The Emerald Maiden: Symphony of Dreams Reviews

there's a consistent little sub-plot-thing where you gotta find five kittens, and reunite them with their mother, and i like that :]

Definitely not the best HOG game out there. The concept and story had so much potential but was poorly executed, the narration wasn't interesting, the tasks didn't always make sense, sometimes it was difficult to figure out what step logically came next, it seemed like some dialogue/clues were missing when you clicked something that required an action, there was a lot of backtracking (thank goodness for the map and quick travel!), the bonus chapter was absolute nonsense, I saw some basic spelling errors, some of the mini games were horrendous, and while some of the hidden object scenes were unique and good, others were frustrating. This all detracted from how much fun the game was. If you can tolerate and persevere with the trickier hidden object scenes and mini games, then it's not bad to get 100% achievements (use a guide for the collectables as you won't want to play it again!), but it's still a relatively short HOG (3 hours). There are much better alternative HOGs out there that I recommend far more than this one.

One of the better stories in the HOG series I have played from Artifex Mundi. Probably because of another developer, Gogii Games, the story is very interesting and keeps you going. A lot of new or different puzzles, and I played like 10 of these kind of games. I bought it on sale, but it is worth the money.