Beyond a Steel Sky Reviews

Charming, and simple. Perfect combo. Well done devs!

I was impressed at the outset, it's visually quite well done. And that was immediately downplayed by the Main Character. The voice acting is pretty atrocious form specifically the vehicle for the game. And I think some of that comes down to the writing and presentation, he will say the most inane, useless things that we can clearly see. Apparently this is based on an older game and I feel like the my previous comment is a relic of that, at least for the weird blurbs that come up on screen. You don't need those in a fully rendered 3-D environment. Likewise, you don't need the completely out of time systems for dialogue and exploration. It's more than a little painful having to talk with the NPC's. Repeating dialogue can give you new dialogue! . . . or you just listen to it again. There is such a lack of clarity in the environment and in conversation as to what you have done and what you need to do. The dialogue weirdness in particular is mystifying. In any case, I made it a decent chunk through before getting stuck. The character kept insisting I couldn't go to a new location because I lacked necessary information. After turning the hint system on and looking at guides, I have zero clue what I possibly didn't click on. Overall, it looks like an expensive game that didn't do well, and that's probably for the best. There are so many key issues from a directing perspective where it went wrong. It's probably translation and if I ever played the original I could probably provide a bulleted list of how they went wrong, but it is what it is here. 4/10. The visual style and overall production value go a long way for something that is otherwise unremarkable and oftentimes frustrating.

I played the original title some time in the 90's, having received it for free with my first sound card. Although it wasn't very revolutionary as an adventure game in any way, it had a very distinctive feel and atmosphere to it, which made it one of the most memorable gaming experiences I've ever had. I was hoping this sequel could take me back there, but sadly it does fall a bit short. The game looks alright at first, but the more you play the more obvious the shortcomings get. The 3D comic book style graphics are alright, and while the city can look quite breathtaking at places, it's just falls short of the gritty, dystopian atmosphere of the original. The biggest issue however is the story: at the end of the day, it's just not that interesting, feels a bit...forced, and towards the end it actually gets rather naive and even outright preachy; like it was written by and for 14-15 year olds. The original was almost like a horror game, and it had a very unique atmosphere to it which was looming over the player throughout the game, but this feels more like it's intended to be played by parents with their kids: the story, environment and characters are almost without exception much more lighthearted, clean, and sterile than in the original and guaranteed to not make anyone lose their night's sleep over any aspect of the game. And that's the level of the puzzles as well: they are mostly extremely simple to figure out, and for the very very few occasions where they are not, there's a convenient hint mechanism in the game menu which makes sure nobody has to resort to googling any walkthroughs. It's not a very long game either, I completed it in 14 hours. I used the hint mechanism twice. Had I not done that, maybe it would have taken 15 hours, since both times it was just about me having missed an interactive object altogether. In summary, it's not a terrible game, but sadly doesn't reach the unforgettable atmosphere of the original title.