Return of the Obra Dinn

The integrated artistry of this game is incredible: the graphics, the story, the music, the voice acting—and even the convoluted book UI—all come together to create a coherent, immersive atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is monotonous, frustrating, and just plain boring. After two hours into the game I realized that I had, indeed, seen the entire game: it's all about matching names and cause of death to ~60 people according to scattered and often vague clues. And that's it. There is nothing interesting about the clues themselves and no real in-game reward for a successful match. Nothing is unlocked. No new aspect of the story is revealed. In fact you can pretty much figure out the entire story without solving a single mystery, just by exploring. There is simply no in-game reason to play the game. Either you enjoy this kind of monotonous matching for its own sake, or you don't.

The frustrating aspect is that to revisit certain clues you need to move back and forth around the game world and replay sequences. So, either you sit down and write down all the clues you find, or you'll be constantly backtracking. I love playing detective and love puzzles, but the setup here is eminently unhelpful. It would have been nice, for example, if the game would let you write in your own notes. Instead, the game provides a complicated cross-referencing and chronological guide that is harder to figure out than the puzzles themselves.

I'm glad that so many people found this game to be rewarding. I enjoyed my two hours for the artistry of it, but felt no reason to continue playing. I used a walkthrough to finish it up, and even that was tedious. There was simply nothing new to learn.