Tales of Esferia: Araxis

A first title from new developer Arctic Pixels, Tales of Esferia:Araxis is exactly the type of game I like. Sci-fi story, puzzles, no combat, lots of world-building and exploring. I would recommend it strongly to anyone who likes sci-fi or point and click games. It reminded me somewhat of the Space Pilgrim series, though with more of an emphasis on puzzles and less complicated character development. This is a full-length adventure with easily 15 hours of content. I spent longer playing as I was putting together a guide and redoing some sections. I enjoyed the entire time I spent with it. While I bought it on sale I would say it is worth the asking price. It doesn't feel like a beginner's effort at making an adventure games. They've clearly learned from the mistakes of other developers and produced a nicely polished, ambitious project. The difficulty level is moderate, on the easy side for point and click style adventures. I found this good as the pace of the game was never slowed down too much by being stuck for hours because of something overly cryptic. The few times I did get stuck were honestly because of not noticing things or missing fairly obvious options. Ther…

Solid and fun adventure indie game. Surprisingly gory at times which was nice twist to cutesy 16-bit graphics. Puzzles varied from harder to more simple ones which gave it nice balance of hitting that puzzle solving high and moving through story without too much trouble. I liked both main characters and their banter between each other. The science team too had some distinctive characteristics that were interesting to see develop during the game.

This is an adventure game made with RPG Maker. Sadly, the engine's limitations move attention away from an otherwise compelling plot. I'm referring to item management, where you have to press multiple keys for basic actions because the mouse isn't supported, and slow loading times that wouldn't be so horrible if you weren't constantly backtracking. If you're willing to ignore that, you'll get a mature story where people are dying all the time (mostly because of your actions). Puzzles are not that interesting; they're connected to colors and the game's artificial numbering system, but there aren't that many of them. The main gameplay is still picking up items and using them at the right spot.

Just so we're all on the same page, Ethan is secretly the Angel of Death, right?