Gameplay
13 years have passed since the King with the help of three heroes burned the Oracle alive. No one knew if the Oracle was some Druid, a Mag, a creature from the Fairy world, or a half god. What everybody knows is that minutes before the Oracle dies his eyes focused on a young kid that was witnessing the Oracle’s execution, and his last prediction was that this young kid would one day be responsible for a very big disaster.
Since then nothing major happened, and the young child, named Geron grew up normally. There are however people in Andergast who still believe tha Geron is still the cause behind many unfortunate events. There is only way for our young hero to prove that the reputation for ill luck that has followed him since childhood is undeserved.
Andergast has been at odds with neighboring Nostria for centuries, but now first steps are being undertaken towards a lasting peace. But the burgeoning peace and the euphoria of a royal festival are disturbed by a mysterious crow plague. The aggressive birds even attack humans. As the belligerent creatures infiltrate even the castle itself, the king seeks a skilled bird catcher who happens to be Geron. However, the task proves much more difficult than he expects and leads him on the path of the greatest adventure of his life, with the help of his mystical companion Nuri, that will take him to the borders of the charted lands of Aventuria and beyond.
This is how everything begins in Chains of Satinav, a pure point and click adventure that will excite gamers with its beautiful puzzles. What you must basically do in the game is collect every object that you find in your way, combine them, interact with many characters and gather useful info from the dialogues.The difficulty in puzzles, especially before you meet Nuri, is very basic and is almost inventory based. Then it steadily progresses to reach a very demanding point in the Fairy World, but thankfully not so demanding that will give you headaches.
In order to solve some of these puzzles you need to carefully examine the game’s environment and let your imagination break loose. The only hint that we can give you is that weather and gravity are some of the elements that demand your attention if you want to overcome some crucial difficulties in the game. The good thing in all the above is that Deadalic lets you choose the level of difficulty in the game.You can either play as a casual adventurer which means that the game will provide you with various hints in order to save the puzzles, or play as an experience adventurer where every help is turned off.
What makes the gameplay in Dark Eye Chains of Satinav even more original and attractive is Geron’s ability to break every object in the game with just the power of his mind. This ability will prove very useful, as there will be times in the game you’ll need to break an object in order to use a certain part of it, or cause damages in order to have something bigger move. Nuri, on the other hand is the one that can pull all these scattered pieces together. These two functions should be your first choice whenever you get stuck in the game as many puzzles require clever use of both characters and their special abilities.
There is no map for Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav but you’ll probably won’t need one as even though the game’s world is huge is not chaotic.What will help you in navigating in the right way in the game is to interact with every character available something hat will also help unlock achievements but only if you make the right choice in a dialogue. Other achievements unlock is you choose to play in a certain level of difficulty. These achievements let you unlock open concept art, and videos. While the one that remained locked add replayablity value to the game which will take you about 10 hours to finish.
Conclusion
We’ve seen many good adventure games these days however we feel that The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav is the one that could be easily been compared with the classic games of the genre if the game received a bit of polish to complete its status as an undeniable treasure.
Even so The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav is a flawed gem; full of great ideas like the much appreciated highlight-all-objects function, and challenging puzzles. Newcomers, however, may find the steep difficulty too much and if you don’t click with the characters and their story, then you may find Chains of Satinav just too overwhelming and frustrating.
Howevwe if you care about this genre then you should do yourself a small favour and pick this one up. Those interested can purchase the game from Steam, for 39,99€.
Gameconnect rating: 7.6
