Enlightenment

by Taro Ogawa

Cave crawl, Zorkian
1998

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Number of Reviews: 6
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2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Illogical Yet Immersive (For Masochists Only), January 1, 2010
by AmberShards (The Gothic South)

As others have noted, the writing is top-notch and places the player in a believable penumbra of the Zorkian universe. The over-the-top humor is also well done. The first glaring problem, however, is that the PC's actions and restrictions just don't make sense. Adventurers are known for trying all sorts of things in order to solve puzzles; it's their nature. Thus, the game fails right from the outset with a PC that is effectively straitjacketed.

The responses are entertaining -- at first, until they become tiresome and opaque. Apparently the puzzles depend upon doing random things until you figure out the secret parts of various objects that allow you to solve them. I say "apparently" because after 100 turns and still not a single point, I gave up in frustration.

Beyond the mindlessly illogical PC, the unclued nature of the puzzles, and the ridiculous catch-all behavior of the troll, there's not much to really set apart Enlightenment as a game. Don't misunderstand -- the writing is excellent, but the game mechanics are not, so as a game, Enlightenment just doesn't deliver the goods. I suppose you could spend an afternoon banging your head against the wall, but why do that? If you need to resort to hints to get even the first point, you might well love this game. Me, I'm not in favor of games that frustrating.

Enlightenment is basically for masochists only.

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