Review anarchistica 2/5 · Sep 19, 2019
HOG with pathetic puzzles
Esoterica is yet another poorly designed hidden object game released through Alawar Premium. It has really nice artwork and decent voice-acting but that's about all it has going for it.
Hidden objects require multiple clicks far too often, some descriptions are vague and sometimes the object simply cannot be reasonably found. Even worse is the fact that there a several …
Esoterica is yet another poorly designed hidden object game released through Alawar Premium. It has really nice artwork and decent voice-acting but that's about all it has going for it.
Hidden objects require multiple clicks far too often, some descriptions are vague and sometimes the object simply cannot be reasonably found. Even worse is the fact that there a several HOPs where you have to find an object (e.g. gun, statue) but there are multiple versions of those objects (there were four guns!). And too often it's overly vague what your next move in the game is supposed to be. Normally possible actions would be shown on a map, but this game doesn't have one even though you constantly have to backtrack.
But the puzzles are the worst. I've played 30+ HOGs but rarely have i encountered such awful awful puzzles. Half of them aren't even puzzles, just tedious busywork. At some point they want you to colour a mosaic. There are 6 different colours and two adjacent pieces can't have the same colour. And the mosaic has dozens of pieces...
It really is a shame because the artwork looks great and has its own style.