Ratings and Reviews by Rovarsson

In this retelling of the classic, wellknown fairy-tale, you play Beauty. However, you (the player) are not Beauty. Through memories triggered by various rooms, objects, pieces of furniture, it's clear that she has lived a life of her own, in this castle with its Lord, and outside it in her village.

She does not find Beast after coming home from a visit to her family, so she has to search the entire Castle.

And this is where the game shines. This Castle is so detailed, so well implemented and so vividly described, I felt like I was looking over Beauty's shoulder every step of her search. Your discovery of the different wings and rooms of this Castle is paced to perfection. The various puzzles hold you long enough to get accustomed to a certain part of the setting, until you find the solution and another part opens up. This has the effect that in the end, I felt like I had experienced much more space than is actually in the map.

For other of the many qualities of this game, I direct you to other reviews. The Castle was what I wanted to highlight most.

I would have rated this game 6 stars if it would have let me fly the Pterosaur!

There. That should be enough incentive to stop reading this and go play it.

Or not. I absolutely loved this game.Here's why:

-The world. The two cities Illuminismo Iniziato takes place in are big, detailed and deeply implemented. When I began playing, I spent a lengthy and thoroughly enjoyable time just sightseeing, examining stuff, thinking about what I would buy later on and in what shop. I also read the newspaper, and was pleased to see it provided me with hot-off-the-presses news about what happened in the world. And of course, in a city like this, I talked to the people.

-NPC-interactions. The cities are populated with lots of characters, most of whom you might remember from the game's prequel, Risorgimento Represso (also highly recommended). They each have their own personalities, and you can talk to them about quite a bit more than needed for the task at hand.

One NPC who undoubtedly deserves a paragraph to herself is Crystal, your NPC-tag-along slash hint-system. A wonderful character. Helpful but not too helpful when you need a nudge (or a shove). A knowledgeable guide to the game-world when you want background-info. And a tireless chatterbox for your entertainment only.

-Puzzles. Against this background, there are puzzles. Many puzzles. They are mostly well-clued (and if they are not, yaay, another excuse to talk to Crystal!), some are quite difficult, and all are so well integrated that you hardly feel like you're solving a puzzle. Also, some are laugh-so-hard-you-might-break-a-rib funny.

This is a fantastic game.

Emily Short is one of my favourite IF-writers, and when I found this big story-game with her name under the title, I pounced on it!

And it is good. Apart from being an immersive adventure and a detailed exploration of a fine city, deeper themes also shine through.

Truth above obscurity, even if truth also means complete transparency?

Creativity above strict order, even if creativity also means chaos?

The writing is top-notch, the NPC interactions feel real, the city and its history hold the interest, but in the end, the game misses something.

Is it because the game is so good that I raised the bar impossibly high?

Finding an outdoor café where there were no interactive NPCs and where nothing story-moving happened disappointed me.
Finding out that a little nook in the gameworld, about which I dreamed up many possibilities, didn't play a role in the story didn't feel like a red herring, it felt like a let-down.
Finding out that certain information I found about my character didn't matter to the game was a pity.

But those are nitpicks, and very personal nitpicks at that.

This game is very very good. Just not as amazing as I really really wanted it to be. And that's on me.

So play it.