Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness Reviews

Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness was originally released for the PC and Playstation in 2000/2001. Based on H.P Lovecraft's short story “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”. Both being set in the 1920s Providence, Rhode Island. There’s numerous characters that appear in their respective stories including a character who becomes obsessed with their distant ancestor and the occult. There’s mention of Yog-Sothoth and contains alchemical experimentation as well as the resurrection of dead people. In many ways the game is true to its source material. That is, until you reach the later stages of the game with a really abrupt and inconsistent storybeat and it’s noticeable that there’s a lot of content and ideas cut from the game. The ending feels rushed and unsatisfactory. It’s a “Point & Click” with less of an emphasis on item puzzles and focuses more on the investigative aspects. It’s a bit clunky and involves some of the worst pixel hunting elements I’ve experienced in some time, a lot of time is spent in pitchblack corridors trying to find doors and unlit torches. Aesthetically the game uses a lot of pre-rendered backgrounds and has a sizable amount of long cutscenes. The character animation has a notable lack or overabundance of overlap. Sometimes the characters only move one part of their body in slow and uncanny ways, and other times they’ll move every single limb in their body making them look like some weird marionette doll. While a lot of the dialogue and voice acting (cheesy as it may be) captures the uncanny and eerie feeling so integral to the Lovecraftian experience. But it often gets overshadowed by the horrible sound mixing. Often the dialogue is drowned out by the great background ambience. The most notable flaw with the game is the fact that the steam version is impossible to finish due to a bug that both skips a long cutscene but also crashes the game. There is however a community-fix like most old games, that will save you a lot of trouble. I would only bother with this game if you consider yourself a fanatic of Lovecraft media and really wanna try all of the games. There’s some value in this game, but If you want a better version just read the short story the game is based on “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”.

Edit: I have isolated the files containing the missing cutscenes, from when you complete the puzzle to "waking up in a room with edgar" they are contained at the end of my playthrough here: http://youtu.be/zYzzKiaMocU?t=31m (it will already skip to where the cutscene is in the video, you don't have to go through the playthrough to find it) ------ I am sad to be writing a negative review for this game, but first I will give it the praise that it is due. It is a very enjoyable game to play, classic point-and-click with a wonderfully creepy atmosphere. The puzzles are challenging, and interesting. It is a great hommage to the style of lovecraft stories, and very enjoyable to play. It is certainly worth playing, and I'm glad that I have done so. I do think it's important to note this. That being said, the game is incompletable. As others has said there is a massive, leathal bug. A very large, and important cutscene, one that shapes the entire game, and gives the player direction in what to do next (as well as a huge part of the story, and reward for completing the puzzle which came before it) is missing. Also inventory issues, and not being able to access some items leaves the game incompletable from very close to the end. I do understand that meridian have offered their 'solution' which is to download a save game - which means still missing out on that long cutscene, as well as not completing a puzzle. Now that is no solution at all, it's basically a 'level skip cheat' It seems to be as though the developers really do not care about fixing this for the players. It's an honest shame, because while the game is enjoyable - I would really not recommend anyone buying it. At least not until the developers actually care enough to fix this bug - and it is a bug no matter how much they want to deny that. tl;dr: Don't buy this game until they have fixed the MAJOR errors in it. Otherwise is really is a great game.

Features two MAJOR bugs that prevent actually playing this properly, or at all. One of the largest curscenes is missing, and close to the end a menu is disabled that you need to access to get a key and progress with the game. Contacted the developers several times, but it appears they don't want to know. DO NOT BUY.

This is a hard game to recommend to some people. I actually liked the animation, though it is admittedly clunky. I also enjoyed the music plus I am a huge fan of Lovecraft and anything (well almost anything) based on his writing. That said this game has some very cool 'Lovecraft" moments and is based upon the story "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward". The game play issues with the game are the problems towards the end where you cannot get an important piece from an alchemist set you find earlier in the game; it is EXTREMELY frustrating. Also it is point and click game with short cut aways. However with that said, I think people are being too hard on the game. If you have no experience in reading Lovecraft this probably is not the game for you. It is not especially violent or typical of most games that are popular right now, slow and lots of reading/puzzles but with a very well done creepy feel. It doesn't have super flashy graphics as only a few people actually designed and made it. But I still enjoyed it and was quite happy once the bug with the case was ammeliorated by using the link provided above in another review. All that said, if you're not a hard core Lovecraft fan you might not like it. 8/10

What could have been a fun, notalgic release on steam is unfortunately hampered by some serious issues. This port is poorly done and sections of the story are missing. The best cutscene in the game is cut out and you are thrust ahead in the story with no idea what just happened. A game breaking bug makes the game impossible to complete a little later on when you can't access an important part of your inventory. As of yet there has been no word on a potential patch of fix for these issues and because of this I cannot reccomend the game.

There's very few times in my life I actually feel the need to write a review, I generally let things speak for themselves. However, this game is the biggest brain suck I have ever come across and I felt the dying need to alert people to the waste of time and pennies they will experience if they buy this game. I could forgive the tired animations if it weren't for the dreadfully boring gameplay. As someone who is a big fan of adventure gaming, I am generally quite a patient person. However, this game forces you into such a linear pathway (only one action becomes available at any given time and you have to search through the game to find something that has become clickable) that I feel the problem solving has turned from an exercise of logic to a "search for the button" quest. Most actions that become executable wind up turning into a eyeball-tearingly long monolog from some dreadfully acted character that is supposed to advance the storyline but leaves you wondering where the heck the last half hour just went. Major fail guys, don't bother, even if you can get this game cheap.

A good old point-and-click adventure mystery type game with Lovecraftian themes. I don't know how long it is but it's been fun so far. The only problem I have is with the dialogue... there are no subtitles and because of the accents some of the people are seriously hard to understand if you're hard of hearing or bad at slurred American accents so it is advised that if you are about to talk to anybody SAVE your game. You might be able to figure some things out by logic or just clicking around but sometimes they do give you hints that save you time. It's a good practirse to save all the time anyway if not have multiple save files. PS - I loved the part with the guy that gets angry at you for ringing the doorbell. Naturally, I kept doing it to see how far the game dialogue would go and the guy bashed me to death haha. The graphics are pretty ordinary but it's probably to be expected for such an old game, and it's from a relatively unknown developer. Not that I'm the font of knowledge for devs but Anuman? Seems to be from France. Never heard of them until I downloaded this game.

I am genuinely baffled by my conflicting feelings over this "Lovecraftian" adventure game. Okay, [i]Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness[/i] is nothing miraculous. It's old, it's clunky, full of bugs with irritable animations... yet still manages to set an eerie enough atmosphere to drive your perception skills to its limits. For that account only, it is not possible to recommend this game to anyone. Even if one is to set aside the fact that the game is raddled with bugs, it would still be an acquired taste forced down your throat. It's year 1927 in rickety village of Pawtuxet, Rhode Island. A silent afternoon is abruptly interrupted for young William Stanton by his friend, Edgar Wycherley. Edgar seems off, panicked and fearful. He entrusts William an odd pyramid shaped relic and asks for him to protect it, even from Edgar himself at all costs. Then, Edgar takes off as oddly as he appeared before William's door. Minutes later, Doctor Egleton, Wycherley's family doctor visits William to inform that Edgar hasn't been himself lately, consumed by his studies of archeology and asks William to inform him immediately if Edgar is to be contacted. After these strange visits, William decides to visit Edgar himself and learn more about these "studies" of Edgar's in hopes of aiding his friend. That's how young and avid William Stanton gets himself into an interplanar mess centering a quite specific book of occult: Necronomicon. So far, so good. The story is interesting to begin with, weaved with mummies, strange disappearances, long deceased ancestors, sigils and summoning of spirits. Yet is the presentation of the story fulfilling and satisfying as the game progresses? That, I'd like to vote as abstaining. There is a great amount of lore thrown around for us to monitor and take note, but they are not processed as elegantly as possible in my opinion. Anecdotes keep coming to us without any time for us to digest any kind of on-goings. On that part, it is bad construction for a story revelation. The game hailing from 2001, graphics are nothing extraordinary, a bit clucky and plastic even for character models. Aside oddly shaped characters, the basic environment presents a creepy yet dull atmosphere suitable for any gothic setting, yet it doesn't actually deliver the Lovecraftian elegance that one would be waiting. Voice acting is neat, with accents of the original time period, but without the option of a subtitle, and much information for you to pursue hidden in cinematic dialogues - without an option to record spoken information in game - ends up being a complete obstacle for progression. You have to play this game with pen and paper + earphones if you'd like to make something out of the story. We are already used to the linear gameplay for an adventure game, but [i]Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness[/i] takes this part a bit more seriously than it should. One of the main problems for this game, if you ask me, is that you are expected to complete one solemn action at a time, and unless you discover and accomplish that specific action, nothing progresses. You are allowed to explore on your own; it just won't do any good. That's why everything turns into an "action hunt" on a wide map for you to figure out quickly. Puzzles are another issue altogether. They are quite obscure even with the collectible information, asking you to run through a series of spiritual and occult references - most of them are authentic, by the way: kudos on that part - to figure out your next step. They are never easy and demand that you take notes in every step of your game. I'd love that if the lore that we use for puzzles would be at least somewhat relevant to the plotline that we are pursuing... It is mostly not. Oh, and remember "Old Ones" concept that we were so excited about, because, I don't know, this is a LOVECRAFTIAN game? It really doesn't deliver at all. Combined with a series of common bugs that would make the game impossible to finish without an exe. copy of an old retail cd - it is possible to reach one in the guide section of community - [i]Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness[/i] ends up being a lame adventure game with some cool references thrown around. If you are a fan of Lovecraftian literature, sure, you can try. But even then, I'd doubt that you'd enjoy it much. I tried so hard to like this game but even as a Lovecraft fan myself, I sadly did not. Please also check out Lady Storyteller's Curator page [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ladystoryteller#curation]here[/url] - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!

UPDATE: I've gotten this link from Meridian4 support team http://support.anuman.net/necronomicon there is a save file you can download that fixes the "brief case" bug at the last part of the game where you cannot access your alchemy kit. that said, a great portion of my review below is still relevant!. =================================================== I have never written a review before. Thats how strongly I feel about this. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FINISH IT. It would be a great game if 1. You could actually finish it. 2. the cut scenes that are important to the plot acutally worked 3. there were meaningful clues to what you need to do next. 4. YOU COULD ACTUALLY FINISH IT! You know what you should do? Buy a game called Darkness Within: Pursuit of Loath Nolder (and theres a part 2 as well) those 2 games are exactly what you expect from a Lovecraft point and click adventure. THIS GAME IS A RIP-OFF. Whats that? You've seen videos on youtube that look decent? Well, thats because those videos are showing you the half-way decent Playstation version of the game. I am a veteran of the horror point/click genre. I enjoy solving obscure puzzles and thinking about the game for hours and hours.. i had to use UHS walkthrough and eventually youtube videos just to get to the part of the game where... uh.. you CAN'T FINISH IT. So don't waste your money. Its a pity b/c there is a real potential here, if you could acutally finish the game, and the cutscenes were put back in it would be "ok". I hope this helps.

This game cannot not be finished, because of a bug that was not in the original disc version. The publisher doesn't care for fixing it, instead they just gave out a save game for download that puts you at some place behind the broken part so you miss an important part of the story. They show on the shop page screenshots of the HD iOS version, while the PC version they actually sell here still looks exactly like the original game from 2001. Also I didn't see anything about this alleged "Updates in this new version of Necronomicon". Normal thinking people would call this version of that game simply a fraud and Valve shouldn't allow to sell it on Steam. Better just watch a Let's Play of it (of the original disc version) instead of wasting any money. Update: I've found a fix for the problem with the missing video sequences and the missing briefcase, check out [url=http://steamcommunity.com/app/302390/discussions/0/616189743009002917/]this forum post[/url] for more information. Buy the game if you really want to and know how to two juggle with two files (wich is really not that dificult actually). My rating stays the same as there is still no official fix, although it's actually that simple. Also the problem with the technically seen faked screenshots and the missing addtional content stays that way too.