Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream

An adventure game that uses stealth-oriented puzzles, usually focused on learning to understand what the game wants you to do, sometimes introducing dexterity and coordination. It’s fun. Rather humble, nothing as playful or grand as in Shadow Tactics, but also not as intimidating. It gets varied and introduces twists to stay fresh as it’s more of a series of puzzles you have to figure out step by step, with UI being somewhat helpful, but the game overall still relies on some sort of visual coherence and logic, rather than complex systems. But there were tiny decisions that really bothered me. Like when the characters keep explaining what you need to do way past the tutorial (they shut up only in the last third of the game, and that's easily the best part), as if the game is afraid of you getting stuck. The collectibles are annoying, even if you ignore the AI-generated pictures (but some of them look so bad it's distracting). And characters always comment on them, but usually say nothing of note or value, making it feel pointless. The main thing is I failed to connect with the story at all. The English voice acting is fine, and the cutscenes are absolutely impressive, especially the earlier ones as they use more of the language of cinema, but I feel the whole plot is a bit too predictable and too cheesy, while the ending is… too silly and not believable, in my opinion. I felt disappointed.