The Mystery of the Druids Reviews

The game seems fun and I adore the atmosphere. But Unfortunately the game doesn't save and it crashes constantly. Refunded :( Will probably get this game somewhere else

For the sake of being fair, I'd like to declare that I'm an enthusiastic and meticulous adventure gamer. I love adventure games. I love story exploration, I love puzzles and growing up playing older games in this genre, I do not expect much on either graphics or even logic department in these games. I've played my fair share of obscure adventure games from old to new, shiny to buggy, and from "masterful" to "lame". So, don't take my word lightly when I say that [i]The Mystery of the Druids[/i] was one of my worst experiences so far. Here in this obscure little adventure, our protagonist is Brent Halligan, a Scotland Yard detective and a mischievous, good for nothing trouble maker with a disdain for anything orderly. It's the year 2000 - a period when people were completely engulfed by conspiracy theories and hypothetical occult sub-meanings for everything with the shadow of a word called "millennium" attached - and London's been haunted by gruesome serial killings called Skeleton Murders. Due to some drastic errors the last detective handling the case caused, it becomes our case over a night. Halligan's adventure starting up with a trip to Anthropology Museum, progresses to involve rituals of ancient times and an age old sect in Britannia: Druids. Alongside Dr. Melanie Turner - a stereotypical maiden with a sharp tongue, Brent starts his gruesome and somewhat mindless quest to solve the mystery behind this whole shabby picture. Okay, first and foremost: the lore presented within the game is speculative, corrupted and elongated to extremes. The term "Druid" is completely ill-advertised, displayed a long cultural heritage and spiritual practice of 5000 years simply as "power hungry elemental wizards". This is kinda infuriating for someone who is actually familiar with the topic, and it’s both cultural and spiritual indications. It is understandable that any mythical or mystical practice would be interesting enough theme for a "bad guy" in any story, but one would at least expect them to present the concept with some authenticity. Please don't take your basic information on druidism from this game only! You'd end up learning some beautiful concept completely wrong! Now, back to the game itself: as a game made in 2001, graphics are ridiculously bad! I mean, we are talking about "first [i]Tomb Raider[/i] quality" bad. I know, it was charming in 1996, but in 2001, one would expect slightly better. Character animations are almost cubical, movement animations are painfully solid and background artwork lacks any animation altogether. Everything seems plastic and even funny in a bad way. Remember; [i]The Longest Journey[/i] was developed 2 years before this game! So the lack of technology is not an excuse at all! No one decided to put either any skill or labor in this game, that's all. The game's Steam integration is also non-existent. It's ridden with animation bugs, constant game crashes and cyclical dialogue errors. After my 14th crash at the very same point in the middle of the game; I gave up, shut it down and watched a youtube playthrough made with an original copy of the game just to learn the rest of the story. Aside game breaking constant bugs; there is no observable logic behind puzzle dynamics and dialogue options force you to take completely linear progression paths. It doesn't matter whether you know what to do next or not: the game makes sure you should try what you cannot achieve first, then forces you back to the actual solution. You should keep guessing the specific way of thinking in developer's mind to be able to accomplish your next task. Either you get lucky, or give up and get yourself a walkthrough. For the last verdict: even with a ridiculously cheap price, [i]The Mystery of the Druids[/i] won't bring you either excitement, or accomplishment; or even enjoyment. You'll get yourself a cheap story with no causal logic, plain ugly environment, a series of constant restarts due to crashes and a headache. This game is an annoying little trap in hopes of milking a nickel or two from an adventure lover. Stay away from it! Please also check out Lady Storyteller's Curator page [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/11672469/]here[/url] - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!

Best game I have ever played, will not let me progress past the bones. It must be the doing of the druids. Wasn't able to drug the homeless man but I least I was able to see Lowry. Can't wait for the sequel.

I played this game once when I was younger but it kinda didn't get me very far. Recently I decided to pick it up again and I assume it could be quite an entertaining game if it weren't for all this crashing and screen flickering (Windows 7). Plus the fact that most major items are literally indistinguishable from background visuals. You may need a guide for even the earliest plot advances. So... yeah, it's not really playable as is. Might work on something like Windows 2000 with everything on drive C: for safety reasons. Not recommended anymore.

worst thing to happen in 2001 - no Saving and loading - not completable. the guide used a guide for one section - sometimes softlocks the whole computer - had to download a mod to function properly - paid money - literally indecipherable puzzles - completely broken animations. - walking sideways through ground - disappearing sometimes - hours of dialogue - when there is a music, does not match. laughable - every character is unlikeable - everytime the romantic subplot is brought up, a character literally says "is now the best time?" fucking wait until we're not literally 1000 years in the past and getting executed in less than 48 hours - important objects are often invisible to the average viewer - inconsistent 3d and 2d art - no transformation. not even once. - objects will explode if you throw salt on them - unbearably long - cat - random death pitfalls - audio setting reset every time you close the game - druids - maze section - mystery of the druids appears about 1/3 of the way through the game and is answered by the halfway point. everything else is just a goose chase to steal a book from a library or steal money from a homeless person or steal the livelihood of a fisherman or steal from a grave or steal from scotland yard or steal from your co-worker or steal from a druid that you know everything about or steal worms or steal from a bird or steal [spoiler] your lover's life [/spoiler] or literally commit arson on the property of a rich person or steal items from a rich person's house. who is also a druid. or steal laboratory alcohol. or steal a key from a high druid. god fucking damn it - lowry - multiple entirely useless areas and loading zones - the maze section again - death of 2? 3? characters - magical top that will transform you?? - didn't actually transform me :( - fuck - no important information that should have been supplied in the jewel case - incredibly specific conversational flags needed to progress. very easily missed.

The Druid face does not appear in the game collector icon, therefore you cannot fill up your profile with these hot and salty memes. Cannot reccomend.

It crashed literally. Instantly. It crashed Nvidia Control panel along with it. It also stole my wallet and rummaged in the fridge. The Mystery oh... the mystery... the drama...the suspense ooooh I need to know the secret now. I won't stop, can't stop. I will ascend the mountains and cross the seven seas until I can catch it. Heed this warning stranger and get the GOG version. Stay away, only evil lurks here... EEEEVILL!!!

I would like to preface this by saying if you are interested in playing this game I would highly recommend you download a patch created by a fellow Steam user that should stop most of the bugs related to items from crashing the game (I will include the link at the end; it fixed the problem entirely for me though I cannot guarantee it will work for everyone.) Where to begin with this game... The Mystery of the Druids is an obscure (though at this point somewhat of a cult classic) point-and-click adventure game originally developed by House of Tales and CDV Software released in 2001. The story puts you in the shoes of Brent Halligan, a Scotland Yard detective who is suddenly put in charge of a case known as "The Skeleton Murders" after a fellow colleague named Lowry (who you may know as the psychic wizard who levitates above his desk in his office) had made some critical mistakes in his investigation. You are given Lowry's case file, but quickly realize that it isn't of much use as it is complete non-sense and as a result are tasked with essentially starting from scratch on the investigation. Along the way you will find yourself meeting several different characters, some which you will interact with multiple times throughout the game, and some which basically only serve one purpose. Along with these interactions you will also face many roadblocks and puzzles along the way which are very much fitting for a point-and-click of its time- that is to say, many of these will have you banging your head on your desk in frustration at the sheer lack of logic or reason. Though this game is often made fun of for its ridiculous story, horrible graphics which already looked dated when it first released, and mind-bending puzzles (among other things) I actually had a fun time with it and enjoyed the varied environments and characters along the way. Make no mistake, this isn't a great game, it is riddled with bugs (which can be fixed with the patch below) and has a lot of puzzles which make absolutely no sense and involve pixel hunting for items that do not immediately stand out upon first glance. The graphics as I said are not great, they look more like something that would have been released in 1996 and the cutscenes are hilariously poorly animated (please do watch them though they are worth the laugh). However, if you can look past these shortcomings this game actually has a pretty interesting and novel story and I actually really enjoyed the lore even if it isn't 100% historically accurate as some have pointed out. Overall I think it's a game that could have been much much better had the developers put more effort into the areas I mentioned, but regardless, I would recommend you try it if you are a fan of this genre. LINK TO THE PATCH: https://steamcommunity.com/app/343000/discussions/0/1471967615842468311/

I've played The Mystery of the Druids through to completion on an older computer before it was released here on Steam, so I know more about it than anyone would ever want to. Without giving away too much about the plot, all I can say about this game is that the cutscenes are utterly ridiculous, the puzzles are obtuse and violate pretty much every ounce of common sense the average person possesses, and the main character, Brent Halligan, might just be the worst video game protagonist of all time (yes, even worse than Darkseed II's Mike Dawson). Being that this is a point-and-click adventure game, a genre well-known for having ridiculous puzzles and, at times, even more ridiculous characters... I do, in a twisted sense, sort of recommend playing it for yourself. Alas, the game was originally designed for computers running Windows 98/XP, and Nordic's attempts to get it working properly on modern systems haven't quite been perfected yet, so you will most likely experience crashes every five minutes or so. Until the day this becomes more functional, I'd say just hunt down a copy of the original retail game and fire up your old XP computer instead.

Comfy 00s era point and click. Here are the fixes: 1. Grab DDrawCompat from the GitHub and drop the .dll into your install folder. 2. Get the fixed meshes or whatever from the Steam Discussions post "Fix for crashes involving giving bone to Chris and taking bone from Melanie." Install instructions are in the post. You now have a game that saves and doesn't crash.