Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth Reviews

Underrated Gem..💎

A beautiful visual novel. Based on an already well received book and I believe mini series (I swear I've seen the mini series of this) so the story is very solid and paced well throughout. Lovely music and graphics, great voice acting and a nice bit of interaction for you to keep you involved. I've always loved themes to do with this time period and religious stuff like the cathedral which is central to the plot. Definitely a must have if you enjoy visual novels.

Great story amazing characters and great storytelling

This is a great game. Basically it's a point and click adventure, with a strong story narrative based on Ken Follets Book series of the same name. While adhering to the basically linear narrative of the Books, it can still branch in ways of the players' decisions that are made during the game. Sufficed to say the Hardware Requirements set to run this game, are way out of touch. The game has a very small footprint in terms of Hardware resources and runs just fine, at approximately 30 fps, on an i5 Ivy Bridge with integrated HD 4000 graphics and 8 GB RAM, in Linux.

Absolutely loved this game, it deserves to be played and it felt like the people who made it really cared. Great voice acting, which is something I can be picky about. Only ran into one minor bug towards the end where I couldn't select one of the dialogue options but it didn't really make a difference anyway. Story was interesting and gets more crazy and exciting as you progress. I actually hadn't read the book yet before I played this game, but I've heard people call it their favorite book.

Everything is stunning in this game from the art style, music, voice acting, and the deeply moving and engaging plot. This brought me to tears more than once, and I am already missing playing it for the first time.

The Pillars of the Earth is indeed a beautiful game with amazing visuals. The story is super engaging, with great character development and unexpected twists. That said, by Book 3, I felt like the choices I made didn’t matter as much. It was kind of a letdown after the earlier episodes where my decisions felt more impactful. Still, it's a solid game if you're into historical fiction and narrative-driven adventures.

Recommended, with some caveats. The tl;dr: if you're looking for a narrative driven game, and don't mind mostly watching events unfold, with some occasional decision making, this might be for you. The voice acting is great, the story engaging, and it's not a typical setting for a computer game. I have no idea how closely this game sticks to the story in the books, nor whether your actions have more than just cosmetic impact, but I don't expect much in the way of replayability. The game is not without flaws; there are numerous little bugs and spots where you can see corners were cut for budgetary reasons, but nothing that spoils the enjoyment. Perhaps not worth picking up at full price, but pick it up in a sale and you won't regret it. The long and rambly, mostly dealing with the game's flaws: The game is linear. Maybe choices you make have a real effect on how the story develops, but apart from some immediate failure states that produce a "game over" and force you to retry the last section, I don't think they do. There are numerous clues to that effect, e.g. failure to perform certain good deeds to curry favour with the monks having no effect on the outcome of the chapter meeting, or how it doesn't matter how good or bad of a midwife you are, the baby still gets born and the story still unfolds the same. You get a summary of your choices after each chapter, and they get mentioned later in the story, but have no impact beyond that. It feels more like watching an interactive movie, where you have to occasionally select which "alternative scene" plays before going back to the main track. It's also very much an experience on rails; it may look like a point and click adventure, but it's a succession of scenes that each play out in a limited environment, with a clear goal, and very little in the way of actual puzzle work. You don't gradually open up more of the game world to roam freely from then on. It borrows some game mechanics from point n' click adventures, such as an inventory (so small it's not even a separate screen), left-click to walk or interact and right-click to describe things, the ability to use inventory items on things in the game world, but that's where the comparison ends. There are some minor nitpicks w.r.t. the game design. For starters, while the game offers "documents" that offer insight into the happenings in the broader world, it completely lacks a story log. If you've been away from the game for a while, there's no convenient way to refresh your mind about what happened so far. You're not stuck, as your next objective is always displayed on screen, but it might make it harder to get back into the story. Then there's the overuse of the word "take". At regular intervals, the game offers you some insights into things, or questions, which get stored in your "clue inventory", and which you can use on people to talk about that subject. So it will display a text such as "Where is Jack?", and underneath there's a button labeled "take", as if it were an object you pick up that goes into your inventory. This may be a minor nitpick, but how exactly does one "take" a "where's jack"? Then there's some minor audio design issues. At the beginning of the game, you find yourself standing outside a door from which you hear a muffled sermon being delivered. When you open the door to enter, the sound of the sermon abruptly cuts off as soon as you touch the door handle, utter silence while the door opening animation plays, utter silence as the animation from inside the room with you walking in plays, and suddenly the sermon starts again while the camera pans over to the priest. This was the most jarring example, but it shows a lack of attention to detail. And some inconsistent interactions, e.g. when using an item on something where it's not applicable, sometimes you'll get a remark to that effect, sometimes you'll just initiate the default "left-click" interaction. And some things evoke a reaction when interacting with them, whereas others have you walk over and just stand there. There's also the map. In this game, you can "collect" maps to areas you visit. This happens automatically. They probably meant to do something more substantial with it, but as far as I can tell, you only ever get to "collect" one map: that of Kingsbridge. It doesn't allow you to fast-travel, only to see where locations are in relation to the other locations. Given how small the town is, it's rather pointless. It looks as if this feature has been cut down for budgetary reasons, but instead of removing it altogether, they left it in in an unfinished state. Similar budget cuts are evident in the "cutscenes": they consist of minimally animated conversations, bookended by black screens where people enter/exit the room, to save on animation budget. There are also some typos and grammatical errors in the subtitles, and near the end, some instances where the subtitles don't match the spoken dialogue/narrative. Nothing serious, and it happened rarely, but shows limited testing budget. But the worst offenders for me are the "challenges" and the stupid "bible mechanic". At random points in the game, you need to interact with something in a way that shows some prowess. E.g. using your hammer and chisel to chisel some stonework. Instead of just assuming that the person doing the work is indeed proficient with the tools he has been using for years, the game forces this stupid minigame on you where a white dot does the "knight rider" animation inside a rectangle, some parts of which are coloured green. And you have to click exactly when the dot is over the green areas, clearing them all out, while a timer counts down to put you under time pressure. This kind of minigame has absolutely no place in a narrative driven game like this. It's just busywork designed as gameplay, and shows an utter lack of understanding of what makes games fun. In a game like this, it only serves to break immersion. Similarly, the "bible mechanic". One of your characters carries a bible around. You can use it on people to discuss matters of faith, but also on objects to offer insight from a religious perspective. The game explicitly tells you this, so in the beginning you try this mechanism out on anything and anyone you meet. And it's just a third way of interacting with things. You have the left-click for direct interaction, but now the bible also serves a similar purpose when used on people. You have the right-click to describe things, but now you also have the bible to "describe from a religious perspective" when used on objects. And at no point is this mechanism actually useful. Except for one very specific scene, where you must use the bible on someone to lecture them, so you can convince them to do what you asked. Finally, some minor bugs: when highlighting interactive objects and exits, the exits are not always marked. In the documents screen, the scrollwheel sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. The map of Kingsbridge becomes randomly inaccessible at times, only to show up again if you move to another screen. The interaction icons at the bottom randomly disappeared on me once, only to return after I moved one screen over and back again. The mouse "locks up" when the game is "busy". I had one lock-up when interacting with an object, forcing me to stop the game from the Steam client. But worst of all: the game minimises when it loses focus (e.g. when you move your mouse off-screen), and doesn't restore to the same screen in my multi monitor setup. That last bug was quite annoying; the others are just things I noticed, but which weren't bad enough to ruin my fun. All in all, despite feeling somewhat "unfinished" and despite the bugs, the game had me coming back for more, to see how the story would unfold. If it hadn't been for the story, I probably would've been a lot less lenient in my review, but the story is what redeemed the game in my opinion.