Cinamax, 2006
What will we get if we blend 1-cup of adventure, 1-teaspoon of RPG, 1-tablespoon of action, gloomy atmosphere, and isometric perspective view in a blender? Well, I assure you that Daemonica will most definitely the result of such effort. Even though the game does lack a few traditional attributes of adventure genre, it is still quite an exciting and enjoyable adventure game with half a dozen mild sword fighting sequences. Talking about the weaknesses in this game then the major one is no voice-acting of any sort, which is very frustrating especially for a game in which story buildup and puzzle solving depends mostly on talking with other game characters. The only voice acting you get is when our hero narrates his achievements or any revelation he makes during his investigation either at the end or in the beginning of each "Act" accompanied with onscreen text captured in beautiful graphical frames.
The storyline is a murder mystery spread over 6 Acts and the setup is a medieval English town in a post Black Plague era. You play as Investigator Nicholas Farepoynt, who has been summoned by the Mayor of Cavorn to investigate the mysterious murder of a young lady and whether the accused person executed for the crime, actually committed it or not? Our hero has few extraordinary qualities and the most distinguished is the ability to crossover to the realm of the dead to summon and interrogate dead people. The dialogues are onscreen text boxes that popup when you interact with game characters by selecting a dialogue from an array of dialogues. During your investigation you meet and talk to many living town dweller as well as the dead ones, travel around the town to pick up herbs to prepare healing and other useful potions, gather inventory items, visit the monastery, the forest outside the town and the old mines.
The travelling is made easy by the help of a small onscreen map of the surrounding area, which red crossed important places you can reach by just clicking on them and also show your current position. The game has multiple ending depending on your choice. Graphics, animated objects, game characters, and the weather effects are the best features of this game and provide the player a true visual of a medieval town. While the ambient Music is good, the lightening effect was so sudden and shocking that I reduced my speaker volume to 0.5 just to avoid a possible heart attack. In the inventory screen, you will also find your quest diary that shows the quests you have already accomplished and which ones are left. One last thing I feel necessary to mention is that in this game you must save early and save often as it will be too late for you to find out your mistake later in the game, especially when using limited amount of herbs while preparing potions.
