Lost Grimoires 2: The Shard of Mystery

I think I mentioned at the end of my last Artifex Mundi review that they had released another two games right when I thought I was done. Lost Grimoires 2 is the first one we have gotten around to playing. And we smashed it in one evening.

Lost Grimoires 2: The Shards of Mystery follows the story of… someone as they go on a mission to save the kingdom of somewhere from an evil person trapped in a mirror. Minor spoilers – this one doesn’t do the Artifex Mundi story trick here where you get to the end of the game only for the person you thought was evil to suddenly be revealed as not evil. This bitch in the mirror is evil throughout the entire thing.

You start by helping your nephew who becomes king at a young age and then when he goes a wondering one night you run into his bit of stuff who just happens to be the daughter of the evil bitch. The evil bitch is trying to escape the mirror and it’s up to you to a solve a load of puzzles save the kingdom and do away with evil bitch once and for all. It’s a pretty mystical and farfetched storyline and if I’m honest, I didn’t pay that much attention to it while it was happening.

The gameplay is standard faire by now. Solve puzzles, complete hidden picture scenes, etc. There were some slightly different hidden picture scenes where you have to find the items based on the pictures but it’s stuff being recycled from the previous games. The puzzles were good and still offer that rewarding feeling you get when you complete without a guide so it’s an all good more of the same.

I complained quite heavily about the music and ridiculous non-puzzle bits in the first Lost Grimoires and they have significantly cut down on these here which is good. The music wasn’t really noticeable at any point either and that’s only a good thing but that may have been down to the shortness of the game.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 13 Achievements

It’s a short achievement list with only the single playthrough required to get all the achievements as there is no additional game to play here. All of the achievements bar two are missable. Playing the game through on expert will get you the two unmissable achievements for completing the game.

The remaining 11 are what you would expect from an Artifex Mundi game with the exception of finding hidden roses throughout the scenes. There are 31 roses to find, one in each scene you encounter and they are all fairly easy to spot. Of these 11, there are three achievements connected to the roses.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Lost Grimoires 2 is one of the quicker and easier Artifex Mundi games to complete. The storyline is just there as background for the puzzles which are the main selling point of the series. All in all, it’s a solid game with an easy achievement list.