Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches Reviews

Well I have mixed feelings about this game after finishing it. It has a pretty good story and it's compelling and interesting enough to keep playing it, but gameplay wise it's rough around the edges. The puzzles are very cryptic for the most part, and confusing, since sometimes the most obvious way it's not the correct way to solve things. And the "notepad" it has to keep track of tasks, sometimes adds to the confusion more than helping. The navigation controls and the way to interact with the inventory are not the best either. But that being said, it also has some pretty unique features and atmosphere that makes it for a good experience. So if you truly love adventure games, and you're up to a real challenge and to struggle with it's defects then you have a fairly decent horror adventure game to play. But I wouldn't recommend it to new players getting into the adventure game genre though cause it's very tough (I had to use a guide a few times to get myself unstuck of pretty crappy parts). So I guess in the end it all depends on the amount of patience and experience you have, and the amount of time you're willing to put into this game.

If there was an uption for 5 thumbs down and NO NO NO NO NO Dear god NO then i'd be putting it. Have been playing old adventure games on Steam for a bit now- I am a 90s baby who grew up playing amazing games like LBA, Grim Fandango, Myst etc. Have been playing games so far and refrained from reviewing, i dunno, cos some are amazing and some were mreh, little bit annoying, but still enjoyable. This was a painfully stupid game. Those comparing it to Myst and Riven must be out of their minds. There is no logic to how this game is played. Only similatiry to Myst is the pointing, movement system. It is very irritating you can look at things, but not be able to pick them up until youve read like one thing, ages away, meaning lots and lots of pointless back and forthing. And the spiritual nonsense to complete the game! *slight spoilers* particularly the last element Air- so apparently to complete this game you need to sync up the noise of a fridge with a calender. JUST....WHY!?! And put a plastic mouse in a cauldron for "symbolism", even though you have an actual real dead mouse in inventory. Absolute madness. For the record, i love complicated, complex puzzle games, if i tell you i completed Riven before any walkthroughs existed then many will know what level i'm at, lol. Im not just a thickie that hates games where you have to think a bit. This game is 100% absurd.

This game is very tedious. Be prepared to get eye strain reading all of the pages of hard to read dairies and other documents. That said, for a game that is fairly old it is well done and for the price is worth the challenge. Like most games of this type trying to figure out what to do next is the real problem. The game has many places to visit and many "screens" to study. It's easy to overlook important clues. Acess to a good walk through will lessen the frustration factor. The lead chracter is absolutely fearless in that she goes places and does things that the average person would not do in light of all of the stange events that she is experiencing. I didn't find any bugs or have any crashes while playing this game.

"Rhiannon: Curse of the Four branches" is a mysterious quest which has an interesting and plotting story line fulfilled by joyful soundtrack and puzzles. If you are seeking for something paranormal and challenging - you are in the right place.

The game was made in 2008, but it feels like nineties. graphic and sound quality pretty bad and Myst-style mouse control and camera system awful that's why navigation can be disorienting, i had no idea where i was or where i was going for about ten minutes and I got lost a lot therefore it was just a chore to play for me. gameplay dull and slow and there is no music at all. some puzzle solutions also absurdly complicated and you cannot collect items until you are on the "right" quest, meaning there is a lot of back and forth go fetch moments. i very tired of finding things I could pick up but not put in my inventory -yet- but maybe later. i simply didn't enjoy from this game.

While not really bad, there are just too many issues with this game for me to be able to recommend it. If you're an absolute point and click adventure junkie, it's worth buying if it's on sale otherwise, I wouldn't advise buying it. Graphics are passable but look similar to games made in the late nineties. This is also true for the interface. Rhiannon uses the same slideshow interface as the original Myst game (that came out in 1993!). Adventure games have evolved a lot since Myst and it's unfortunate that Aberth Studios were unable to create a more modern feeling game. Even the creator of Haven Moon was able to create a beautiful looking adventure game with a sleek interface. So the fact that this was created by an indie studio isn't a good argument for the game feeling like it's twenty years old. My first issue with the game is its lacklustre writing, especially the Welsh legend that forms the basis of the whole plot of the game. I'm glad they didn't force me to read through 300 pages of Ye Olde English. Instead, we're presented with a summary that is so dry and matter-of-fact that I really had force myself to read all of it. Which is a real shame since it's the backbone of the story in Rhiannon. The rest of the journals and diaries are quite well written and the voice overs are also fine. My other issue is with the puzzles in Rhiannon. Some are very straightforward, but others require a huge leap of logic. One of the first puzzles that really stumped me was finding the correct 4 digit code that opened a lock of the garage. I had expected the code to be either a date or a year. So when I found a birthday card from Rhiannon's father saying that Rhiannon was not only the key to his heart but also to the garage, I went looking for her date of birth but couldn't find it anywhere. Turns out that the code has nothing to do with the girl Rhianon but instead you have to enter the track length of the song Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac that you find on an MP3 player. It makes sense afterwards but if I hadn't read the guide it would have taken me days to realize this. And unfortunately, there are more puzzles similar to this one which had me stumped because of awkward logic. The game is divided into four chapters and in each chapter, you are tasked to find a couple of items that correspond with the legend. You then have to combine these items with other items, following a different logic in each chapter. While these aren't bad puzzles per se, they weren't fun to solve and felt mostly like busy work. What also surprised me is that the map (which allows quick travel to already discovered areas) and the notebook (which gives you hints on what to do next) were added later as part of the premium edition. Without those, the game would be almost unplayable with the large amount of backtracking that is necessary. Level design is also fairly boring. Most of the game takes place on the farm of the family of Rhiannon and spans a small area. Some areas are unavailable at the start of the game and only open up in later chapters. So you'll see the same few locations a lot of times. Special mention needs to go to the end sequence. It features a soundtrack that feels like it was written in the eighties with a weird out of place synthetic electric guitar that doesn't fit with the rest of the game.

I think this is only worth the buy on sale. No matter how much I love adventure point n' clicks and how much patience and tolerance I usually have, in my opinion this game had a great start, an excellent overall setting, but it just failed to deliver. What could have been an astonishing spooky mystery story turned into a hardly believable fantasy novel with zero hand-holding, which all-in-all became boring really fast. You basically just keep running around the grounds, looking for something to have changed since the last time you visited a certain location, and then you're supposed to find something randomly placed there using the "pixel-hunt method". Add to that the horrible camera controls and you're in for a bad time. I honestly once walked back and forth multiple times in the same place just to find the perfect spot where I could click to be able to turn left and interact with some cupboard. And when you finally grind through this process and progress the story towards its conclusion, the ending is also a real let-down. So if I sum this up... yeah, you're most likely better-off playing something else. And it's a damn shame cause I really wanted to like this.

I was very surprised and please with this game. I don't play point and click games very often because is seems like we've moved on since that era, however, Rhiannon is an exception. If you like puzzle games, you'll may want to give this game a shot. Pros: Unique and challenging puzzles Engaging story line Decent graphics for the day Most of the puzzles are good logic puzzles Clues are scattered about forcing you to find and put them together Different areas become available as you progress through the game The map lets you jump from one place to another saving time Cons: Two or three of the puzzles don't make a lot of sense Too much reading (there is a lot of filler in the journals, information you don't need) Using the maps jump feature may cause you to miss important information At the time of this review, this game was selling for $5.99. Well worth it in my opinion.

[u]The good[/u] Tells a deep and involving story Excellent use of Welsh folklore and mythology Challenging puzzles Automap fast travel is a great touch Occasionally eerie Good addition to the adventure game canon [u]The bad[/u] Moving around can be problematic Minimal music Graphically nothing special Lots of reading (if you don't like that) Arguably no replay value

Once again I find myself in the situation of wanting to give a neutral rating, not being able to do so, and then having to decide whether to recommend it or not. I finally decided against recommending it, for there are some things that bothered me in this game, and that I believe should warrant a bad rating. I'll comment on everything I found worth noting while playing this, and end with a small rant on the thing that bothered me the most xD. Story: it started quite bad, and didn't improve much, but at least got up to a "meh". The main story is easy enough to understand, but there's a "myth" that's quite difficult to grasp, reminiscent of those old myths full of battles for foolish reasons, and magic with ludicrously specific rules that allow you to do almost anything, but only after you've performed a task that makes no sense whatsoever. This whole game is you, carrying out some nonsensical rituals which require finding a lot of random stuff that while ultimately combine, allowing you to go further. It's standard enough, I came here after playing Dark Fall and Barrow Hill, which follow a similar premise, but those were much more entertaining and well though out and put together. Most of the time, I found myself bored, simply going from one place to the other, trying to remember where that item was that I now needed for some reason. It's pretty chore-y, and not in a good sense. The ending is really anti-climactic, adding to the "meh" feel. Gameplay: it's fine, not good, not bad. The map is not that big, and you can jump between important locations, making backtracking much much easier. Items that you find but are not needed are not picked (because you still haven't seen that thing which would make picking it reasonable), which is a nice touch, but grows old fast, because you need to remember where everything was so you don't have to go through it all over again once you see something new. Movement is not square (some arrows are diagonal) which makes it a little less standard, and yet doesn't add much, and can even be confusing and bothersome, because you want to get to that specific place, and it's not that easy. But I was still mostly ok with it. One thing I don't get though is optimization: the game made my computer hit 60 C, permanently, which is not much, but enough to make my cooler stay permanently on; it definitely seems unreasonable seeing as it's a static point and click game, with bad graphics (I've played many games like this, and this has never happened). Visuals and Sound: the graphics are not good by today's standards, and apparently not by 2008's standards either. However, I wasn't bothered by that at all. I was a bit bothered because of how bland it all was. Dark Fall and Barrow Hill have some interesting locations that really caught me by surprise. They were really well done. However, here, I didn't feel that at all. New locations were pretty "meh", and there wasn't much to really appreciate. The soundtrack is good, but really scarce. Most of the game has no music. Additionally, it has some voice over, but it's even scarcer. You mostly just read. And that brings me to another low point: you have to read a lot, which is not a problem for me, since I like that in these kinds of games; but what makes this one fall short is that a lot of what you read is either redundant or irrelevant. At one point in the game you read a bunch of emails that basically tell you the same stuff you've read in a diary, except for the very last email, that has one new thing (and is required to be read to go further). But you have no way of knowing this beforehand, and therefore end up re-reading a lot of stuff you already know. And it's not the best story ever written, as I've previously pointed out, so re-reading it will definitely get you bored stiff. Bugs: there's a small dialog bug at the start of the game (some lines are spoken over previous lines), but that was all I could find, luckily (I understand some people had other problems, but not me). And now, for the rant: Even when taking all of these flaws into account, I was still thinking that it wasn't as bad as to say something like "stay away from this", and I think steam ratings are not that fair, with a lot of people ignoring games with "mixed" reviews. I was going to give it a positive review so not to discourage people and get them to give it a chance. However, one final element got me to change my mind, and it is this: this game praises pseudo-science. I am a scientist, and as such, I feel a certain ethical responsibility to not give a pass to people trying to promote false information. This may sound funny, seeing as I played this game and mentioned other games with supernatural and paranormal elements. Why am I not bothered by those, but was bothered by this one? Because this one includes claims that are exactly the same as pseudo-scientists use in real life, includes mentions to real people promoting these false claims, and actually says "according to scientific evidence...". Thing is, I LOVE supernatural or paranormal stories, even though I don't believe in any such things; I love thinking about "what if" and imagining myself in those situations. I love ghost stories, in games, movies, series, books, you name it. And I don't see a problem with liking any of those things, or using those elements in stories, games, etc. But I do take issue with saying those things are actually real, and especially that "science says so". Without giving out much of the story, I can say that one of the characters is an homeopath, and while researching the house, you find stuff saying that water has memory, that it was "proved by scientists", along with mentions to that one Japanese guy who took pictures of ice crystals and said they were actually influenced by speaking to the water, or even thinking good or bad thoughts. In the game, you use those "properties" to perform the tasks, and it would be totally fine if they didn't include those claims that are actually made by real people to convince others to pay them for treatment that doesn't work beyond the placebo effect. If anyone is interested in knowing more, you can read the wikipedia article on homeopathy, I believe it also includes mentions to this Japanese guy (I don't remember his name), who was confronted by scientists, and performed two experiments suggested by them, proving by himself that he was wrong (and of course, he later ignored the evidence he himself found and went along selling books and praising the stuff he made up). Later on, it was said that scientists today believe that ghosts are actually recordings of previous events replayed in the present, which is total bs. Scientists today don't have any evidence of any paranormal phenomena actually existing outside of the minds of the people who claim they do, and there is an increasing amount of evidence of different kinds of cognitive biases, perceptual illusions, and varying effects of suggestion that explain every single instance of paranormal phenomena reported (most of those phenomena can't be reproduced and amount to anecdotal evidence, but every systematic investigation into recurrent apparitions yielded these revealing results, very interesting for psychologists and neuroscientists, but not so much for "believers" or charlatans). In any case, I would have been ok with this game using those elements if it hadn't gone as far as to saying science supports those claims, and using the same arguments real pseudo-scientists use to get people to fall for their claims. Anyway, end of rant xD. I'll leave by saying: totally meh game, boring at times, with some potentially problematic claims that go beyond the fictional reality this game is trying to create and could actually induce people to believe in false claims in real life.