Last Half of Darkness - Society of the Serpent Moon Reviews

I have thoroughly enjoyed these games and I am very sorry I have finished. The stories are intriguing, the puzzles (mostly) doable and I had no technical problems at all.

One of the older games but definately fun to play, it is a tad aged regarding the controls but it's minor.This game has an interesting plot, nice puzzles and a good atmosphere that works. Recommended!

I can deal with low quality graphics and terrible voice acting and the awkward tacky cliches, what really broke the game for me was the inconsistent and buggy controls. Left click is meant to perform an action Right click is meant to give a description, usually something like a vague hint if the item relates to a puzzle. At time I would left click and nothing would happen. I had to click several times before the game actually responded to my command. There were so many times that right click had no reaction, so you are left trying a few times wondering if the game has bugged out again or there really isn't a description. My conclusion was that there simply was no 'description' audio for near 90% of the objects in the game. Sometimes left click only gave a description, rather than a response that there was no action available (as the description should have been for when you right click). Stilted, awkward and confusing.

I finished this game a few months ago and recall enjoying the puzzles and atmosphere. It reminds me of The Black Mirror (2003) and Blade Runner, but it's a bit more on the cheesy territory. Unlike its predecessors, which were 1st-person P&C adventure games, this installment shifts to a 3rd-person perspective. A notable addition to the gameplay includes the protagonist offering commentary when interacting with items, which previous games lacked. The main character's voice is hilarious; I'm not sure if it's intentional or just bad voice acting. There are numerous jumpscares, but they're more likely to make you laugh than frighten you. Overall, that covers my thoughts on the game.

It is really hard for me to put into words why I like games of this sort so much, but the fact is I *love* them. Last Half of Darkness is a perfect example the genre: spooky atmosphere, silly dialogue, interesting puzzles, quirky characters, and an intriguing mystery. To be clear, it is not perfect. This game runs on an ancient engine (you can't alt+tab without crashing the game) and the game stutters to a crawl any time there's an "effect" in a scene (bugs flying around a lightpost, water dripping, etc.) Some of the dialogue and voice acting is a little goofy, but for whatever reason, it just makes the game all the more endearing. If you've played this type of game before, you'll know what to expect: explore an area, interrogate characters, pick up items, use items to unlock doors/solve puzzles/whatever. The mystery is engaging and makes you want to solve it (a crucial part of any mystery game) and the storyline is surprisingly complex. Without spoiling anything, you play as a detective trying to find his missing fiancee (or maybe girlfriend? the game switches back and forth). As you investigate the strange town, you uncover a conspiracy involving a secret society and maybe something paranormal? All in all, it's a fun but flawed game, where the flaws make the game better. Give it a try, you'll enjoy it.

I didn't have any technical difficulties. (Aside from not being able to tab screen out or else the game crashed. But eh, older game, so it gets a pass on that one.) This game isn't all bad. I enjoyed the cheesy voice acting. Most of the puzzles were decent. And the price is more than reasonable considering the amount of content. So why don't I recommend this game? First, let's just get down to the most important point: The ending? The ending that's supposed to satisfy an entire series of games? (Which, granted, I didn't play, but now I'm glad I didn't.) It was so incredibly disappointing! (Also predictable, but mostly just... ugh! So frustrated by how little effort was put into that conclusion!) Second, the game isn't intuitive at ALL. If I didn't put items together in a specific order, nothing would happen. (Which led me to believe I was on the wrong track more than once.) For example (and hypothetical), if I wanted to put salt on an egg, I should be able to click the egg OR the salt first and then bring it to the other one for the action to happen. Puzzles would also sometimes reset without me realizing or not work properly if I clicked too fast. There were also times that not moving my mouse near a small area led to missing an important piece of a larger puzzle. If you're a fan of the other games in this series? Then I'd guess you'll probably be satisfied (aside from that horrid ending). But if this is the first of the series you pick up? It might be a shell-shock for the issues noted above.

As someone who enjoyed the first three Last Half of Darkness games on DOS, I was surprised to know that the series continued, so I had to pick this up. That was a mistake. For starters, the voice acting is awful. All the characters speak with such slow cadences that it's like listening to your friend rant about politics after downing Quaaludes. The main character's voice is also done by a terrible David Hayter impersonator, or someone who has a bunch of nails stuck in their throat. Gameplay wise, there's not too much going on. It's an adventure game, so most of what you're doing is collecting items and solving puzzles, but you can easily miss picking up vital items if you're not hovering over every part of the screen. If you miss an item, there's no system in place to help you find it. There’s no hints and there's not even a button you can hit to have important items in a scene glow. Visually, the game looks good for 1997. Too bad this was released in 2011. I mean, I wasn’t expecting much going in but… Wow. There’s virtually no graphic options and the game only runs in a 4:3 aspect ratio. A game that only runs in 4:3 in 2011? It seems pretty insane, seeing as though 16:9 had been the typical ratio for most media for several years up until that point. 2D elements, 3D elements, it doesn’t matter… It all looks horrible and the animations are just as bad. Whether it’s a cutscene or the main character interacting with the environment, it’s all bland and poorly animated. Puzzles range from tolerable to downright frustrating. One of the puzzles is a game of Simon. With eight buttons. You have to memorize a pattern that goes all the way up to seven sequences on EIGHT buttons. If you're great at memorizing patterns and can focus, you'll do fine, but I often have trouble concentrating and remembering things so it was a frustrating nightmare. The game was pretty bland all the way up to a specific puzzle towards the end. That's when I completely turned on it. See, all throughout the game you'll find these green coins that are apparently pretty important, but you're never told why. It turns out that this particular puzzle requires you to have 27 green coins. I got to this section with the right number of coins, but the game forces you into DESTROYING one of them before you even get to interact with the puzzle. That left me with 26 coins and being unable to continue. I tried looking up walkthroughs, but the only ones I found were incomplete. I looked up YouTube videos about this game. I found a few, with a FIVE HOUR video being the most helpful, but I wasn't about to scrub the timeline of a five hour video to figure out the location of a single coin. I briefly thought about heading back to the game and wandering around for a bit, but traveling in this game is terribly slow and clunky. I just decided to watch the ending on YouTube. I didn't miss much. Frustrating game design, bad voice acting, annoying puzzles, horrible visuals… Yeah. This isn’t a good game. I think everyone, but more specifically people who love adventure games, should stay very far away from this title.

Wow, this really was a great spooky adventure. It's been greatly improved compared to its predecessor titles and this time in 2.5D! Apart from the graphical overhaul the gameplay has also been polished more and employs better game design solutions. Since the developer was so generous and included a few earlier games of the franchise for free, I gave them a shot before playing Society of the Serpent Moon and actually finished one of them, Shadows of the Servants, but only barely. It was a good story but it was overshadowed by the clunky UI, less-than-convenient navigation system, but worst of all the unbalanced sound mixing. The usually quiet game would suddenly throw you jump scares that were so loud you could hear the distortion in the audio track which happens when you raise the volume levels so high the audio loses quality. This put me off big time and I didn't even want to play the other two extra games. But in Society all those problems have been taken care of and it really was a pleasure to play. There are some loose ends but nothing major, overall the story and the suspense keeps you interested just enough that you want to keep playing. It's dark, spooky and doesn't want to perforate your eardrums - just the way I like it.

Love the story and the atmosphere. After you download the game you will also have 3 other Last half Of Darkness games available in your Steam folder so you really make out. I got hung up on the coin puzzle at the end but there is a post about it in the discussion section on Steam. Don’t forget to check out the latest Last Half of Darkness game available which just came out Feb 7 2025.

Intriguing point and click games for adults are few and far between. This is one of my favorites! It has every element of mystery, horror and suspense that one would expect. Not an easy or childish by any means. This is one that you won't want to miss