Occultus - Mediterranean Cabal Reviews

Despite frequent freezing (which may well be my computer, I didn't feel like taking the time away from the game to trouble shoot because I just wanted to get back into it and restarting the game worked just fine since it autosaves after every action just about), I had a great time with this game, so much so that I ended up playing the whole thing in one sitting because I just HAD to see how it turned out, how these items fit together, etc. The story took me in a direction I didn't fully expect, which was cool, and, !!!SPOILER!!! there's a scene with combat mechanics?? I wish we could have spent a little more time in that area, as the design was really neat! !!!END SPOILER!!! It has a bit of the "well I have this item that would work just fine, why do I gotta go over here and get this Better Suited item?" that is just a part of hidden object/puzzle games in general, which is the most frustrating thing about this genre but I understand I'm not playing an open world game and limits must be set to prevent game breaking and keep us going in order. :P The inventory itself does get a bit unwieldy in the middle for a while, and I'd love to see perhaps a two-row system, since we are holding on to both usables and craftables in the same inventory, scrolling through to get to the one item I needed quite a bit (hello, dagger, my old friend, I tried to use you on Literally Everything and you spent most of your time a few scrolls away). I also do not have any idea what an Italian accent is supposed to sound like, and I'm not going to speak on the voice acting in that regard. I will say it's about par for the course for the genre. The main character had a good speed and style, though, that VA was a good pick! Despite these pretty minor gripes, I had a great time with this game! Please give it a shot!

Very atmospheric with good graphics and soundtrack ! OK , so the gameplay could be improved, personally I don't mind the drag and drop though . A bit more annoying is the fact that the map doesn't always indicate where you have to go, but if you're really stuck you can hit the hint button.

I played the easiest mode and have Windows 10. The game ran smoothly. IMO the game is a bit of a higher difficulty, but you can use the help feature or skip puzzles & mini games. I will definitely replay it. The HOPs were interactive and original which made them interesting and challenging. I recommend for those who like variety. There is a tool that shows you where you have an available action, and lets you jump to it. Since there are a lot of locations, this is a very good thing. There is a help feature. It will also show you which way to walk. You'll have quite a bit of inventory. You can combine things within it. There is a journal.

This game is... okay. There's nothing stand-out about it, everything is simply... fine. The voice acting is more irritating than anything, however, and the puzzles don't make up for the poor story.

Doesn't work on ultra-wide monitors - the top and bottom of the screen are cut off, sometimes including the inventory. There aren't any options for other aspect ratios and turning off full-screen gave me the same ratio but in a tiny window. I thought I soft-locked myself in the intro because I couldn't figure out how to stop the carriage, but it turns out I needed to talk to the driver that was off-screen and could only be seen by right-clicking at the top edge of the screen to zoom in. The hidden object scenes are equally unplayable on ultra-wide for the same reason.

I thought this was a fun standard HO game. I felt the other reviews were harsh and undeserving. This is a good player on the HO stage. Played normal level. Felt the map traveling was clear. Was patient on paying attention to the cursor. It let you know where you needed to be. It was a bit longer than the usual HO games I play so that was a plus. I did skip 2 puzzles just because I was feeling lazy and didn't want to take the time to sit and do it correctly. This deserves a higher rating than it currently has. I did get in on super sale but totally recommend this game on any sale.

This is a casual point and-and-click adventure with a few hidden-object scenes and puzzle mini-games. Skip this one. While the storytelling is OK, the game engine is rough, awkward, and buggy. You have to click and drag objects, which is already an annoying mechanic, but often clicks won't register and you will miss objects and actions even though you did the right thing. Map navigation is a nightmare. Even without the clunky engine, game design is unreasonably difficult. At some point I lost interest in even trying to understand the logic behind the puzzles and relied on the hint button to move forward. You are not rewarded for carefully thinking through the puzzles. Instead, you need to just use every object with everything until something works, which is not only tedious but also frustrating when the game engine won't register your clicks. The puzzle mini-games are also poorly designed. One memorable disaster involves putting 5 weights in order so they balance on a scale. Except that carefully trying to deduce the relative weights will reveal that the rules of physics don't apply. You simply have to try all combinations. Thinking will be punished!

This game has so many little problems that pills up that it's complicated to explain why and how you reach the point where you stop and say "no, I can't recommend that game, I'm done." The feeling for me began when I looked around for ten minutes what I was supposed to do with those mosaics with the roman numbers until I get that during the day there was a painting with the right number under. Then it became worse, especially with the map green indicator telling you "I should come back later" while in fact you forgot to pick stuff in the room, which you need now to progress. Then game becomes the "Cave Corridor CG Simulator" (which should be the subtitle of the game as those are the only "quality" CG and you'll spend your time seeing the same over and over again every time you open a fucking door leading underground). And then I received 3 mini caskets instead of 4 and I got stuck in the game on the last tier of it (oh, did I forget to say that people face bugs and dev don't care about it ?). Which mean that I went through twice everything and it was even more annoying as I knew some of the events but didn't remember how and when they would unlock, so I went to see my "watch repair friend" at least a dozen of times before he gave me that damn screwdriver so I could continue to progress. The story isn't bad, there are some good puzzles and interesting HOG scenes, but the gameplay is completely outdated for something from 2017 and you keep getting lost because you have no idea what illogical stuff you have to do to get the story to progress.

I'll give this a provisional recommendation, as the story outweighs some of the clunky mechanics. If you get it in a bundle or on special, go for it, otherwise play something else. A 55/100 effort. [b]The good[/b] Excellent story for this kind of game Superb backgrounds and visuals Some very challenging puzzles De-emphasises HO in favour of story Reasonable music [b]The bad[/b] Clunky interface and mechanics A couple of tracing games that are way out of place in a HOG Amateur theatre society level voice acting Some pixel hunting Difficult to figure out what to do on occasion Minimal replay value

Let me start from basics, I didn’t like the game. Mechanics is not intuitive, if it was 2014 game I wouldn’t say anything but it is supposed to be new… dragging objects you want to use instead of clicking and hoping you’ll hit just the right spot, moving back and forward to pick up the same item that is used in two scenes, map that requires 3 clicks before you can move to desired area, simply annoying. The description of the game says “unbelievable investigation” but I only got bored and confused. The makers were trying to put it all into one story, mysterious murders, occultism, elites lives, ghosts, visions, portals…. And because of that it felt random and illogical. “Stunning hidden object scenes”, well, maybe, but that doesn’t justify using each scene twice (!) simply by changing the list of objects we are searching for. Alternate day and night scenes…. Let’s be clear, it could be interesting, but the main character finds his grandfather’s watch, discovers it can change daytime to nighttime and just accepts it, naturally this type of things happen all the time, I don’t know why was I surprised. He also doesn’t use it when it could be very useful, just in two scenes. “Variety of minigames and enigmas”, that one is true. Unfortunately, variety means “oddity” and you spend more time trying to figure out what they want from you than actually solving it. “Intriguing characters at the heart of a quest into the underground world”, possibly, but none of them got introduced properly so you will not have a chance to be intrigued. And when it comes to the underground. Cut scenes with the character walking through underground tunnels, arrrgh! I’m pretty sure it is there (multiple times) just to make the game seem longer than it actually is and to irritate the players. The game is around 2 hours long but it feels much longer, not in a good way. When I finished I was happy to find out there is no bonus chapter. To summarize, I do not recommend the game for the above reasons, if it was older game, I could forgive some of the drawbacks. The short list of pros doesn’t balance the long list of cons.