ten­do E‑shop

Although I end­ed up down­load­ing the demo for this part of the game, I was intrigued enough to buy this after the first sec­tion. Game­play con­trols changed since the first one, some for the bet­ter, and some for worse. At first, I lament­ed the changes, but after a while, I found myself pre­fer­ring the new. A few tweaks are still need­ed as the touch “back” but­ton over­laps with the inven­to­ry which is hel­la annoy­ing, but the rest of it is good. The cut scenes were a lit­tle bet­ter as now the close up of her face isn’t as sta­t­ic and bor­ing. The sto­ry itself steps up the creepy factor–though typ­i­cal­ly any­thing deal­ing with insane asy­lums is inher­ent­ly scary. MUCH longer game and sto­ry becomes more con­vo­lut­ed, but same gen­er­ous hint sys­tem and the puz­zles are a hard­er than before. You are allowed to skip puz­zles which is nice, but I acci­den­tal­ly hit the skip but­ton a few times when I was try­ing to fin­ish with­out it for the achieve­ment. Some of the touch con­trols were not respon­sive and I had no choice but to use the cur­sor. It was neat to see some Latin involve­ment, though the loose trans­la­tion was too loose for a nerd like me.

I liked it quite a lot and was upset at the doozy of a cliff-hang­er. So much so that I found myself going on to Gob­linz’s Face­book page to fig­ure out why. It’s in the works, which is awe­some to know. Despite some touch con­trol flaws and a few unclear puz­zles, it was a wel­come step up from the first por­tion and a rec­om­mend­ed game.

Divinity Original Sin: Enhanced Edition — Reaching the Source Temple

Plat­form: Xbox One

There seems to be few walk­throughs for this part of the game which is very much dif­fer­ent from the orig­i­nal. So, to reach the Source Tem­ple in Phan­tom For­est in the Enhanced Edi­tion of Divin­i­ty Orig­i­nal Sin, you need to acti­vate 4 switch­es. It does­n’t mat­ter what order you do these in, but there’s an ide­al order the game devel­op­ers want­ed you to (Air, Earth, Ice, Fire). Hon­est­ly, though, it’s faster to go Fire, Air, Earth, then Ice. That way you’d have faster access to the unlocked stone door after the Ice switch.

Air (x:230, y:210)

I tele­port­ed a Source Hunter in through the gates, then picked up the key sit­ting on the crates to the left. Alter­nate­ly, if your telekine­sis is high enough, just snag it through the iron gate. Because the oil is annoy­ing, I threw crates on top of the traps. Open the gates to let your team­mates in, as there’s a Demon that will pop up you need to kill before start­ing down the stairs. Hit the switch at the bot­tom of the steps to the left of the next gate. It will light up green for suc­cess.

loca­tion for the iron gate

Earth (x:252, y:264)

Open the door next to the Air switch (or alter­nate­ly come in from the swamp side of the map, though watch your step). Dis­con­nect a char­ac­ter from your par­ty. The sen­tinel will see you and make the ins­ta-kill lava on the ground. I used my rogue with Winged Feet. There’s a round pres­sure switch on the ground near the gob­lin totem. Plop a crate on there which will open the door to where the earth switch is. I did­n’t see under­stand what the switch did ini­tial­ly, so I parked my rogue at the Earth switch door and used my oth­er source hunter with high telekine­sis to throw a crate from the door­way. Then when the door is opened, you can con­tin­ue on with Winged Feet onto the to hit the Earth switch, or use the 2 tele­port scrolls in the cor­ner to hit it. This will open the near­by door which is a path to the ice switch as well as cause the sen­tinel in the pri­or room to crum­ble.

I already hit the earth switch. Some forum men­tioned that you can throw the sen­tinel around, but I tried and could­n’t.

Ice (x:224, y:350)

From the Earth room, head through the new­ly opened stone door. Whether you entered from the stone door or the swamp side, don’t step on the dark tiles as they are all switch­es that will acti­vate ins­ta-kill lava. I’m not sure what the totem does because I killed it first with my archer. Then I used Winged Feet and pulled the lever on the wall behind the totem’s back which elim­i­nat­ed the lava and opened the iron door to the grassy area. Now, find the 3 stat­ues (knight, wor­ship­per, and fish), then “move” them onto their respec­tive 3 green pedestals (there are carv­ings on top of them). Then, as Izma said to Kro­nk, “PULL THE LEVER!” A green mir­ror will appear. Go through it and hit the Ice switch.

I can’t believe I could­n’t fig­ure this out with­out online help. It’s so sim­ple.

Fire

In the Ice switch room, there are levers. You’re sup­posed to split your team up and keep some­one at the levers to open and close the doors below. That will help you reach the fire switch. You can’t just tele­port through these gates because there are steam clouds that block your cast­er’s vision. In the mul­ti-gat­ed cor­ri­dor there is a sen­tinel, lava and a met­al crate. Seems com­pli­cat­ed and time con­sum­ing because it is. The sim­ple way is to head west near the wood­en bridge to where there is an iron gate. Then just tele­port your­self in, hit the Fire switch, the door opens, and voila! Alter­nate­ly, you could have entered the area from the back­side (there are two chests down that path around the left side of the area that leads to the mul­ti-gat­ed cor­ri­dor) or even use the green mir­ror por­tal right behind where you enter to get the Air switch.

20200307_1233274933522149297659070.jpg
The path to the iron gate you should tele­port through is south of my cur­sor. My peeps are chill­in’ in the Ice switch room

Hope­ful­ly it becomes of use to some­one. In ret­ro­spect, I don’t under­stand how I could­n’t just fig­ure this out on my own. The Air and Earth ones were easy, but the Ice and Fire had me run­ning all over the place and wast­ing loads of time.