![]() ![]() However, this time around the obstacles are far more difficult and obtuse, requiring deep creative thinking, but more often than not bordering on the “impossible to solve without help” realm. The puzzles are of the same kindred as the first act - difficult to piece together at first, with a dash of trial and error mixed in. I asked for more puzzle complexion in my review of Broken Age: Act 1, and boy did I get it. The game’s challenging puzzle logic also comes through in full force with no time to ramp - progressing in the game relies heavily on prior knowledge of the landscape and characters. The second act gets straight to business, dumping the player into some heavy plot points right off the bat. ![]() ![]() If you’ve managed to hold out this long to play both acts together, rest assured that you’ve done yourself a favor. When Shay and Vella’s solutions rely on the others path is where the problem lies.Broken Age is very much designed and intended to be played as one game, not chopped up into two parts. Playing around with the environment is most of the fun, and I found it great to do, such as leading a maintenance robot throughout a ship using the master controls. Interacting with objects and being mindful of your environment leads to discoveries, and it never falls into pixel-hunting. I tend to be bad at such things, and it takes me a while, but I don’t tend to consider it bad if the solution can be reasonably found with some looking. Mostly, the puzzles are quite fun and clever. It’s further exacerbated by how the puzzles nearing the endgame rely on using both paths – despite having no logical reason in which they can interact at times. If it had been given a better explanation, perhaps it would have been easier to accept, but we seem to be told to accept that a teenager would recognize her fighting spirit instinctively. This makes Shay’s stated affinity and fascination with her somewhat suspect, given his limited contact with her. The two interact all of twice in the story, and never speak to one another. Symbolism abounds in it regarding absentee parenting and family relationships, but I felt it was a bit too blunt.īroken Age’s story relies on Shay and Vella, and the two distinct plotlines eventually converge, but they lack reasons to do so. Even teenage belligerence and self-absorption can’t justify that degree of obliviousness, and even if it could, I can’t quite buy that it didn’t ever come up. Shay’s “parents” are another such problem, as the mother seems to undergo a drastic personality shift in the second half, and their pasts present a problem since Shay seems entirely unaware of this. However, the reveal of one of their allies blatantly contradicts their stated ideology and raised several questions. I wanted to like the main antagonists for their smug attitudes and Saturday-morning cartoon evocation, yet with understandable motivations in relation to the universe. I say ‘mostly’ because there are some outright contradictions that stick out like snarls in fabric (blame the Space Weaver). The story’s climax, and the revelations that come with it, are mostly suitable, and I find the core premise, tied into the themes of independence, exploration, and open-mindedness, to be mostly satisfying. There are a few new areas, though you don’t spend much time in them – again, the designs are great. It gives a sense of time while revisiting old areas, and does it well. The storybook feel was welcome, and watching the other characters you’d visited in the last game progress was strangely satisfying (such as seeing a cult-obsessed feathered man realize he’d been duped by a charlatan). ![]()
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