Strange Antiquities

Like its predecessor, Strange Horticulture, Strange Antiquities is another tale of a rookie thaumaturge hired by the owner of the local antiquities shop to cover the store in their absence. With strange forces yet again threatening this peculiar village, it's up to the rookie store manager to solve the mystery while helping the locals with their daily problems. Strange Antiquities features a nearly identical gameplay system to its predecessor, with plants being replaced by strange trinkets of magical power. In many ways, this concept makes more sense than Strange Horticulture (especially with how plants were used); however, it does lose a bit of the charm of operating a nursery. The game is split across 18 chapters, with each chapter featuring a formulaic gameplay loop. The store bell rings, a guest appears, and they request an item to solve their problems. Using a combination of vague clues provided by the guests and the process of elimination, the store rookie must accurately guess their requested item. Failure to guess correctly too many times leads to a potential game over, which can be avoided by winning a mini-game. As with Strange Horticulture, the reference books are not all assembled at the beginning of the game, with pages earned as rewards upon completing a request. Similarly, not all of the antiquities are in the store, necessitating the rookie clerk to explore the local village, castle, and catacombs to complete their collection. Strange Antiquities is around 50% longer than Strange Horticulture, which I'm not sure entirely played to its benefit. Especially toward the later chapters, the formulaic approach to puzzles was beginning to tire me. Like the first game, the narrative progresses "off-screen," where recurring guests visit to share what's happening around the village. While it shares a lot of narrative cues with its predecessor, I had trouble engaging with this story. Namely, I felt that there was a lack of mystery to the narrative, particularly as it relates to player autonomy to arrive at revelations on their own terms. Strange Antiquities is still an enjoyable game, which I'd recommend to others; however, I did feel I enjoyed it a bit less than Strange Horticulture. Whether that was due to the longer runtime wearing down the novelty of the concept, or the story feeling less engaging, I can't quite decide. For fans of the franchise, though, Strange Antiquities is a welcome return featuring cats, investigative puzzle solving, a slightly Lovecraftian tone, and everything else one might have on their list of needful things.

tldr: definite improvement over the previous game, tho it's still frustraiting sometimes If you played Strange Horticulture and found some of its game mechanics frustraiting and the puzzles a bit too easy -- Strange Antiquities actually addresses all of these issues! Instead of one big map which you need to scan for several minutes any time you need to find something, you have several smaller maps which are easy to navigate! Your main reference book has an INDEX which allows you to find artefacts based on what is mentioned in their description (like 'water' or 'light' etc), making the task of finding an item when the client doesn't know its name significantly easier! And you actually have more than one book now, making the gameplay more varied. The UI had also got significantly better and, for example, the game now clearly communicates when your choices have impact, or when a new game mechanic need to be used. That being said, there are still some frustraiting moments. On one hand, I've really enjoyed that they made the puzzles more complicated, both for the artefact identification and the map exploration. On the other, in my opinion the devs overcorrected a bit and some the puzzles are just utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and illogical -- which unfortunately becomes more frequenter the later in the game you are. For example, I've still no idea why one puzzle that required 'magical' silver/gold items didn't accept multiple 'magical' silver/gold items I tried. And the whole Moon Clock thing is just... ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and the game really needed some integrated hints for it. The idea of exploring all alternative endings is still too daunting, in my opinion. After one playthrough you already know most of the puzzles, so there's no fun in figuring them out anymore and you're left with only the same artefact-recognition gameloop over and over again, just for the sake of changing a couple of decisions in, like, day 5 and day 12. Which is a shame -- the story is definitely better in this game, and I got actually worried for some of the characters. I hope the devs will make alternative story exploration easier in the next game, if they will ever make one. Overall, even though it's a bit of a hit-and-miss at time, it's still fun and enjoyable!