Odyssee - Kurzreview english

"Odyssee: Search for Olysses" is the second game in the newly announced series Cryo-Legends. Cryo itself describes the contents of the series as 'gripping adventures of universal history', whereas the first release "The Timemachine: The New Adventures" is not based on historical background, like "Odyssee" and the two upcoming games "Tales of Chivalry" and "Casanova". A misprint in the new Cryo-Legends-brochure shows in a chracteristic way, what the company is intending with this series of games: "Cassanova" instead of "Casanova" - to make as much "Cassa" (italian for cash) with this four games in a short period of time.

But return to "Odyssee": the story is based upon Homer's epics "Ilias" and "Odyssee", but this time the hero is not Olysses himself, but an early friend of his - Heritias - unknown to us until this moment. Penelope, Olysses' faithful wife, sends Heritias to search her husband not heard of for a long time. He is going to trace the great warrior and hero and starts his search in Troja. In the course of the game one gets to know many places and mythological figures in the mediterrenean area of the classical antiquity.

slydos

Rating for an adventure game: 45-50 %, because:

1. the action part in this game is rather expanded: you have to to give your best in running in several parts of the game (what is most difficult through this really unfamiliar keyboard control). You get constantly slaughtered or have to slaughter (especially in the second part of the game the slaughters increase). Sometimes I really felt the story beyond good taste, for example when you have to run the gauntlet through an appliance of tridents and get slaughtered dozens of times until you finally manage it in spite of the dam... keyboard control accompanied by the forceful sound of death cries. Not my kind of thing!

2. Most of the time the puzzles are not logical and can only be solved by try and error procedures (which crystal/stone do I have to place where?) without any hints from the story. You have to be prepared to do a lot of searching, wandering about, guessing, finding right places to hide ...

Besides sometimes the story isn't very imaginative (spoiler warning!):
In the city of the Lotophages you have to brew a lotus-drink, to get intoxicated like the Lotophages just to lead a conversation on the same level. The clou to carry out the brewing puzzle was to to choose the right pot out of 4 pots you collected on your way and to find out that the whole thing doesn't work with water from a pool in the town but with ocean water only. This is one of the most difficult puzzles in the game and was a great discussion point in the forums.

Well, to be fair - the game has its highs sometimes:

I appreciated for example the challenging puzzles around Circe, where you have to act transformed into the shape of a pig ...

Nevertheless even this part couldn't be mastered without a pinch of brutality: the evil Merops wants to catch you and therefore slaughters all of Circe's pigs (surprisingly, this time you don't have to watch it but just listen to the decent but slightly threatening cries in the background) - beware you poor little piggy ...

Also the riddle around the 'paradise' of Hades was a fine, peaceful and satisfying chapter near the end of the game.

Well, as to the graphics I don't have to say much, look at the screenshots. I prefer good 2D-graphics (Atlantis 2, Lotus Spring ...) instead of these 3Ds!