Botanica: Earthbound Collector's Edition Reviews

Not sure quite which way to go on this one. So let's just do a good/bad thing. Good: + The HOPs have a bit more depth to them than simply find a list of things. In all of them there is a bit more interaction. Open this, find the thing to put on the other thing to get a third thing etc. Some might find this annoying (even I would, depending on mood) but I found it actually helped to make it a bit different and 'puzzling' rather than simply looking for stuff in a static picture. + Most of the puzzles are pretty enjoyable. I liked the 'making potions' type ones especially. + Decent length. Or at least it seemed to be. But seeing my actual time I'm not so sure it's good value now. + I didn't turn the sound or music off. I didn't notice it as being especially amazing, but at least it wasn't utterly awful like some of these games can be. Bad: - Doesn't cope with Win10 resolution scaling. If I have to change my desktop settings to even be able to play a game, that's a big downer. Makes me think this is either an old game just recently put on Steam, or very lazy. - The cut-scenes, dialog, voice 'acting' and plot are dreadful. None of those things are really why I play this kind of game. But at points it was SO cringe-worthy I wondered why they had tried to make it into a story at all, rather than just a sequence of puzzles. - A few puzzles seemed utterly incomprehensible. Even with the guide, I'm still not exactly sure how some of them were meant to be solved. Especially the last one. W.T.F. - The graphics are 'good' but in the current HD world, not really good enough, sorry. Conclusion: I enjoyed about 70% of my time with this game. It really did seem to oscillate between the best and worst that this genre offers. Given that it wasn't exactly cheap, and looking through the points above, I'm going to have to give a 'no' for this one. It's not BAD, but there is so much competition now that 'meh' isn't really good enough for a recommendation.