Created: December 4, 2022

Awakening: The Skyward Castle [Collector's Edition]

This is Awakening #4, a continuation of the story. Though excellent in many ways, it features similar frustrations to those of Awakening #3, such as a confusing and poorly conceived list of achievements. In this case I thought the annoyances tipped the scale enough towards me not recommending this game.

The main issue is a handful of poorly designed puzzles that spoil the experience. Again, we have puzzles that require mouse precision, which never work well. There is one puzzle where you need to put together pieces of paper to reveal a code, but there's one piece that does not visually fit. I had to watch a few video walkthroughs to see it connect. It still doesn't make sense to me. There are also just some very difficult puzzles. I'm not averse to challenges, but they are a poor fit for a series that until now has had a casual tone. And some point-and-click adventuring puzzles don't make much sense at all. I need to use the flowers on a floating castle in the far distance? Huh?

Of course, you can always skip puzzles that are too hard or use the hint button, but where's the fun in that?

I also think the story is below the standard set until now. It seems rushed and lacking in characters, especially towards the end.

At lease the issue with resolution seem to have been fixed, and this game runs OK on modern systems with modern resolutions.