Eventide 2: The Sorcerer's Mirror

I swear these storylines are becoming even more ridiculous. Eventide 2 sees you doing some rock climbing with your niece Jenny, who is then kidnapped by the Russian sorcerer who then uses magic to cut a rope and send you plummeting from the rock face to your death. Just kidding. That wouldn’t be much of a game now would it? While you don’t actually die, this opening scene is ridiculous in that the sorcerer uses magic to cut a rope when a knife would have done the job a lot easier, and earlier in the scene, you use a knife to cut through a tree branch like it’s butter. Not to mention the Deus Ex that sees you survive the fall just because there wouldn’t be a game otherwise!

The remainder of the story sees you travel to the Sorcerer’s mansion making friends along the way as you try to rescue your niece. Naturally, she has been kidnapped as she looks a little bit like the sorcerer’s dead lover and needs to be sacrificed to bring her back to life.

This is where my main annoyance with the game is. I only know this part of the backstory because there are about six storyboard sections which are supposedly puzzles that don’t take any intellect to solve, but are essentially unskippable dialogue bits which are annoying on second subsequent playthoughs. But it also feels like a very lazy and stupid way of telling the story. Why do I need to complete some weird storyboard puzzle thing to open a gate to a cemetery and does that mean the gravedigger has to watch that shit every time he goes in there? It’s mental.

The game introduces two new mechanics; combining items and moral choices. The combining of items is a nice touch and it’s a wonder this hasn’t been in previous games as it did add a level of enjoyment to the series.

On the flip side, the moral choice mechanic can do one. It boils down to you, the player, being able to make five dialogue decisions throughout the game that will slightly alter the course of events you encounter. It’s ridiculous on many levels and here is an example.

The first moral choice you make is about whether or not you lie to the innkeeper about buying a drink for the gravedigger. If you tell him the truth - you are buying it for the gravedigger - then the gravedigger will have the key to the cemetery. However, if you lie and say it’s for you, the innkeeper will have the key and you have to do the same events in a different order. It’s totally redundant as a choice and how the fuck does this alter who has the key?!

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 29 Achievements

It feels a lot like I laboured through this list and the reason for that has a lot to do with the moral choice mechanic in the game. You do all the standard stuff like complete the game on expert, do all puzzles without skipping and complete all picture scenes without using hints and this will net pretty much all of the achievements.

Outside of this, there are not standard collectibles to get which include talking to all imps in the game (pretty hard to miss), collecting all glimmering mirrors and imp cards (slightly harder to find but not impossible). The biggest issue with the collectibles though, it how segmented the game is. Once you get through five or six scenes you cannot go back and explore. Not a problem for me but I can see how this would be irritating if you missed a mirror or card in the middle of the game.

Back to the moral choices issue, there is an achievement for playing the game again and making different choices. However, what this should say is the following: Play the games once making all choices on the left side of the screen which results in pink flowers on the book and then play it again making choices on the right side of the screen which gives orange flowers on the book. Oh, and do both of these playthroughs back to back otherwise you won’t get the achievement.

So this resulted in me playing through the game three times as lying to the innkeeper about who the drink is for is a bad choice. So one playthrough for everything and then two back to back playthroughs for this one achievement. As I said earlier, the moral choices in this game can do one.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Aside from the moral choices the game felt a bit shit. This is a combination of the story boards which felt lazy, and the moral choices which also felt lazy. That said, it’s still a quick completion as the story is somewhat shorter that the others.